We left Noah’s Ark VIP Hotel and headed north-east to Kenya. I was sad to leave Uganda, which, despite setbacks with illness, a lost DS and a never-to-arrive parcel, had delivered on its promise—a magical country with wonderful people. In 1907, a young traveller by the name of Winston Churchill had described Uganda as ‘the pearl of Africa’, a phrase that Ugandans often repeat with deserved pride.
Another big day of travel lay before us. What I had anticipated would be an epic day of three minibus trips and one border crossing was made a little easier at breakfast when Simba kindly offered to drive us an hour or so to the regional capital, saving us a minibus trip. As he manoeuvred his people mover around potholes and traffic, Simba and I chatted about Australia and Uganda, the relative economic state of the countries, and also the relative state of the roads.
Simba explained the complex communication system that exists between the drivers—lights, horns and hand signals can send dozens of different messages, such as traffic ahead, move over, pass me or watch out.
Sam piped up from the back seat. ‘They aren’t going to find my DS, are they.’
I felt for him. ‘I don’t think so, Sam.’
‘That’s all right,’ he sighed, ‘the black DS can take over from the blue DS.’ I think it was the fact that we were leaving Uganda—he was finally ready to let go.
After a second minibus, a boda boda to the border and a relatively painless border crossing we were in Kenya, our ninth and second last country. We obtained some local currency from one of the money-changing hawkers and hustled to board a coach that was conveniently leaving for our next destination, Kisumu, in ‘half an hour’.
Two hours later, the bus left. At least the three-hour coach trip was more comfortable and safer than in a minibus, and we could read. Through the dusty windows a woman boiled peanuts in a hub cap over a roadside fire. A boy skipped with a vine. In the fields, charcoal smoked in kilns resembling mini-ziggurats of mud brick, and the roadside rattled and hummed with horns, engine noise, yelling and laughter. The road flattened, the temperature rose, the dirt yellowed from paprika-coloured to peach-coloured, the countryside dried out and dust returned. We had crossed a political border and a geographical one: from wet central Africa to the dry east.
Sam had obviously been pondering the practicalities. ‘Does Kenya have a McDonald’s?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there would be one in Nairobi.’ Well, I thought there would be.
‘I don’t want to go to Nai-robbery,’ he quickly replied.
‘Stop calling it that, Sam. We’ll get into trouble.’ I hoped the passengers around us weren’t from Nairobi.
We finally reached Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city, at six p.m. and took a tut-tut to the hotel. We had only travelled around two hundred kilometres, but it had taken ten hours and involved a car, a minibus, a boda boda, a coach and a tut-tut.
Kisumu was a bustling place on the shore of Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa. The city was reminiscent of India, where I’d travelled in my twenties, and had many residents of Indian descent. But it also had the tension inherent in a larger African city. You needed to be careful on the streets here.
The next day we caught a tut-tut to the shore of the murky and crocodile-infested Lake Victoria. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant by the lake; its waters were the shade of blue metal. Sam ordered his lunch. He was now ordering meals with such ease I didn’t really pay attention anymore. I sometimes had to remind myself what he’d been unable to do at the beginning of the trip.
We had planned to play chess and cards by the lake before a spot of boxing, but a storm hit and we scuttled back to the hotel. Our insalubrious accommodation was accessed by a stairwell from the street up to a solid wrought-iron gate. It had wi-fi, ceiling fans and street noise. The reception desk bore a sign saying DO NOT LEAVE VALUABLES IN YOUR ROOM, WE WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE IF THEY ARE STOLEN.
Up on the rooftop terrace, we could see across the groaning city to the great lake. As night tightened its grip, the dim glow of a streetlight below revealed boda boda drivers sitting astride their bikes on a corner and harassing a young woman walking past with a bowl balanced atop her head. She ignored them. A security company car zoomed down the narrow street. Music blared out of a dark bar with flashing neon signs in the shape of beer bottles. Dogs barked and car horns blared. I contrasted the sights and sounds with those on the verandah in Kapchorwa.
