"Roja, roja"

(The story in pictures.)
(Part 1: Why did the guinea-fowl cross the road?)

What of the animals, then? In short, yes, we saw them all - lions and cheetahs with their cubs, a rare leopard sighting, elephants, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, wildebeest and guinea-fowl that did cross the road. Sighting animals in the Mara is done as follows. You strike out from the hotel in a random direction - usually your guide will have some local inside knowledge gleaned over tea with the other drivers on where the animals might be. The terrain will look the same to you, but the guides have some strange homing instinct that tells them where the animals are lurking. Sure enough, ten minutes out, he will say 'look there in the bushes' and where there had earlier been only green foliage, there will now be some yellow movement, soon to reveal a lioness. Inside the car, there will be a rapid scramble for cameras, and a few hundred clicks. The lioness will look at you disdainfully and carry on doing whatever it is she was doing. In most cases, you won't be alone for long. Other drivers know, through force of habit, that a stationary car means there's an animal around. So they will flock towards you, and quickly a hundred clicks will become a thousand. If there are more than 10 cars, and they don't move for 15 minutes, you can be sure they're waiting for a kill.

Seeing a kill is apparently the pinnacle of the Mara experience. Hundreds of tourists flock here everyday hoping that a zebra or a giraffe will wander by a lion and turn into dinner. Only a small handful actually see it happen. Besides the fact that animals don't hunt everyday (they eat the carcasses over a few days), if you don't have a 4x4, you're confined to the main paths, and that means that you're cut off from activity in the interiors of the bush. Nevertheless, waiting for it to potentially happen is an experience in itself. In our case, there were a pride of lions and a solitary giraffe.

How it happenned. Drivers, it turns out, are equipped with more than homing instinct. They also have a radio. As you ride along therefore, there will be the incessant static of other drivers reporting sightings, or not. While most of this is unintelligible, every now and then, your driver will say 'Roja roja' and then lapse into local dialect once more. Two hours into the experience, I realized there were saying Roger Roger. And then, some time later, our driver was saying Roja roja much more frequently and with much more excitement. Then we careened down a road at breakneck speed, to come to rest by about 20 other vehicles and the aforementioned pride of lions. There was a giraffe in the distance, and a lion was making its way towards it gradually. Halfway there, however, it gave up and sat back down. For half an hour, we willed them to get in closer vicinity, but the giraffe eventually wandered out of sight, and the lion showed no signs of getting up again. There were a mild stirring of interest as the rest of the pride got up and began to move in the same direction. But they were only regrouping for another nap in a new spot.

To cheer us up on the way back, Steve regaled us with stories. One was grim, about Safari Walk experiences that some hotels offer - a chance to walk in the bush with a Maasai tribesman and see animals up close and personal. Apparently, some weeks earlier, a newly married couple were out doing this, and were abandoned by their Maasai guide when they came upon a solitary elephant. "Maasai are not scared of any animal, even lion... but they are scared of elephant". The couple apparently didn't make it. Steve clearly didn't recommend the Safari Walk. His second story was lighter - and is about the wildebeest. The wildebeest is apparently so stupid that, in the process of running from a lion, it will suddenly forget it is being chased, stop running and begin chewing grass. The end.

Part 3: The Maasai