SUNDAY, MARCH 15, 2015 AMERICAN PRESS F5

past and making its own way in the world.

Nairobi, once the business and cultural capital of British East Afri-ca, still retains a distinctly “English” feel to it, particularly in the tree-lined neighborhood of Karen where smartly uniformed children made their way to very English inspired schools. As an amateur historian of the British Empire, I could picture Sunday afternoon polo matches on green pitches, gentlemen adventur-ers and safari hunters gathered in the Stanley Hotel’s Exchange Bar recounting their exploits in the bush, and British Army officers enjoying drinks under the burning African sun. Empire still resonates 50 years after Kenya gained its independence in 1963.

We caught our bush flight at Wilson Airport in Nairobi, a small domestic airport servicing safari camps throughout Kenya. Process-ing through the airport was easy, quick, disorganized and chaotic … but happy. No one yelled at passen-gers to stay in line or remove their shoes, and it was completely devoid of the antiseptic and emotionless procedures so common in Western airports. We walked to our plane, a 12-seat Air Kenya propeller aircraft and took whatever seat was available. In-flight service was an ice chest filled with water and a pilot who per-sonally briefed the passengers.

Our flight north was interrupted every 20 minutes as we landed, discharged and picked up passengers at lonely, remote gravel airstrips in central Kenya. The third stop was our final destination, Meru airstrip, a small airfield operated by the Kenyan Wildlife Service in Meru National Park.

We selected Meru National Park to visit because the park figured prominently in the lives of George and Joy Adamson, the Kenyan game warden and his wife who raised and successfully reintroduced Elsa the Lioness back into the wild, a story made famous in the 1966 movie Born Free. Personally, my lifelong interest in conservation and animal welfare issues was inspired at an early age by notable Lake Charles animal welfare activist Laura Lanza when I joined her chapter of the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal.

We also selected Meru because it is one of Kenya’s most remote and least visited parks, unlike the larger parks and reserves in southern Kenya.

Our lodge, Elsa’s Kopje, is built atop a large rock and tree-covered hill overlooking the surrounding savannah. The architects who built the lodge integrated the natural terrain features of the kopje into the cottage itself, creating natural walls within the rooms with rocks and boulders. The décor was traditional British East African integrated with the natural features of the surround-ing terrain. The roof was thatch and a magnet for vervet monkeys who played on the roof during the day but retreated to the trees at night to escape hunting leopards.

One thing you learn very quickly is to secure your room when you leave because monkeys will find a way in and wreak havoc with your belongings. The lodge was operated by Cheli and Peacock, a luxury safari travel operator based in Kenya with camps throughout the country and Tanzania. They run a first-class operation and I would highly recom-mend them to anyone wanting to go on safari.

Early to riseDays began early when staff

would awaken you at 6 a.m. with excellent Kenyan coffee and 30 minutes later, we were in the bush for morning game drives. Mornings in the bush are inspiring: the air is crisp and cool and animals are on the move having survived another night in the wild. We fell into a routine of stopping by the local baboon’s com-munal living area in trees alongside a slow moving river first thing every morning. The youngsters made a habit of showing off for us while the adults, wary of humans, peered at us from the trees and among the low bush cover.

As the sun rose over the African savannah, we stopped and had a bush breakfast, traditionally British fare with eggs, sausage, toast and coffee.

One morning after breakfast, our guide took us to a rhino sanctu-ary in the park where endangered rhinos live under the protection of armed game rangers. Rhino horns are prized by poachers because they fetch tremendous amounts of money on the illegal wildlife market in East Asia. The horns are used in traditional East Asian medicines and producing decorative handles for daggers.

While waiting for the gates of the sanctuary to be opened, a large puff adder snake slithered under our vehicle. He was a beast; short, stocky and nasty. The puff adder is responsi-ble for most snake bites and fatalities by snake bite in Africa because they tend not to flee approaching humans as do other snakes. It was an unex-pected but welcome sighting of one

of Africa’s deadliest creatures. Puff adders share the terrain in this part of Africa with the spitting cobra, but unfortunately we did not have an opportunity to see this reptile. Al-though I really wanted to see a cobra in its natural environment, it was not on my wife’s bucket list of things to see and she really was not inclined to go look for one as I suggested we do one day during our free time.

