Lions

Prosper drove us a long, long way to see lions, and we were not disappointed.

We even saw lions mating.

Lions who are mating go off together for a period of about five days, during which they copulate every fifteen to thirty minutes. Who knew? Thus, if you come across them, you can just hang out for another fifteen minutes, and you will see them do it again. But don't blink, because it's quick. During this "honeymoon," as Prosper calls it, they do not eat, and barely drink. They sleep in between sessions. The pair we saw was very tired, especially the male, but he still staggered determinedly after the female whenever she stood up.

Buffalo and hippos

Cape Buffalo

Nobody messes with the cape buffalo. They are huge and powerful. They kill lions.

Their horns are deadly poisonous because of bacteria that flourish on them. Lions who hunt buffalo have learned to attack from behind, aiming to break the back legs and disable the buffalo. If they bring it down, they will begin eating it while it is still alive. Lions teach their cubs how to properly hunt a buffalo. This is so fascinating to me. Do they teach them that the horns are poisonous, or do they only teach them (by modeling) that buffalo must be hunted from the back?

Hippos

Hippo pools are much more crowded, active, and smelly than I realized. Fifty hippos might be stuffed into a pool together, from multiple families, and apparently they get in each other's way, because there is a lot of the hippo equivalent of "Hey, watch it, buddy!"

They continually splash water over themselves with their tails to cool themselves and protect their skin from the sun. But it's not really what I would call water: it's a green frothy sludge of water and hippo poop. They churn it. They prefer to submerge in it, but there's not always room. I was eager to see hippos, and was surprised by how gross they are in real life.

Wildebeest and zebras

Our safari guide, Prosper, was wonderful in many ways: a good driver, a good communicator, funny, kind, and great with the kids. But Prosper was at his best with the animals, both finding them and teaching us about them. Though he could tell you any facts you might want to know, what stuck with me was what he showed us about the animals' personalities and relationships. We saw so much, and without his guidance I would not have understood what I was seeing.

Wildebeest

When I first looked at this scene, I just saw a bunch of wildebeest. The mooing and grunting is very loud.



Prosper showed us that they are arranged in clumps of females guarded by a dominant male. It is rutting season, and the males have a harem to protect. They chase off other males and sometimes clash with them.

But wildebeest have a very short working memory. So once they finish fighting, they stand there looking around blankly, because they've forgotten where their ladies are, or even who they are! Meanwhile some other male has probably taken over, leaving his own harem behind. We had a lot of fun imagining what must go through their heads. "Didn't I see you last night?"

Wildebeest have a great sense of smell, but poor eyesight. If a lion approaches a crowd of migrating wildebeest, they will run away; but the lion knows that if she hides downwind in the tall grass for a couple of minutes, they'll forget she's there, and she can ambush them. 

Zebras

Zebras have a less developed sense of smell than wildebeest but excellent eyesight, and are very intelligent. They know the lion is there in the grass, and their response warns the wildebeest. When they stand around, they stand in pairs facing opposite directions to keep a lookout.

In general they were much quieter than the wildebeests. They make a pleasant whickering-whinnying sound.

Zebra foals are fuzzy and their stripes are brown.

Zebras have round bellies like fat ponies because their stomachs are full of worms that aid digestion. (This is an alternative to the four-stomach system that a cow uses.) They only need to drink water once every three or four months. When they do go to a watering hole, the tension is palpable: There might be crocs in the water or lions in the grass, and the zebras know it.

Maasai

What would it be like if traditional Native American culture and practices were alive and well in the countryside? In East Africa, the Maasai are all around. They are very distinctive, swathed in bright robes of red, blue, and purple. The women wear a lot of jewelry and the men carry a staff. Both shave their heads.

Driving on the highways, you see them driving their cattle and goats and sheep along the footpath that parallels the highway. Children in their middle years normally have the job of taking the cattle out of the village to graze and bringing them back at night.



