The first mission as soon as we stepped off the plane was to look for our sign. Outside the airport, queues of people were lined up - signs and names in their hands, looking over the bustle of people for who they were here to pick up. It was going to be a challenge to find our last name in a sea of nearly every surname in existence. By some miracle, our sign found us. A man with soft, brown eyes asked our name, and we could see from the sign that he was our driver. Without saying anything else, he led us to a moss green taxi and put our bags in the boot. No matter where you are, airports always have this generically sterile feel, as if you haven’t even left your own country, so it wasn’t until we were driving down the motorway that I felt real culture shock. At first the culture shock came mainly from the driving – which was aggressive and pushy. But as we started to drive into Nairobi people appeared, people who moved with loose relaxation, completely at ease with themselves. People who wore clothes that hugged their bodies and had smiles that seemed to not only emanate from their lips, but from their eyes. It could not have felt more different from rushed, stressed-out London. I later met a man from Uganda and told him how much I loved the chilled vibe of the people in Africa. He smiled. “In Africa we move with our internal time, not the external time,” he said. I laughed, “I would love to do that to, but I don’t think I would get anything done.”
The first morning of our safari I woke to an unfamiliar humidity that had crept into our room overnight. I got up and had the first cold shower I’d had in a long time. Downstairs our driver for the week was waiting for us in the lobby. His name was Ahmed – a short man who stood as if he was the tallest in the room. We all shook hands, and I said I was going to buy some water. “Water?” Ahmed said, attempting to imitate my accent with a huge grin on his face, and I laughed. We trundled through the outskirts of the Maasai Mara, going far too quick for safety to be Ahmed’s concern. I looked out of the window through the dust cloud we were accumulating. In the village we were passing through, two women in long, bohemian skirts carrying woven baskets looked up as our van passed them, probably not impressed by the dust cloud we were leaving them with. The villages were small, and held up mostly through manual labour – houses and shops made of sheets of metal, doors looking as if they wouldn’t keep much out. It was warm and a sensual heat stuck to the windows of the van, and my skin. Kenya is a beautiful country. My most vivid memories are of the vastness of the scenes we gazed at from the van windows, the glow that seemed to emanate from the sky and ground. Everything about it is exotic – the vibrantly dressed people and their relaxed manner suggest a contentment that is so full, yet so rare to see in Western countries where we have everything and nothing at the same time.
The first day of our safari saw us driving through the Mara and into the heat of the migration. The wildebeest make their journey from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the greener pastures of the Maasai Mara, drawing all the predators and ‘eye candy’ to the tourists as they go. Ahmed assured us that today, we were going to see a lion. As the safari went on we saw an abundance of zebra, so many, in fact, that we nicknamed them ‘the common cow’. We spotted a thick horned waterbuck peeking out from a bush; he was so big his attempt to conceal himself had been very unsuccessful. We also saw delicate, ash red gazelles, nibbling at the grass, springing away in groups when the vans came too close. But so far, no lions. The Maasai Mara is a stunning, open place, particularly in the early mornings and evenings, when the sun soaks everything in this unearthly, golden glow. Midday, however, is stiflingly hot. I had already been through one and a half bottles of water by lunchtime. Ahmed slowed down and parked up. We looked around as this was usually an indication there was an animal near. He pointed left, and we followed his hand. All of a sudden my eyes were filled with a big grey bulk, wrinkled skin and two ears flapping away the flies. My breath sped up. “He’s a wild male that’s been shunned from the herd,” Ahmed explained. The elephant did not stand still, his legs constantly pawing the dusty earth, his crinkled trunk searching the air. I could not comprehend the scale of his size until he began moving closer to our van. And closer, and closer, until Ahmed began to get worried. He turned on the engine. The elephant had clocked that we were there, watching him, and he didn’t like it. He picked up his pace. “Oh shit,” Ahmed said, and just as he accelerated the engine cut out. Panic erupted. The elephant’s descent on our van was suddenly charged with anger and I could hear his heavy, determined breath. He had nothing to lose. He was a rogue, angry at the world; taking out some tourists would do nothing but please him. Ahmed started the engine again and we swept out of the scene, driving outside of the marked boundaries for safari vans. I looked out of the back window – the elephant stopped, turned around, and slumped off in the opposite direction, looking for someone else to pick on.
The remainder of the day was less dramatic. We stopped and had lunch overlooking a lake where a herd of wildebeest were drinking and recuperating. The scene became even more alive when Ahmed pointed out a crocodile waiting on the edge. She was as still as a stone, the only indicator that she wasn’t actually a stone being her mouth - wide open, revealing gleaming white teeth and pale pink insides. We carried on driving, seeing the usual zebras, wildebeest and gazelles, which were sadly becoming a mundane sight. It was nearing early evening, the weather had started to cool and the sun was thinking about setting sometime soon. Ahmed’s radio, which he had wired up to all other safari vans in the area, buzzed with activity. “There are lions about a ten-minute drive from here,” Ahmed said. Bubbling with anticipation, we drove a short distance across the Mara. Soon, we found a group of safari vans forming a semi-circle around a tree. We drove up and found our place amongst them. I stood up so that my head was out of the sun roof. Dozing languidly in the grass was a family of lions: two females, both sleeping, their bellies rising up and down slowly in deep relaxation. Three cubs were there, trying to relax, but so excited by the commotion going on around them their little eyes darted about, not sure where to look. Occasionally one would bite the ear of another and they would descend into the sweetest fight I think I’ve ever seen. Feigning aggression, they would attempt to growl, only to make a sort of high pitched purr that made everyone melt. When the fights became too boisterous, a mum would raise her head and watch them, flicking them with her long, rope-like tail. But then the tail became the new object of excitement, and the two cubs jumped on it with persistence as the lioness bared her teeth in annoyance. She moved her tail to the left, the cubs followed, to the right, the cubs followed again. Eventually she stood up, stretched her magnificent body and slumped back down facing the opposite direction. The cubs lost interest and went to bother the shyer cub, minding its own business by the umber tree trunk.