Notes from the Masai Mara

by Leigh Kemp, 28 November 2007

November in the Mara

'We had missed the herds of the migration by days .... The grass was cropped short ... Skeletons littered the ground and the air seemed to echo a silence ....' - Notes from my trip to the Masai Mara in November 2007

I was hoping to see the herds on the plains of the Masai Mara but as with all things in nature nothing is guaranteed. The trade-off for my initial disappointment though was that I could now experience the Mara settling back into a routine.

The great herds spend a relatively short time in the Mara - up to two months - before they head south into the southern Serengeti to give birth. Although this is an incredible spectacle to watch the Mara is much more than the annual migration.

My childhood ideal of the Masai Mara was based on an image I had seen in a book - a flat-topped acacia tree and a giraffe on a distant ridge silhouetted against a wide sky. The idea of space filled my senses. The image was actualised many years later on my first visit to the Mara when I photographed a giraffe and an acacia tree on a distant horizon.

The Masai Mara today is one of Africa's most utilised wilderness areas and yet one can still get the feeling of remoteness and isolation due to the expanse of the area.

The Mara is also possibly the most filmed and recorded wilderness area in Africa. With its photographic landscapes and multitudes of animals it's reckoned by many to be Africa's greatest safari destination. But there's still something more to the Mara and it took a moment of revelation to understand what the lure was.

A Masai Mara Morning

I awoke to the birds' chorus, but something seemed out of place. As I listened I heard a cow bellow, followed by a dog barking. Was I not in one of Africa's greatest wildlife sanctuaries?...

I was part of a group from Go2Africa that was busy checking out new lodges in Kenya and we were now in the Masai Mara National Reserve at a lodge on the edge of the reserve, in the heart of Masai land. The lodge is run exclusively by Masai from the area.

What seemed like a good idea the night before took on a new significance in my waking moments. How can cows and dogs be part of a wilderness experience, a part of the real Africa experience of big game and wild dawns?

This is where the Masai have grazed their cattle and lived among the wild animals for longer than our written history of the continent. It was in my misguided ideals of Africa that I woke to confusion at the sounds of the Masai Mara.

The safari marketing lobby has changed the perception of wilderness with a drive 'to show the real Africa' to potential visitors. This 'real Africa' is devoid of the sounds and scents of the past.

Wilderness areas before colonisation were tinged with wood-smoke and human voices. The majority of conservationists believe that a pure wilderness is one without humans. We have destroyed the true wilderness and now set out to define it.

On our evening drive the day before I had seen young Masai boys minding cattle and goats on the edge of the reserve and I wondered at what price western ideas have taken over the lives of these people living close to the earth.

Stories of Masai elders giving land rights to safari operators abound in East Africa, leading many to believe that the reserve areas should be for the sole use of wilderness protection and humans should be kept out.

To many people it is an attack on the senses, and ideals, to have humans wandering freely in the game reserves but these tribesmen are the very link to preserving the earth in our souls. By wanting people out we display an ignorance of the real value of the earth.



It is also due to these very people that we are able to appreciate the wilderness areas today.

The Masai Mara is certainly one of Africa's greatest wildlife sanctuaries, but there is a deeper side to it, a side that combines the past with the present, a side that takes us back to traditional values where man lives in harmony with the earth.

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