At Sweetwaters Camp in the Ol Pejeta Refuge, we are in classic safari mode. We are sleeping in a large tent that opens out onto a watering hole and savannah with grazing antelope, the occasional elephant group, and birds so different from home. As I write this I am being watched carefully by two Marabout storks, each more than 4 feet tall, with the bare reddish head of the scavenger.
We have gone on two long game drives, standing in our van with the roof raised and armed with binoculars and cameras. We watched an elephant clan with several small ones, including one less than six months old, graze peacefully across the equator, posing by the refuge sign that identities the spot. Earlier in the day, on the main road, we were entertained by local folks showing the Coriolis effect at the equator, with water poured 20 meters south of the line rotating counter-clockwise, and the same water rotating clockwise 20 meters north. On the line, it did not form that bathtub swirl. Our young man explained this very seriously, including the connection to hurricane movements. You will have to google it.
This land, savannah and marsh and acacia thicket, has amazing numbers of grazers and browsers. The vegetarians all tend to hang out together. The sleek and healthy zebra come in large herds, often with ox peckers on their backs. Those are not what you think: they are related to starlings, 8 inches of cream and dark colors, that live on the ticks of larger animals and do their part as well by alerting to predators. There are groups of antelope: gazelle and impala and hartebeest and waterbuck and oryx, each with a distinctive type of horn. Each of the groups of antelope seem to have its gang of squat and ugly warthogs, snuffling along on their short legs.
We spent a very long time watching a group of giraffe, seemingly carefully pruning a grove of whistling acacia trees so that the trees were all the same height. It is hard to understand how the giraffe can pluck out the new growth from among the spikes along each branch. Two giraffes were at the beginning of a courtship, moving in slow dance steps around each other and swooping their sinuous necks. It is, of course, called necking and they were in no hurry at all.
Near a water-hole we found a female lion, nearly invisible under bushes. A solitary giraffe who came to drink could apparently sense her presence, because he never did make himself vulnerable by bending low to drink. She looked prepared to wait, in that sleepy way that cats have. On the night game drive we watched two male lions, doubtless brothers, alternating standing watch with snoozing, and cuddling together and grooming. Despite the catlike calm, they look fierce with bunched power.
A solitary black rhinoceros, apparently a deposed bachelor, grazed slowly along. The Ol Pejeta Refuge has a large area devoted to preserving the rhinoceros. We visited Baraka, a blind black rhino who lost one eye in a right and the second to cataracts. The refuge has a total of 45 black rhinos and 15 white rhinos. These latter are mis-named today: they were originally called wide rhinos because the shape of their mouth is wide. All rhinos are endangered, but especially the white rhinos. They have come under extensive poaching pressure for their horns, extremely valuable in Asia for their alleged aphrodisiac properties. Mohammed, our guide in the rhino preserve, says those Asians should use their own fingernails, which are made of the same material. He turned fierce and believable when he said that the refuge employs two armed guards per rhino and that poachers will be shot without questions and left for the hyenas: we don’t take captives, he says. We are quite taken with the passion and commitment of these young Africans to their land and its creatures.
Catherine Camp is currently retired. She served as a Consultant to the California Senate Budget Committee in 2001-02, reviewing Social Services, Employment Development, Aging, Community Services, Alcohol and Drug Programs, Rehabilitation and Child Support budgets. From 1989-2000, Catherine was Executive Director for the California Mental Health Directors Association. During that period, Catherine staffed the county mental health system’s restructuring of public mental health through Realignment of community and long term care programs from the state to the county, transfer of the management of specialty mental health Medi-Cal services to those counties that agreed to provide them, development of risk mechanisms for consortia of small counties, and advocacy and policy analysis for the operation of public mental health programs throughout the state. Her prior experience includes Executive Director to the California-Nevada Community Action Association, Principal Consultant to the Assembly Human Services Policy Committee, and Director of Community Action and Head Start programs in Shasta County.