Mostly the Maasai are a closed culture: they live in their own villages in the traditional way with their livestock, and do not intermarry. There are some Maasai villages that welcome tourists for a fee. We visited one, and although this kind of cultural tourism is always strange, I enjoyed the experience a lot. I was very curious. We had a guide who spoke pretty good English and welcomed my questions. First the villagers did a welcoming dance for us, and helped us join in... super silly, I felt like I was straight out of a weird colonial National Geographic article, but what do I know? I am in no position to judge its authenticity. It was incredibly colorful and exotic, and to me, exhilarating -- partly because it was just so far out, I had to just decide to go with it.

Then they showed us a Maasai house. These are little domed dwellings made of sticks and thatch and cowhide. The front entrance is a bit of a sideways tunnel, so that you spiral inward; the design keeps the wind out. Inside is a little single room, with a hearth for cooking, and two bed alcoves, one for adults and one for children. It is smoky and dark. It seemed like nothing for a house, until I realized that the Maasai really live outdoors. Indoors is mainly for sleeping and cooking.

The Maasai's main livelihood is their livestock: they drink their milk as well as blood from the cattle, carefully harvested so that the cow is not harmed; they also eat meat. I wish I had asked if they eat any plants at all, but I didn't. Women build the houses and take care of the kids. Men protect the village and govern. Teenage men have a coming-of-age ritual in which they are circumcised, paint themselves black with white-patterned faces (very fierce and mysterious looking), and live on their own outside the village for six months, returning at night to eat and sleep. Young children go to school in a village schoolhouse, supposedly, although this was another thing that I am not sure how to judge; what would they be learning, and why? In any case all the children assembled there for us and sang us the alphabet. We gave them pens that we had brought for that purpose. This was great for Aaron, who needed some help getting over his shyness, understandably. (Jordan, who was getting over being sick, got overwhelmed and went back to the car with Dale and Dale's wonderful camera.)

I have to assume this is a pretty tough existence. But I wouldn't presume to know what is the right way for modern sanitation and other necessities (?) to interact with a traditional culture. Missionaries build hospitals and schools for the Maasai, and you would think that has to be a good thing; but really, what do I know. What would be the right thing to do if there were still traditional cultures alive and numerous in our own country?

Safari

A safari is primarily driving. If you have been to Yellowstone, it's surprisingly similar. Instead of a rented minivan, you have a Land Cruiser, with a driver who is also a guide. The Land Cruiser opens on the top so that you can stand up and look out.

You get up in the morning and drive out to somewhere where your guide guesses that there will be animals. Sometimes the animals are around every corner, like the illusion you always suspect they are creating in a wildlife show: On your right, Grant's gazelles! On your left, a family of warthogs! Just ahead, a herd of elephants munching acacia! Look, in the grass, a cheetah! Other times, you drive for an hour or more and see hardly a single animal, just an ocean of grass or a forest of vines or whatever the landscape is. This is tedious and hot and dusty and fairly bone-rattling, because the roads are all dirt tracks and very bumpy. Fortunately our driver is terrific with both animals and transportation.

You either have a picnic lunch out on the drive (packed by the lodge you are staying in), or come back to your lodge for lunch. I greatly prefer the latter, because I very much enjoy a couple hours of down time in the middle of the day. One day, for example, we got back for lunch at 12:30, and had until 4pm to rest, swim in the pool, write, do a little laundry, etc. Other days we didn't have that luxury; we were only there for a week, so sometimes we had to spend the afternoon driving on to the next place. On those days, we might be in the car for ten hours. That's very tiring. But the kids slept on the floor, and the scenery was exotic, so we bumped along and took pictures out the window.

We mostly stayed in lodges, which are beautiful old hunting-lodge type of places, with grand architecture and extraordinary settings. One was built into a kopje (rock "island" in the middle of the savannah), full of giant boulders and passageways through the rock, teeming with lizards and rock hyraxes and dwarf mongooses. Another was on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater, and every room overlooked the crater, where the herds move with the cloud shadows over the crater floor.

Two of the nights, we stayed not in lodges but in "tented camps": these were some tents! They had full beds and bathrooms, in some cases quite luxurious. At these places, you had to be careful of unwanted encounters with wildlife, to the extent that a guide would always escort you to and from your tent. We were never troubled, but the noises at night made it clear this was not just a formality.