Days ran into one another and time passed far too quickly.

In the wildLike a lot of people, I am fascinat-

ed with Big Cats. Early one morning, we saw several lions feeding on the carcass of a buffalo, their bellies distended and their regal faces smeared with blood as they stretched out on the grass and peered at us warily. Several days later, we watched three young lions and their mother track and attempt to ambush several zebra. Unfortunately for the lions, a young pride member sprang the trap too early and the zebra escaped unharmed.

As a former professional soldier, I admired the lion’s tactical skills and immediately understood their actions as they flanked the zebra and allowed them to wander into their “kill zone.” Exhausted after their un-successful hunt, the lions walked up to our vehicle, sat down and panted heavily in the mid-day heat.

We were fascinated by the el-ephant, who roams freely and in great numbers throughout the park. One late afternoon, we parked along a river and watched as several dozen elephants drank and caroused in a river, trumpeting loudly and watch-ing over their calves. Later, while stopped on a remote bush road, dozens of elephants surrounded our vehicle, peered at us with their gentle, intelligent eyes and continued their journey to somewhere in the park. Although massive, elephants move gracefully and quietly, emanat-ing a low, guttural and eerie rumble as they communicate with one another. As the herd passed by our vehicle, our guide spotted a massive male bull elephant about a half-mile trailing the main body of elephants. We sat motionless as we watched this gigantic bull slowly make his way towards us.

Our guide, in a barely audible whisper, told us this was Abdallah, the Beast of Meru. He was in musth, a time when hormone levels in male elephants are elevated, making them unpredictable and aggressive. We sat there for 45 minutes watching him as he grazed no more than 10 feet away from us, aware he could overturn our vehicle without much effort. We had several more run-ins with this beast during our stay in Meru and he will

forever be a memory for us.We spotted many animals dur-

ing our time in Meru such as the tiny Dik Dik that appears to look like a miniature antelope. Giraffe were numerous throughout the park and provided a beautiful and grace-ful framework to Meru’s natural beauty as they stood eating from acacia trees. We sat on a riverbank and watched hippos, Africa’s most dangerous animal, as they bathed in a beautiful river lined with lush vegetation and palm trees. Groups of bushbuck, impala and gazelle pre-sented themselves every day as well as the regal and noble looking Oryx, one of the most beautiful animals we have ever seen. Of course, the vervet monkeys and baboons added comic relief and we never tired of watching them interact with one another.

Elsa’s graveBeing members of the Born Free

Society, a trip to Meru would be in-complete without visiting the grave of Elsa the Lioness who is buried in the park. We left early one morning and headed to her gravesite which lies along the bank of the Uru River. As we clipped along a dusty bush road, we spotted a yellow flash dart across the road and disappear into the bush. Our guide stopped where the creature had disappeared into the thick undergrowth and we saw a beautiful young leopard peering at us with golden yellow eyes from within the low bush.

In a split second and without a sound, she disappeared into the bush like a ghost. Leopards, unlike chee-tah and lions, are reclusive, solitary and prefer thickly wooded areas

with an abundance of concealment, so it was an unexpected treat to see one. Elsa’s grave is located within a small clearing underneath tower-ing palm trees and along the banks of the slow-moving Uru. Although I try to avoid being anthropomorphic, we like to believe that magnificent leopard was standing watch over Elsa’s grave, the final resting place of a wonderful lion whose story brought joy to millions of people worldwide and attention to the plight of Africa’s wildlife.