I wondered what to do next, where to go. This wasn’t a backpacker hostel but rather a one-star holding bay for travellers who kept to themselves, low-key business folk and desperadoes.
Sam didn’t like it. ‘I don’t want to stay here.’
I agreed, but we couldn’t do anything about it. ‘It’s the best we can manage.’
I let him chill on the DS while I read on my Kindle, both of us quiet and alone with our thoughts under our mosquito nets, in the prison cell of a hotel room. Our backpacks and belongings were strewn on the concrete floor, there was a broken toilet seat with a bucket for flushing, the blank bleached walls were lit by a single naked bulb and mosquitoes droned relentlessly.
The next day we got organised. I tried to get Sam involved in planning where we should go as we scanned the tatty map of southern Kenya in the reception area of the hotel. We found a local Indian travel agent who efficiently organised a four-day tour, which took in the Maasai Mara and Devil’s Gate national parks before finishing in Nairobi. Maybe Sam would get to McDonald’s after all.
When we’d arrived in Kenya I’d had no idea this was the time for the annual wildebeest migration, which only lasts for a few weeks in the period from August to October—the exact time varying from year to year. We discovered the Great Migration was now starting in the fabled Maasai Mara. We were incredibly lucky. I was excited, and I hoped Sam was too. He just seemed very spacey.
The day our tour began the overnight rain had cleared to a fresh clear morning. Joseph our Maasai guide steered the small van south towards the Tanzanian border, Sam and I the only passengers. After a few hours the traffic thinned and we hit a corrugated dirt road which wound down a precipice. Stretching out to the horizon were the vast grass plains of the Maasai Mara.
As we descended, wildlife started to emerge. Zebras scattered off the road, pods of elephants roamed through the zephyr-tousled grasslands, a family of giraffe grazed nearby. Thomson’s gazelles, Grant’s gazelles, waterbucks, topis, impalas and elands. There were the vibrant colours of lilac birds, yellow-billed storks and ground hornbills, the majesty of secretary birds, marabou storks, vultures and ostriches.
This was the Africa of dreams. The flat horizon was broken only by the occasional flat-topped Vachellia tree. Thousands of wildebeest stood in vast herds. A huge sky arced above, laced with wispy strands and ringlets of cirrus cloud. Buffalo glared at us, baboons darted up trees and warthogs marched across the plains. A hippo splashed away, startled by our van. A massive crocodile sat immobile on a muddy bank. All this just on the drive to our hotel, which was located in the centre of the park.
When we arrived at the hotel I realised why the trip had cost so much. This place was way better than anywhere else we had stayed on the entire trip. The hotel was seriously up-market.
Sam clearly had his mother’s ‘champagne’ taste in accommodation. ‘I want to stay here longer,’ he said a microsecond after we entered our room. Before us lay two immaculate queen-sized beds, a marble bathroom, a writing desk and a panoramic view from the verandah doors to the animals milling on the Maasai Mara plains below the precipice on which the hotel was situated.
‘We are only here for two nights,’ I cautioned.
‘I want longer.’
I fully sympathised. ‘So do I, really, but we can’t afford it.’
‘Oh…’ he moaned, as some giraffes wandered by the window.
I was glad for his sake that he was getting some luxury. We had been roughing it for so long; it was nice that he could enjoy some comforts. With five-star hotels, though, come five-star wankers. This became all-too evident during the afternoon game drive, as fellow guests boarded the line of safari vehicles outside the hotel. Men toted camera lenses the length of a wildebeest’s leg, probably compensating for something. One man, who, of course, was also loud and opinionated, had a drone camera. Seriously? I secretly hoped the camera would crash amid a pride of lions and he’d try to retrieve it. Now that would make for an interesting photo.
On the game drive, the van passed teeming herds of wildebeest, numbering in the tens of thousands, all heading for the Mara River. They formed long columns of bovine nomads stretching out in meandering lines to the horizon. Their silver bodies were banded with black slashes, and their black faces and manes were festooned with white beards; the clowns of the plains.
Sam watched them pass. ‘They are like The Lord of the Rings. They are an army.’
‘Yes, I suppose they are,’ I replied with a wry smile.
