Mathews Range

A Samburu herdsman waters his cows at a singing well. Photo by David Lansing.

There are two rainy seasons in Kenya. The first, which generally runs between March and May, is called the “long rains.” The second, between November and December, is the “short rains” or “little rains.”

Last year there were no long or short rains, and the year before that, very little. So this year when the rains came in January and continued pretty much straight through May, people didn’t know what to call them.

Water is life everywhere. It just seems more acutely real in Kenya. If the rain does not fall when it is supposed to, the cattle die, the wildlife dies, and, if the maize fails, the people die. All of this happened in such grand proportions that in January of last year, the Kenyan government declared a national emergency over the extended drought.

And then in November the short rains came and just kept on coming. Which, of course, can cause as many problems as no rain. This summer, there was so much maize harvested that Kenyan farmers couldn’t sell it. “Where do you want us to put it?” said the usual buyers whose silos were already full. So it rotted. And the farmers went hungry. Again.

It’s a conundrum.

Up here in the Northern Frontier District the major river is the Guaso Nyiro (which flooded its banks and caused major damage in the spring). And then there are the luggas, or sand rivers.

During the dry season (which we are towards the end of, assuming the little rains come next month), the Samburu and other pastoralists in this area like the Rendille, herd their cows and goats and camels from one patch of meager grazing to another, watering them in the same sand rivers that have been used for hundreds of years by these people.

In the sand river, they dig a hole just deep enough until they find water and then they take a bucket or an old vegetable oil tin and fill it with water for their stock. Of course, as the dry season goes on, the water is harder to come by and the hole gets deeper and deeper. Eventually it might be 15 or 20 feet deep, necessitating a chain of three or four lmurran passing the bucket from hand to hand, all while they sing a lilting chant that reverberates all along the sand river where four or five other groups of warrior herdsmen are doing the same thing. For this reason, they are called the singing wells.

That’s the scene we came across quite accidentally this morning. We were out and about looking for Grevy’s zebra (which I still haven’t seen) when we heard this strange, hypnotic music wafting across the sand river we were crossing. We went to check it out and came across several groups of herdsmen watering their cows while singing. Magical.

Blayney Percival, left, with Osa and Martin Johnson celebrating their safari.

There is a reason why we traveled far out of our way to go into the Mathews Range on our way to Lake Paradise and Calvin knows exactly what that is although we’ve yet to really talk about it.

When Osa and Martin Johnson discovered Lake Paradise in 1921, they were led by Calvin’s great uncle, Bud. Three years later, on their way to Lake Paradise for what would turn out to be a four year stay, Bud also headed up that expedition. But mysteriously, he never made it up there with them. Instead, Bud left them near the Guaso Nyiro River and headed back for Nairobi. As far as anyone can tell, that was the end of Bud Cottar’s relationship with the Johnsons, both professionally and socially, despite the fact that he had worked for them on and off for almost two years. Never once in their subsequent books about the expeditions to Lake Paradise do they mention Bud. It’s as if they never knew him.

This bothers Calvin, I know it does, even though he doesn’t like to talk about it. I’ll say something about the Johnsons expedition, how Osa did this or Martin did that, and Calvin will show a tenseness in the muscles around his mouth and say something like, “The thing is to tell the truth about that journey” and I know that what he’s talking about is his great uncle Bud.

Tell the truth about that journey.

The trouble is, nobody really knows what the truth is. Everyone who was actually there has long since passed away, and the only people who wrote about it are Osa and Martin Johnson. So, as is often the case in history, they get the final word.

Here’s what we know for sure: Bud Cottar organized the expedition in Nairobi and got the whole bloody troop, which included 70 porters, three trucks, four wagons pulled by teams of 12 oxen each, and a string of pack donkeys up to a spot near Archer’s Post. Here they camped and waited for the Johnson’s old friend, Blayney Percival, to catch up with them.

Osa waits in camp while Martin and Blayney look for a route through the Mathews Range and Bud Cottar heads home to Nairobi.

Once Percival arrived, there were heated discussions about the best route to Marsabit. Some local guides had told Martin that there was some amazing game to the west of them in the Mathews Range—big herds of elephant and rhino as well as lots of lions and leopards and other animals, and Martin badly wanted to do some filming there. Then, while waiting for Percival to arrive, Martin got it in his head that maybe by heading into the Mathews Range, they could actually cut off some of the distance between them and Lake Paradise and get the filming in as well. It seemed unlikely (and certainly nobody had any clue as to how to get through the Mathews Range). Both Blayney Percival and Bud Cottar were, initially, against it. But when Martin Johnson got an idea in his head, logic went out the window. In the end, he was able to convince Percival they should give it a go. So on or about March 7, 1924, Martin and Blayney Percival set off looking for passable routes through the Mathews Range, no doubt passing right by where Sarara now sits in the opening to the narrow valley, while Bud Cottar turned around and went back home.

