It was not exactly the Yellow Brick Road from Nairobi to the South Rift Valley. I'd got used to potholes by now but this was indescribably wild. "Road" is really not the right word for the vague and rambling path that had been sort of hewn through rubble, salt lakes, savannah, hills and such. I don't know if there is a word for it, actually! I was just glad to be in a brand new and enormous Toyota Land Cruiser (it had been picked up from the showroom the very morning that John Kamanga, the director of the campsite project I went to, drove me there).
The camp, called Sampu Camp, is a new project that is intended to be a model to be copied throughout the South Rift area. South Rift is composed of several conservation areas and quite a number of group ranches owned by Maasai communities. They are trying to develop camps such as this one to open a corridor for tourists from the Maasai Mara to Amboseli park - to capture the business currently going to one park, then driving all the way back to Nairobi, and then driving all the way to the other park. Since South Rift connects the two parks, and in fact all the wildlife you see in either park transits this corridor regularly, visitors wanting the real safari experience would be much better off taking this route. Since it is a fully community-owned and run operation, it takes time to get off the ground. Getting all the various parties and chiefs and so on to agree at each step is no small feat, and often there are ruffled feathers between all the various 'important people' over who gets to be chairperson, treasurer, etc and then what gets lost is 'what does the chairperson actually do for the camp anyway and who makes sure that gets done???'. Nevertheless, Sampu has been the recipient of several grants and some significant NGO assistance, and is quite impressive in its potential and location.
So there I was, one little blond Canadian girl going into Maasai land to offer some service training, infrastructure and suggestions for making this camp a successful business and a model that could be copied.
My first discovery was one of the best, and provided the most wonderful conversation starter for the duration of my stay, particularly given that Maasai culture in its most traditional form is, ah, not entirely supportive of women's rights and power, shall we say ever so diplomatically. My discovery was made upon introducing myself to the half dozen Maasai men employed at the camp: "Melanda" is very, very close to a fairly common traditional Maasai name. For BOYS. Well that got us all off to a good start! I got every one of them laughing about how I had finally found 'my tribe' in the South Rift and actually I'm a Maasai man but just in a very good disguise.
As it happened, the young men working at the camp were very much in the 'crossroads generation' of Maasai, very passionate about conserving their rich and amazing cultural heritage but embracing a great deal of Western thinking about the role of women, and what they have to offer intellectually and socially. I was happy to remind them, as we talked and shared our stories and information about our cultural, ethnic and national backgrounds and norms, that actually Western society has a rich and illustrious history of repressing and ignoring women too, and it's only been in the last 100 years that we've had a voice at all, anywhere in the world. I hate to allow people to carry around idealistic and fantastical notions about how 'advanced' and 'good' Westerners are when really we're just different and have our own bundle of good, bad and ugly like every other culture out there.
Another amusing discovery (well, I had to laugh or I would have cried) was that most people in Kenya believe that Canada is part of the United States. One person asked if Canada was in Texas. Another said, solemnly, "all very learned people know that Canada is one of the United States of America". It took me many, many evenings of gentle coaching and adamant lecturing before they could believe that in fact, I come from an independent nation with the queen on our money, a Prime Minister (I left out the part about how our current PM wants to be up Bush's bum like Tony Blair and is a total US wannabe, that would have been a detriment to my case) and government run health care for all (I left out the part about how the right wing nutjobs in our country want to dismantle it and love to tell lies about how it 'isn't financially possible', because again, that wasn't my point!). We finally understood each other when I asked them "is there a country in the region here that Kenyans have some political difficulty with and would not want to be mistaken for? A country whose individual citizens you like, respect and feel neighbourly towards, but whose government and international policies you object to and strongly oppose?" They said, yes, that would be Somalia. Aha! When I then said "well, you telling me that Canada is part of the US is like me telling you that Kenya is a province of Somalia". They got it at last!
As to the environs of the camp, South Rift is a few hours drive south from the Ngong Hills (of the movie), which are just outside Nairobi. Nairobi and the Ngong area were historically all Maasai land, but as urbanization took hold of that water rich area, the Maasai, nomadic herders, were crowded into the south. They had always occupied the southern areas, all the way into Tanzania, but had previously also stretched north into Nairobi (the name of which is a corrupted version of a Maasai word "Nilofi" or something like that, which is some reference to water from what I've been told). As a group, the Maasai now run the gamut from extremely traditional, truly nomadic herders still living only on meat, blood and milk, to those who have added farming to their livelihoods, to those who have turned to farming entirely, to those who have started running businesses or working outside the home for their incomes. Most combine all of the above elements, so the men I worked with and trained all had farms, and also had herds, and also had jobs! Those who were married had wives who helped with the farms, children who did the herding when not at school, and some hired outside workers to help with the farming and herding. A very busy people!
