Pursuing praxis

Now that I have your attention…

My trip to Tsavo West was in many respects similar to Hell’s Gate last weekend, just over two days instead of one. Hot, dusty bush, few critters, and a driver wearing loafers, slacks, and an ironed collared shirt despite the knowledge we were going into the field. I guess it’s a professional standard thing, but it stops making sense when you’re covered in dust and slipping over the volcanic rocks in your tractionless shoes.

Anyway. In bovid-news, according to some taxonomists the Damara dik-dik is the same species as Kirk’s dik-dik (no Star Trek jokes, please), the distribution having two isolated patches - one over southwest Africa (including Etosha) and the other in East Africa, where I am now. And not much in between. Funny I see the little guys in both places. They’re quite small, probably in the 10lb range, and at least superficially appear to occupy the same niche as bunny rabbits back home, but with a little mowhawk of orange hair between their ears and a somewhat droopy nose.

Mzima Springs at Tsavo West was notable for its sheer volume and force - the water pouring over the rocks, gushing forward, streaming over plants and boulders alike, originated right there. It really just springs from the ground! And the place had probably a dozen hippos in the water, mostly submerged, but doing the nostrils-and-eyes view regularly. THere was even a baby, all small and short-nosed (a hallmark of babyness, afterall…). No crocs.

The highlights for me, though, were the yellow-headed blue-bodied foot-long lizards (I’m not a herpetologist, and I can only carry so many field guides with me), and a few monkeys of a species I still haven’t looked up yet. Lizards for color, monkeys for personality. Not bad. But the throngs of tourists fresh off the bus (but evidently not freshly showered) kind of put a dent in my experience of Mzima Springs, apart from the fact that there weren’t any kudu to be found.

Back on the road, saw some more zebra, a pink-and-black osterich (no doubt from the very red dirt making his white parts pink), some impala (good for comparing with the black-faced sub-species of Etosha). No kudu… no kudu…

I got a campsite about 11km from the main gate (the closest campsite available), dropped my driver there with plans to meet at 6am and get an early start for kudu. In the receding evening light I passed a small group of cow and calf elephants roadside, though obscured by the thick bush, and watched a weak and watery sun descend beneath the escarpment in the disance. 

The campground was deserted save two dik-diks dicking around, and some impala. THere appeared to be a one-horse stall/shed built next to the bathrooms, with hatched doors and all the rest. The toilet was a porcelain hole in the ground, but the taps were functional so I called it a success. Given the "man-eating lions of Tsavo" and the very sane park rules of "don’t get out of your car" while driving around, I opted to "camp" in the backseat. Lions, mosquitoes, cold, dew and dirt (and my greatest concern - the wiley Homo sapiens) more than sealed the deal. I sucked down a melted chocolate bar and had some crackers and water and called it good. 

ALthough I reasoned they wouldn’t clear a campsite and allow people to buy camping spots if it wasn’t relatively safe, I made some provisions for what-if scenarios, apart from not leaving my sushi-like body laying on the ground at night. I locked the doors (despite the heat), put the keys in the ignition and the gear in first, and kept the front seat clear in case I needed to make a speedy getaway, be it elephant, buffalo, lion, or human threatening my wellbeing.

It’s funny how being alone makes you more wary of people in general than if you’re accompanied by another human. A truck passed by on the bumpy road, and the instant I heard it I switched off my flashlight and my eyes and ears felt twice their size. I decided taking my daily notes was not feasible with my adrenaline levels as they were, so I sat and watched stars. Yeah, I know, they don’t move very fast, but they really do twinkle, and I watched what was either the ISS or a satelite pass relatively quickly by. I’m not any astronomy buff by any stretch of the imagination, but I"m pretty sure there was a planet out - maybe Venus? it was very bright and beautiful - and I kept my rational faculty going full tilt as I tried to make sense of a twinkling, non-moving light showing through the bushes by the bathroom. Probably just a very bright star low on the horizon, I reasoned.

Soon, a second vehicle bumped down the road, headlights bobbing with the potholes and ruts, and bobbed right into the campground and straight for yours truly parked under a tree. It was a big white pickup, and pulled up unhurredly next to me. Doors slammed, and a couple people piled out. I caught a glimpse of a KWS decal on the side of the truck, but my red flags were flying high and skepticism and caution were the foremost attitudes governing my mind. But, knowing that polite friendliness and humor grease a helluva lot of wheels in Kenya (while suspicion, reticence, and rudeness will raise everyone’s eyes and guard) I unlocked and opened my door (but just that one), without getting out of the truck. The fellas standing there weren’t too near, and had non-threatening "just doing my job" body language, but were most alarmingly wearing camo and sporting automatic guns at parade rest.