Now just think about all this. Bud Cottar was 20 years old when he first led the Johnsons to Lake Paradise in 1921. Like a lot of 20-year-olds he was strong-headed, had a bit of a temper, and thought pretty highly of himself. Blayney Percival, on the other hand, was one of the “old boys.” A mzee. He was 50 years old, recently retired from the post of game warden for all of British East Africa, and a man greatly respected for his knowledge of game animals (he claimed he could smell giraffes at 300 yards).

So what do you think the young Bud Cottar thought when, after doing all the work to get them half-way to Lake Paradise, this old mzee shows up and allows Martin Johnson to talk him into going into the Mathews Range?

I think they had a battle of wills and Bud Cottar said, “Either we do it my way or I’m returning to Nairobi,” confident that Martin Johnson would agree. But he didn’t. And once Johnson convinced Bwana Percival to go along with his hare-brained scheme, Bud Cottar had no choice but to pack up his things and abandon the safari.

That’s what I think. But only Bud and Blayney and Martin know for sure—and they’re not talking.

Bachelor giraffes getting ready to neck. Photo by David Lansing.

The reticulated giraffes around Sarara are mezmerizing. There patterns are so much more distinct than the Masai giraffes in the south whose hides look like they’ve been washed in hot water making the dark brown bleed onto the white. The coats of reticulated giraffes, however, look crisp and freshly pressed.

This morning we stopped not far from camp and watched a handful of twigas, including a couple of young ones, move like shadows among the thorn trees. As we came up, they stopped, ears out, their large heavily lashed eyes looking inquisitively at us. The young ones, uncertain as to our intent, lollopped back to Mum in that delicious slow-motion amble they have.

They blend in so well with their surroundings that it was a few minutes before we realized that not far from this little mama-toto group were a few young bachelors, doing a little neck-knocking, as Calvin calls it, the mostly-gentle sparring matches where they slap their necks against each other to determine who gets to hook up with the women when the time comes.

Hardy, who always seems to be thinking about food when we’re out game-watching, asked Calvin how they tasted. “They’re delicious,” Calvin said with great enthusiasm, and there then ensued a long conversation about which other animals were or weren’t worth eating. Forget about bush pig or wart-hog, Calvin said. They’ve got all kinds of parasites. Same with zebra.

“Really?” Hardy said. “I’ve always heard that zebra are pretty tasty.”

Can be, Calvin said, but the problem is that even though zebra can have fat bellies and look quite healthy, they might actually be starving to death and full of parasites. Even giraffes have their health problems out in the wild and are susceptible to various epidemics, like rinderpest, a viral disease also called cattle plague. Evidently in the 1960s, an epidemic wiped out half of the giraffe population of Kenya.

On a cheerier note, Calvin told us that giraffes like to get a little drunk every once in awhile. They’ll eat the berries from marula trees which will then ferment in their stomachs and get intoxicated. Not a good thing to be drunk in the bush. Check out this short video which shows the effects of animals eating marula berries—it’s hilarious.

Our picnic setting next to a sand river. Photos by David Lansing.

When I started talking about Virginia and Robert Ruark’s 1951 safari yesterday (Could they really have downed 46 bottles of gin in six weeks? Surely he was talking about those mini-bottles from the airlines), I had no intention of chronicling their excesses.

In fact, the reason I even took up the Ruark book in the afternoon was because we’d had the most wonderful picnic yesterday afternoon in a shady glade next to a sand river and it got me to thinking about a passage in Ruark’s Horn of the Hunter that described a similar afternoon:

“We pulled out of Iringa, headed for a village by the Ruaha, and a few miles out of town we stopped for the lunch ceremony.

“’I love these picnics,’ Virginia said, nibbling happily at her nutritious delicious. “I always loved picnics as a kid. We used to go down into Rock Creek Park and have them on Saturdays when I was a little girl in Washington. There were always a lot of sex fiends loose in Rock Creek Park, and Mother was always afraid I would get raped or something, but I used to slip off and have picnics anyhow. Never thought I’d have a picnic three times a day, every day, though. Let’s take some pictures, this is such a lovely spot.’”

I was thinking of that, how Virginia loved to have picnics while on safari, and how I also really loved it when Calvin would just stop the safari vehicles somewhere—on a hill in the Mara or, like today, in a shady spot by a sand river–and we’d pull out the folding chairs and Julius would get into the chop block and turn out some sandwiches or maybe a cold pasta salad and we’d pull some very cold Tusker’s out of the cooler and sit in the shade and, like Virginia, think just how lucky we were to be having a picnic in such a beautiful spot.