At day’s end, we were treated to a “sundowner,” a tradition dating back to the golden age of safaris in the ear-ly 1900s. As the sun set, field guides would select a scenic location where drinks were served to guests, tradi-tionally gin and tonic. Sundowners are truly memorable because they occur at a magical time of the day when the sun is setting and the night-time coolness and calm overtakes the savannah. These sessions, often fueled by copious consumption of beer and gin, really generated great conversations among guests and we made some lasting friendships.

Love for AfricaAt night, guests would gather at

the bar and discuss the day’s events. Our fellow guests were an eclectic group: an American couple from Chi-cago on a round the world retirement trip, an Australian couple, several British couples and a group of lovely British Kenyan ladies.

However, they all had one thing in common; a love for Africa and its wildlife. After drinks, the lodge served dinner al fresco on candle-lit tables on the lodge grounds. After

dinner, nightcaps were served and discussions continued on the day’s sighting. The stories were fascinat-ing as the American couple described their recent trip to the remote Bud-dhist kingdom of Bhutan, the Austra-lian couple telling us of their travels around the world, the British couple who traveled the length of breadth of Africa over the years and the Brit-ish Kenyan ladies from Nairobi who were important players in the coun-try’s conservation community.

After the goodnights were said, the lodge staff escorted guests to their cottages. The escorts, armed with lights, were necessary because leopards prowled the kopje at night.

It’s been said that once Africa gets into your blood, you cannot shake it. Brian Jackman, an English author with extensive experience on the continent wrote “Africa changes you forever, like nowhere on Earth. Once you have been there, you will never be the same.

But how do begin to describe its magic to someone who has never felt it? How can you explain the fascina-tion of this vast, dusty continent, whose oldest roads are elephant paths? Could it be because Africa is the place of all our beginnings, the cradle of mankind, where our spe-cies first stood upright on the savan-nahs of long ago? Maybe that is what led Karen Blixen to say in Out of Af-rica, “Here I am, where I belong.” We have said goodbye to many places we have loved during our life, but saying goodbye to this wonderful place was the hardest.

Fortunately for us, it’s only a four-hour flight to Kenya and we pop over every chance we get.

Under siegeIt would be intellectually dishon-

est to paint such a rosy or naive picture of Kenya. As I write these words, Africa’s wildlife is under siege from what is supposedly na-ture’s most intelligent and sentient species — mankind. According to the African Conservancy, of the dozens of species of rhinos that once roamed earth, only five remain. Of the 100,000 black rhinos that once existed in Africa, only about 2,707 remain. Of the 5-10 million African elephants that existed in the 1930s, less than 1 percent of that number remained when they were added to the endangered list in 1989.

The decline in the African lion’s population is largely due to habitat destruction, persecution by farm-ers and greed. 10-15,000 free roam-ing lions remain, down from 50,000 a decade ago. In 1900, there were about 100,000 cheetahs worldwide; currently, it is estimated there are about 10-15,000, with about one tenth of those in captivity. Not only is this tragic and inhumane, it is also a security problem. Law enforcement and intelligence services assess the illegal wildlife trade funds regional conflicts, criminal syndicates and terror organizations in East Africa. You get the point.

These wonderful animals are the Creator’s gift to humanity and Af-rica’s treasure for safekeeping. What kind of world will it be if the magnif-icent elephant no longer graced the plains of Africa or the mighty roar of the lion is forever silenced? If we lose these most iconic of animals, so familiar to children and adults alike, we lose a part of our humanity. We humans, the most evolved species on earth, have the power and moral obli-gation to ensure this never happens.

George Adamson, the former Kenyan game warden and Elsa’s caretaker asked “Who will now care for the animals, for they cannot look after themselves? Are there young men and women who are willing to take on this charge? Who will raise their voices, when mine is carried away on the wind, to plead their case?”

We cannot fail our animal friends; they deserve so much better.

Giraffe roam among the low brush in Meru National Park.

A baboon on watch along a tree-lined creek in Meru National Park.

LIFE

Elsa’s Kopje Bar is a popular gathering place in Meru where Brian and Kitty Johnson shared drinks and conversa-tion with fellow safari guests.

KENYAContinued from F1

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