I’ve had several people ask me if I was ever scared or in danger during my trip in Africa. The short answer is obvious: I made it home and never saw the inside of so much as a medical clinic. Which doesn’t mean I didn’t ever feel my adrenaline spike. Here’s the second-best candidate story, and the first significant such experience, excerpted from a much longer, more rambling post I put up back in March, shortly after said adventure. Plus, I finally up-loaded the promised pic, which is my real motivation for posting now :o).
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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.
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