‘They are buffalo soldiers!’ Sam said, and started to sing the song that we had heard about a thousand times since arriving in Cape Town. Bob Marley is huge in Africa. Technically they were wildebeests and not buffaloes, but I still liked his joke.
Each year nearly two million wildebeests and hundreds of thousands of Thomson’s gazelles, zebras and other ungulates make a three-hundred-kilometre trek which circles the Serengeti ecosystem of northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. The Maasai Mara is the northernmost point of the arc. The migration never stops, and as African wildlife expert Jonathan Scott puts it, ‘The only beginning is the moment of birth.’
Then, way down south in the Serengeti, eight and a half months after the rut, more than 300,000 calves are synchronously dropped over a short few weeks to reduce the window of opportunity for predators. The wobbly-legged calves can outrun a lioness within five minutes of being born.
From there the great herds continue clockwise around the plains, stalked by lions, leopards and hyenas, crossing crocodile-filled waterways but always marching on, driven by instinct and rain patterns. When they reach the Maasai Mara, for unknown reasons, the wildebeest feel compelled to ford the Mara River, their greatest challenge, before heading south to cross the river again, often only a few days later. The river crossing is dangerous, with dozens being taken by crocodiles, but still every one of them does it. It is usually the old, the young and the weak that are taken. The wildebeests’ defence is their vast numbers; as a species they can afford to take a few hits at the river.
The line of cars stood beside the river, lingering to see if the herd would make the dash across the shallows. As they often do, the herd threatened to but didn’t cross; not this time.
We woke early in the morning, keen to see the lions when they’re most active. It paid off, as we soon spotted a pride. They were feasting on a few wildebeests they’d killed overnight. This was the happy hunting season for the lions. At this time of year, they fattened up before the herds disappeared south. Then they would need to feed on more difficult to catch game such as zebra, antelope, and even giraffe or hippos.
Sam was wrapped in a red and blue Maasai rug, kindly supplied by Joseph. It was Joseph’s coat of many colours. Well, two. Even though we were on the equator, the plains were sixteen hundred metres above sea level so it got chilly. Joseph was being very patient with Sam, who was continuing to make way too many references to black- and white-skinned people. I explained about the documentary and why I was using a video camera. I didn’t want him thinking I was another Western wanker.
We could hear the ripping of tendon and muscle as a female lion tore apart a dead wildebeest’s legs. Jackals hovered nearby, aware she would eventually have had her fill and then it would be their turn. A male lion was also hooking into a carcass. He then marked the territory with a piss before strutting across the road right in front of our parked van.
Sam was transfixed. ‘He has big balls.’
During the quiet time in the middle of the day I tried to get some schoolwork done. We attempted some maths. It soon deteriorated.
‘I don’t want to do the pi questions. It’s too hard,’ he complained.
‘Sam, you’re very capable of doing this. You’re not trying.’
‘No, I am not capable. I am disabled. I have a disability.’ That was a new one.
I wasn’t going to back off. ‘Not in maths you don’t.’
‘Yes I do. You are a mean father. You should be kinder to me.’
I was getting angry. ‘Just do question four now!’
He punched me, tight and hard, with a hook to the side of the head. I was shocked by how hard he could punch. It was one of the best punches he had ever thrown; he had kept his body steady and balanced. Perversely, as I recoiled, I thought of congratulating him on his technique.
He immediately knew he had gone too far. I frankly felt like punching him back, and nearly did. Instead I stormed out of the room with the DS in hand, and Sam at my heels.
‘Don’t take my DS!’ he screamed.
With a set jaw, I snapped, ‘I am not taking it. You are just banned from using it for an hour.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
I turned to face him. ‘Go back to the room and leave me alone. Now!’
I took my bruised feelings—and head—to reception to calm down. Where had that come from? Sam is normally fine with maths. And as for the punch, I hoped that wouldn’t set a precedent for future tantrums. As a seasoned father of three boys, I reckoned a lot of this behaviour was in the typical range of other fourteen-year-old boys. Still, there had to be a consequence. This was an extremely bad behaviour, which couldn’t go unacknowledged.