On one afternoon during my stay, I was given a tour of the local community area, and was fascinated to see the combination of traditional flowing red and purple cloths, stretched earlobes and decorative beaded necklaces and headdresses, to suits and shirts - and the differences had nothing to do with what their roles were or what they were doing. Some herders wear the draped cloth and beads, some wear western attire. Some business people wear business attire, others are cloaked and beaded. It's all a colourful jumble. I visited a "boma", where the "warriors" live for a period of time - this is a rite of passage for young Maasai men, who are circumcised at age 18 as a 'becoming a man" initiation rite and then live in huts together for a few years. Traditionally they would have gone out and hunted lions - I think you have to have a scar from a lion hunt to be a 'real' Maasai man - but now they are part of the conservation efforts and don't hunt but rather steward the wildlife. In this phase they grow and braid their hair quite long, and then when they leave the boma they shave their heads. Women similarly have initiation rites, which horrifically also include circumcision (which is actually referred to by human rights organizations seeking to ban the practice as "female genital mutilation" which is honestly a more accurate term for what is done to these girls). During my visit to the local health centre, which was donated and built by the British Army and serves the local community, the doctor told me that this practice causes terrible medical issues for women and also complicates childbirth enormously. There are a lot of such issues being worked on slowly as this culture, which is beautiful and strong and tied to the environment and nature in amazing ways, begins to reinvent itself in light of the growing focus on the rights of women. It is a fascinating struggle to see up close and not at all a simple matter to address.
The camp itself was amazing. It is graded "deluxe", not luxury, which I appreciated, because it allowed the real flavour of the 'safari' experience to seep into you while you were there, not having some veil of ridiculous and unnecessary convenience between you and the wild. Not to say it was uncomfortable, because it had great amenities. It made me feel like I was on Safari for real, or in the movie Out of Africa or something. Each tent was like a small and rather basic cabin, but with a fully equipped bathroom at the back, beds, and tables and chairs. The tents were placed around the outside of the camp and each had an extraordinary view -- some overlooking the river, some facing the escarpment and hills, some facing across the grasslands. The Mess Tent had the best view of all, with a view all the way to the mountains dividing Kenya and Tanzania. The camp was open but guarded and patrolled 24h/day, and as it happens the animals tend not to come into human occupied camps because they fear the light, noise and unfamiliarity of the strange creatures inhabiting the camps. This was not a lot of reassurance at first (what about lions? oh they don't come in here. Yeah, okay...), but as I grew used to it, I appreciated not being walled in, and being right out in the middle of the true wilds of Africa. And, since I'm here at the UN offices borrowing a computer to type this, I obviously was not eaten by a lion.
I did not actually get to see any predators at all, though on the game drives we did I got to see zillions of zebra, lots of Maasai giraffes (darker than the Rothschild variety), wildebeest, dik-diks (small antelopish things with no horns), impala, and one very unhappy buffalo. Apparently Maasai don't fear any animal at all, save for the lone buffalo -- these are the males who have failed to get their own herd and are eternally angry about it and take it out on everything they see. Even lions don't usually go for them, they are so dangerous. If you meet one whilst walking, you are likely to be killed on the spot if it's in a bad mood, which they usually are. So seeing one, even from inside a sturdy Jeep, was a bit of a nervous thrill.
My other wildlife encounters were of a smaller yet more frightening variety. Three cobras were found at the back of a very messy supply tent that we cleaned out, and scorpions were all over the place inside crumpled materials or under boxes that had not been moved in a while. I found three in my tent on one night. Needless to say, I was rather paranoid and checked every nook and cranny with my kerosene lamp and then again by the light of my cell phone (just in case the different light wavelengths revealed different things) before I went to bed each night. I also stripped and re-made my bed each time before getting into it, in case anything had crept into it while I'd been out.
There is so much more I should write about my week there - it was astounding and I can hardly wait to go back again! But for now I need to go, because I'm only borrowing this PC and I have several meetings with people here at the UN and later at the Red Cross that I now have to leave for. So I think I'll send another chapter from home - I'll be back in Vancouver on Sunday night.
Sending greetings and happy wishes and big hugs, and hoping to see most of you (who are in Vancouver) soon and share photos... I sign off as:
Melanda, the honorary Maasai man!
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