I was in the Mara over the weekend. Yes, first time in the Mara for me. It was media trip organized by Sarova hotel. That sounds a bit misleading because it sounds somewhat studios. Somewhat bookie. Well it’s not. It’s an excuse to get drunk…and for some, get stoned.
Take three vanful of journalists down to a place like the Mara and the aftermath will be many empty bottles of alcohol. Suffice to say, media trips are a load of fun. You meet interesting people, all sorts of characters. You meet teetotalers. People who wake up at 4 freaking AM lugging their heavy cameras up a hill to catch the sunrise. You meet vegetarians, and vegans. You meet weed-heads (those are such fun people). You meet people who drink so much and never get drunk, and people who drink so much and lose their minds (and shoes). You meet people who are funny and outgoing, and people who sit alone at a corner and read a book. You meet people who you have read but have never met, and they almost never look like what they write. It’s the curse of writing. Once in a while you will have the misfortune of going for a trip with a TV personality, and some wear this long ridiculous look of self importance and a huge chip on their shoulders. Those are people you don’t want to have a drink with because they make your drink taste like camel piss. But the crew that went down was OK, which is to say there wasn’t any overbearing television personality.
But the Mara is special place. It’s endless in beauty. The skies are shade of blue that is not in the color wheel. In Mara, the wind doesn’t blow, it purrs. Whilst Nairobi is constantly marked by a choking anxiety, the Mara lives a perpetual sense of longevity. A sense of rebirth. At the Mara the gods look over you. Literally. I mean if God wanted to he would toss you a piece of half eaten Pizza. Yes, it’s that close to heaven. But the Mara is also an endless cliché; the Maasai’s stand on one leg. I mean, it’s like looking at a postcard. Only it’s a postcard that smells of milk and blood. I don’t mean to disparage the Maasai, or their touristic importance, but come on, one leg? I mean I saw this Maasai chap who was busy chilling out by the roadside, chewing a blade of grass or something, and once he saw our van approach he sort of took one leg off the ground and leaned on his spear! Sigh. These guys will do anything to get onto Youtube! Anyway, when our van neared and he saw that we were just a bunch of black-ass Kenyans he spat the grass out and walked away with a Mara swagger, perhaps to go milk a cow…or whatever they do during their free time now that they have become lazy to hunt lions anymore.
Another thing, you can’t take a picture of a Maasai if you don’t show him a certificate of good conduct, an original ID,your blood group result from a certified doctor and money. Yes. Things have changed a lot, Maasai’s have become smart. They know what a camera is, and they know that a picture is worth a thousand words, and quite often a thousand bucks if you sell it to a newspaper or more for a magazine. So they ask for money if you want a picture. If you take a picture of him without money or his consent, he spears you. If you point a camera in his face without his consent spears you. If you have dreadlocks and you look like a lion of Judah, he spears you.
But they are justified in a sense (justified to ask for money, not to spear you). I mean the payment is not just for his face, it’s for the amount of time he spends twisting his braids, or looking that warrior like. So pay or get speared in the heart. I tried taking a picture of some Maasai kids playing by some pond on our way to the lodge, and they got really agitated and dramatic those kids, someone would have thought I tried taking off with their clothes. They started screaming (kiddie war cry) and basically being a nuisance in the damn Mara. So I didn’t click which was just as well. I mean, they didn’t even look like Maasai kids, they were naked. Talking of nakedness, doesn’t nakedness reduce every man (and woman) to one element; human? Isn’t it clothes that define who we are as opposed to how long our eyelashes are? Think about it, take ten guys from different races, and put them on a police lineup. Now ask them to strip. Won’t they just be men at the end of it all? Ok, hang on, get that African off the lineup, he is making everyone else look bad!
Anyway.
Hotels often organize game drives at the crack of dawn or late in the evening. I have nothing against people staring at animals and taking pictures, I mean, they are easy to photograph than the Maasai; they won’t ask for money or worse, spear your kidneys out. So go ahead. But I can’t seem to stand game drives maybe because my threshold for concentration is so low I would fall asleep looking at Giraffes. I find it so odiero, wowing and ooing over some Rhinos going about their daily business of trying to support the weight of their humongous heads. I also never seem to reconcile with the fact that Hyenas are ugly and they stink, they really do. And that walking style doesn’t help their case either. I have a friend who studied wildlife conservation and her favourite animal is the hyena. Sigh. Moral of the story is never poke strangers on Facebook.
I love leopards though; they are stealth, proud and vicious. One Maasai in Ngorongoro, Northern Tanzania told me of a story of how a Leopard invaded their boma one night killing two guys, twelve goats, blinded one man and scared the crap out of the ten others who had come to kill it. He told me they heard commotion in their boma where the animals were locked, and thinking it was a lion they mobilized a bunch of strong warriors armed with whatever Maasai’s use to kill trespassing lions. It turned out it was a Leopard, and their hearts sunk. They surrounded this animal, and there is nothing as dangerous as a cornered cat, he informed me. One guy threw a spear, the cat- like in a scene of animal Matrix- evaded it, and he says when it sprung up to attack it was up in the air for a few seconds but when it landed, two guys were dead, most scratched and bleeding, and the leopard was gone. How can you not respect an animal like that? So yeah, I will skip looking at Dik Diks and instead stare at a Leopard. Problem is they are nocturnal. So game drives? No thank you sir.
Darkness sneaks over the Mara. And night is powerful than day. It bleeds over the landscape, fading it into black. Darkness brings out the insomniacs, led by Mufasa the lion. They prowl this land by night because it belongs to them. This is their hood. Night also brings out a rare creature; humans. They stand perched on a hill, putting away cocktails and lusting over the sunset. The sunset is not just gorgeous, it’s achingly gorgeous. Its god’s exquisite painting. It’s his way of telling humans that they are out of their depth. Men can capture sunrise, but they will never reproduce it. God is showy, and rightfully so. And who wouldn’t want to show a piece of work like the sunset or even a sunrise? You know, the only thing I’ve ever seen more beautiful than the sunset is my little girl’s smile!