Parenting experts tell you that enforcing ‘consequences’ for more extreme ‘unwanted behaviours’ is appropriate, as long as you don’t overdo it. There are certain commonly accepted rules for doing this: only occasionally implement consequences, try to have the indiscretion and related consequence clarified beforehand to both parties, and implement the consequence calmly. I took a few deep breaths.
When we’d both calmed down, Sam apologised, sincerely. I knew I’d have to be careful the next time we had a maths lesson about π, the symbol which Sam referred to as ‘two Js’.
Late that afternoon, Joseph took us out in the van again. We descended onto the plain below the resort. Joseph suddenly pulled over, stood up through the pop-top roof and peered through his binoculars. ‘Hold on!’ He leapt down, thrashed the gears and hit the accelerator, soon overtaking other trucks and vans. At the river, we came to a sudden skidding halt right at the edge on the raised bank. We all stood and looked back out of the pop-top roof towards the herd. Hundreds of beasts were charging straight towards us. The herd was at full gallop and the ground began to shake.
My heart was racing. ‘Bloody hell!’
‘They’re coming straight at us!’ Sam yelled.
The thundering herd hurtled around our stationary vehicle and plunged into the wild river directly below us. Occasionally a beast would thump the side of the truck in the pandemonium. Hundreds of them catapulted down the two-metre drop before splashing into the water, without hesitation or care for their safety, their legs splayed and tangled, smashing into each other and slipping on rocks and goodness knows what else as they leapt and bounded across the shallows.
‘Fuck!’ I couldn’t help it; it slipped out.
‘What are they doing?’ Sam was wide-eyed at the window.
‘They’re trying to cross the river!’ I yelled above the roar of hooves and bellows. Dust filled the air.
Crocs materialised from everywhere. There was a violent splash near the far bank. A croc had grabbed a youngster. The crowd in the quickly gathering vehicles gasped in unison. A woman in a truck near us mouthed, ‘Oh no.’ The young calf struggled and kicked but it was of no use, he was dragged under the water and disappeared under the torrent of the crossing herd. Both he and the croc were trampled to death, and the carcasses were feasted on by the other crocodiles. It was real, it was intense, it was life and death on the high plains of Kenya.
Several hundred had crossed when a new threat suddenly emerged from the scrub on the far bank. A lioness flashed through the exhausted wildebeest, which scattered in every direction to escape her. It was chaos. There were gasps and screams from the trucks. A few seconds later the great tan beast made a second run through the animals but with no kill. Well, not one we could see.
The herd stopped crossing; they’d had enough for now. I didn’t blame them one little bit.
‘Wow, Sam. First the crocs and then they have to deal with a lion!’ I said. His eyes were like saucers.
Joseph drove us around the park. We spotted some rhinos in a swamp. A hyena feasted on a carcass, watched by jackals and vultures. Another carload had spied a leopard lounging in some thickets, but was now hidden from view.
We crept back to the river. There had just been another crossing, zebras this time. We saw the tail-end of the group: five zebras trotting through the water in single file. I smiled to myself: this was a real zebra crossing. As we parked on the bank, the aftermath of another kill was revealed in the waters below and I stopped smiling.
The body of a young zebra was being torn apart by thirty massive crocodiles. The black and white stripes of his coat were still perversely clear in the violently splashing bloodied water, with the four-metre crocs radiating outwards from the poor victim like writhing spokes on a wheel. They thrashed around each other, jostling for position and a chance to rip off some flesh, before devouring it in large gulps with their huge gaping mouths pointed to the sky. Occasionally the fat white belly of one of the crocodiles would flash at us as they rolled their bodies to twist a piece of zebra meat off the rapidly shrinking carcass. It was enthralling but grotesque.
I was later to learn, from some traumatised English newlyweds, that the zebra had taken a long time to die. Pinned by a croc biting one leg, he had managed to free himself repeatedly before being retaken, struggling and screaming in fear and pain the entire time. It was all too gladiatorial for me. I knew it was nature, and that’s the way it had always been, but I was still relieved Sam and I hadn’t seen it.