The driver, whose face I could not see with the headlights on, greeted me with a friendly tone and asked if I was alone. No, I said, I have a driver. Is he here? he wanted to know. Yes, I said. Where? he wanted to know. Why, in the accomodation for drivers outside the gate, I said. So you are alone, he concluded. No, I insisted, I have a driver and we spent all day in the park.

I beat around the bush long enough to see what the reactions were, and where the line of questioning was going, and nobody made any moves, or peered into the car, or got impatient. He asked if I had any protection against the animals, and I said I was sleeping in my car, and my foremost weapon was an active brain. They laughed easily, and I said I was more worried about being visited by armed men in the night than being attacked in a locked car by a lion, and gave the guys standing nearby a direct and toothy smile. They laughed again, and after another round of phraseology-challenged questions indicated they were from Kenya Wildlife Services, and their mission was not just to check up on me, but to have a couple rangers guard me through the night.

At this point in my stay in Kenya I am pretty accustomed to the differences between Kenya Wildlife Services and the (comparatively humble) Park Service back home, with their military dress, replete with automatic rifles (for people or animals, I’m still not entirely clear), berets, camo, and pants-tucked-into-combat-boots look. I asserted that they’d better be ready to sleep under the stars, because they weren’t staying in the truck with me (more laughs, as was my aim, though my tone told them I was quite serious about it), and I did they have any badges or IDs I could see? As is the Kenyan habit, it seems, they assured me everything was ok, they were for real, I could trust them. I played the I’m-a-foreigner card and asked to see their IDs again.

By this time I had been introduced to two of the guys, Peter and Haron, and Haron produced, at length, a rather worn looking KWS ID card that looked quite legit to my eyes. Peter had evidently forgotten his, so I bantered about a bit more trying to get a better feel for their intentions, attitudes, and expectations. They didn’t move an inch from their first spot on the ground, I saw no prying eyes, or leering smiles, or really anything to indicate this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill operation for them, yet another camper to watch, whose exact identity and circumstances were neither part of the job description nor particularly interesting, for that matter.

Finally I consented, shook Peter and Haron’s hands again (shaking hands is a cultural staple here), and watched the other couple men get back in the truck and pull away just as they had come. I promptly closed and locked my door and watched my watchers set up camp next to the big tree trunk. It was a minimalist affair, with white-blue headlamps illustrating their few movements. Soon they were settled, and I heard some low and relaxed conversation, a couple chuckles, then all was quiet and dark. I heard nothing, saw nothing, and slowly my adrenaline was re-uptaked by the appropriate ligands, and I laid down in the backseat to battle the heat instead of my worries.

In truth, I really did sleep easier with a couple good humans nearby, though still quite lightly (and with the keys in the ignition) and I stopped thinking about dextrous lions and rabid elephants and Jurassic Park, and passed the night one handful of minutes at a time, instead of one second at a time.

I awoke at 5:40 am relatively well-slept, and greeted the guys with a cheerful good morning - because it’s always easier to be cheerful in the morning after potential danger has passed. They goodmorning’ed in return, and in 10 minutes all our stuff was in the back of the truck. I gave them a lift to park headquarters, just a few km down the road, thanked them for their services, requested a pic, and bid them goodbye. The pic’s blurry because it was 6am. The guys looked a lot better than I did.

The morning drive was a comparative success, sighting three lesser kudu (one subadult male with about 10" horns, one female, and one juvenile). All of them were gone before I could raise the camera and get it auto-focused, so I have no proof, and I didn’t have time to sex the juvenile. But, I saw them, and those dozen or so body stripes (a hallmark of the tragelphines) and white throat patches were utterly unmistakable, and a real thrill after so many tragelaphine-free days of critter viewing.

A bit later on we went down an obviously unused road that looks like it doubles as a gully in the rainy season. The word "pothole" suggests that there’s an average level surface from which it is deviating, and no such surface existed on this road. It was either mostly-level or distinctly-not-level. A couple km down the track and we came upon a large group of buffalo (I’d only seen my first buffalo the day before, and he was in very sorry condition indeed). I snapped some quick photos of what juveniles I saw (and there were a few), and urged Andy the Driver to move on as a couple of the bulls kept their attention focused on the car. I’m told buffalo will totally charge a human (this mainly goes for the solitary bulls, but precautions are spread to the entire species, reasonably I think), but they don’t really key into vehicles. Nevertheless, I didn’t fancy being the center of attention of a ton-plus horned, stupid creature with a herd and babies to be protected, so we moved quickly on.

Soon we came across the back end of the herd - of utterly unknown size given the density of the bush - which was slowly moving in the direction from which we had come. Andy deftly turned us around in the one-lane gully, and we crawled forward till we were in …

To be continued. It’s dark out!