Looks like Livingstone: Safari Shuffle

"What is that?"        Our driver called out in an excited tone of voice
"It's bush."        Eddy replied
"What is that?"        Our driver repeated in an even more excited tone of voice
"It's a bush, it's a bush..."       Eddy replied
"No, it's not a bird that one!"        Our driver explained with passion
"No, it's a bush"        Eddy again repeated, almost without even getting irritated

The time for our roommate and friend “Eddy the Dane” in Kenya was running out. With only a couple of days left in this country of safaris and exotic adventures he thought that he should at least get around to do a smaller excursion in search of the lions, giraffes and all of the other animals roaming the country. Luckily for him Nairobi is the only capital in the world that boasts a real national park just adjacent to the city where one can see all kinds of what we mzungu call “exotic animals”. Luckily for me and Nils he was kind enough to ask us if we would like to tag along on this mini-safari. Skipping school and going searching for lions instead? Not too many times in your life that you have the chance to do that. So off-course we excused ourselves at the university and packed ourselves in a taxi headed for the park. Oh, yes, it is allowed to drive around the park in practically any vehicle. Preferably you own a big Land Rover. If you don’t you can bring your tiny Toyota or Mazda. Or if in our case you don’t own a car at all and don’t fancy renting one at the quite ridiculously high prices, you can just hire a taxi with a driver for the trip, something which is a lot cheaper and easier. So that’s what we, or rather Eddy, did. He hired a taxi-driver by the name of Muragu that he had used on a lot of previous occasions. Turned out that it would be a choice of mixed feelings.

After the usual traffic-maze-navigation and about 40 minutes after we had embarked, we reached the entrance to the park. Immediately as we stepped out of the car a group of Masai that were standing a bit further away started chanting and stomping as to get our attention, have us walk up there, take a photo and then ask us for shillings and dollars. To their great dismay we did not fall for that. Instead we walked to the ticket office and payed a quite hefty sum for being allowed entrance. There’s a difference if you are a foreigner or Kenyan, reflected in the price you pay. As a Kenyan citizen you pay something like 10% of the entrance fee for a foreigner. One of the perks of being a citizen of Kenya. After some confusion and waiting we were allowed to enter the park, with the gate resembling the one in “Jurassic Park”. And just as in the movie, the initial part of the tour was somewhat dull. As we were driving we could see nothing but high bushes and shrubs covering all of the view from the dirt road. Just as you enter you pass a part where they keep fenced up animals. Our driver and guide for the day suggested that we should go there and check afterwards if there were some animals that we did not see during the drive. We explained to him that we did not see the point in going to a zoo here, when we might as well do that at home and get the same “fake” feeling as opposed to seeing the animals in the wild. I am not sure if it was a matter of language understanding, or a culture issue, but he really did not understand our point.

As we pushed on we finally cleared all of the bushes and the vastness of the savannah opened up before our eyes. There is something about it that just makes the sky so amazing. It could be the quite monochrome, brownish colour spectrum of it that just makes the colours in the sky seem so much stronger and more vivid. Anyway, it makes that even if there for the moment isn’t anything interesting to watch on the ground one can just gaze up at the skies. Quite soon after we entered the park we got the first close encounter with an animal that we would like to call exotic; a bunch of zebras and a couple of buffalos. They were all over the road, so we had to wait for them to cross before we could continue. Our driver did not really share our perception of them being the least interesting, so as soon as he got the chance he just pushed the pedal to the metal and left them all in the dust. This was really the first time when some glitches in our collaboration started to appear. We kept on driving on the dusty roads of the park, most of the time seeing nothing but the empty grasslands. Watchful, and also trained eyes are a very good asset for a successful safari. After driving for quite some time we came across a couple of giraffes walking a couple of hundred meters away. This was the closest we had come to these majestic animals (we had spotted one very far away in the distance just in the beginning of the drive) so we stood there for a long time and admired them. When driving on we did see a lot of antelopes, so many that we started viewing them as just any other thing on the plains. We had gotten greedy, and wanted something bigger.

Zebras having lunch

The buffalo brothers

The back-road to Nairobi?

Gazelle gazing through the grasslands

“THERE!” Nils exclaimed as he looked through his binoculars. “It’s a rhino over there, you see it?” he said handing over the binoculars to Eddy so that he could also get a good look at it. Yet another time during the drive Nils’ skills as a birdwatcher had payed off as he had spotted something which neither one of us could see. Even the Muragu was impressed, and he was otherwise not very impressed with the rest of us, especially not me for some reason. No, we really did not get along at all. He was constantly saying, or rather shouting:
- “MY FRIEND, ARE YOU SLEEPING? YOU NOT SEEING ANYTHING! LOOK OVER THERE! YOU SLEEPING?”
After which he bursted into a loud laughter at his own wittyness. But even though he was really getting on my nerves, I will have to admit that he was perfect for the job as our driver for one primary reason; he did not give a penny about his car. So when we went looking for the rhino that Nils had spotted, he suddenly took a turn more or less straight out on the savanna. I am not sure I would even call it a path, it was more of tracks that was made by one of the rangers big 4x4 Range Rover. We did not have a Range Rover, we did not even have four-wheel-drive. But that did not stop Muragu as he ploughed through the high grass and out onto the savannah. And his efforts payed off! We found the rhino, who did not seem to interested in our presence and got what I would call close to it. At the same place were also a lot of buffalos, and they were on the other hand not so impressed by our presence at the spot. So we did not dare to stay any longer than necessary before heading back.

The park’s closing time was another issue that made us turn back. It was an issue and not a concern, at least not for Muragu. He kept telling us that he would just make up some excuse when we got back, it would not be any problems, “yes, off-course he knew the way out”. Well, turned out that the last part was not entirely the case. But it all worked out perfect for us. As the sun was setting slowly in the horizon, making the light completely magical, we suddenly stumbled upon something amazing. A flock of zebras was feeding on the grass, at the same time as a giraffe was eating away on a tree. As we follow the road we get within just a couple of feet from the zebras when the giraffe starts walking towards us. He ended up walking just a couple of meters from our car as he passed by and then strolled off into the distance. After this we knew that nothing could even come close to that experience, so we might as well call it a day. Eventually, after a lot of wild driving, Muragu found his way to one of the smaller exits of the park. He instructed us to be quiet and let him do the talking. I don’t think that anybody of us thought any different, also since it seemed like he had been doing at least 95 % of the talking the whole day. As we pulled up the guards were not too happy with our delay. An intense conversation in Swahili followed after which they hurried over and opened the gate for us. Muragu said that he had made up something about no-one of us being from Nairobi, we did not know the area and therefore got lost, there were buffalos blocking our way (which actually was the truth) and we now had to drive to some place in the other side of the country because we white men were attending a meeting there the next morning. The lady in the guard was quite chocked that we were to drive a distance equivalent of 6 hours in the middle of the night and wished us the best of luck. Muragu was more than pleased that he had pulled such a good lie and proceeded the rest of the trip home to let us bash in his wisdom. Of all the things, which a lot were just repetitions, I only remember one thing:

Muragu: “It is better to be bitten by the snake you know, than the snake you don’t know! I only know one snake, it’s my wife! HAHAHAHA!”
Eddy: “But if you know it is a deadly snake, I would rather be bitten by the snake that I don’t know.”
Muragu: “NO, it is better to be bitten by the snake you know, than the snake you don’t know!”