One of the Samburu guides from Sarara had come with us for the day and as soon as we parked and started to set up the chairs, he quietly walked away from us and across the lugga, never saying anything to anyone. I didn’t think anything of it until we were just about finished and started packing up and the Samburu had yet to return.

I mentioned this to Calvin and he frowned and said the lmurran might never come back. “I suspect he’s walked back to that last village we passed to secretly visit his girlfriend and cause a little trouble.”

The Samburu warrior returned to us with a smile on his face and a song on his lips. Photo by David Lansing.

It seems that the lmurran had fallen in love with a young woman from the village who returned his affections, but the father of the young woman, as is his right, had promised her to one of the elders who already had two or three wives. Of course, this elder could provide a much more handsome dowry to the father than some young lmurran who still had only a few cattle.

“That’s the way it is here,” Calvin said. “Love has nothing to do with it. A marriage is just business.”

The wedding had gone on as planned. The young lmurran had to dance and celebrate with the other young warriors while his beloved was given to an old man who already had a couple of wives. But that didn’t mean the young warrior stopped loving the girl. Whenever he had an opportunity—like yesterday afternoon—he’d sneak back into the village and make love to the girl. Of course, if he was ever caught, it would be the end of him. And the woman.

And that’s what Calvin was worried about.

We packed the last of the chairs and the cooler. While everyone else climbed into the Land Cruisers, I took my time photographing some starlings, a milky white flower, the sand river—anything to give the Samburu an opportunity to appear out of the bush. Which he did just as I had given up on him.

“Here he comes!” I yelled at Calvin. He got out of the Toyota and came over to where I stood and the two of us watched the star-crossed lover purposefully stride back across the golden sand river, his shadow keeping one step ahead of him.

“Did you have to use your rungu?” Calvin asked him in Swahili.

“And why would I use my rungu?” the warrior replied. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

He nimbly climbed up the back of the Cruiser and sat, legs splayed, on the roof. All the way back to Sarara, he sang some Samburu song in a happy, high voice. Obviously he was feeling quite pleased with himself. And with the time spent with his lover.

Robert Ruark, far left, and his wife, Virginia, far right, with Armand and Poochy Denis, explorer-filmmakers, in 1951.

Have you ever read Robert Ruark? God, you should. Another one of those people who, like Osa and Martin Johnson, was quite famous in his time and is now largely forgotten. He was a journalist and a columnist and magazine writer as well as an author. Around 1950, he was as well known (and almost as controversial) as someone like Rush Limbaugh is now. (The good news; if history has forgotten about Robert Ruark, who wrote 19 books and over 1,000 magazine articles in a career that lasted about 20 years, surely no one will have any idea who Rush Limbaugh is ten years after he dies).

Anyway, in 1951 Ruark spent $10,000 of his own money (even he admitted he must be crazy) to go on a two-month safari with his wife, Virginia, led by Harry Selby, then a young, unknown professional hunter for the safari company Ker & Downey. That safari, chronicled in the book he wrote about it, Horn of the Hunter, turned out to be a life-altering event for him, Virginia, and for Harry Selby. They all became famous.

That was fine for Harry Selby (after the book came out, clients had to book him five years in advance) but not so great for Robert and Virginia. Robert Ruark, who always like his gin, became a raging alcoholic (as did Osa Johnson following the success of her book, I Married Adventure; I guess being a successful writer doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Too bad about that) and a few years later, he and Virginia divorced.

Ruark suffered liver failure and died in a London hospital in 1965. He was only 49 years old. Virginia, who had her own drinking problems, died six months later (a biography of the Ruarks says that while Robert was “a cheerful drinker of unbelievable capacity, Virginia tended to become drunk quickly. Even when not drinking, she had periods in which she wandered vaguely, as if her mind was elsewhere. Ruark referred to these periods as her “fits,” compared them to his own “cutouts,” and bluntly ascribed them to alcohol. Virginia looked for other explanations, but it was obvious alcohol was at the root of her psychological problems, even if you concede his infidelity was the cause of her drinking.”)

Anyway, this afternoon I was sitting around camp, lazing on one of the large sofas in the mess tent while everyone else took a nap, rereading Ruark’s Horn of Hunter. It was warm and still and dusty out and I thought I might sneak in a G&T while everyone else was dozing, so I called over Jarso who was trying to make himself look busy by slowly wiping a wet cloth over the same stretch of bar he’d cleaned five minutes ago and five minutes before that.

I asked him if I might be able to get a gin and tonic and then went back to my reading:

“We drank quite a lot, for outdoor types,” Ruark writes. “We’d roll back to camp about 1 P.M. after a hard morning’s hunt, starved, thirsty, and dust-covered. The ginny bottle would be hanging, coolly beaded with sweat from the evaporation of the water bag. I was bartender, it always seemed.

“’What’ll it be? Dr. Ruark’s nutritious, delicious, character-molding martini, or one of those gin-and-nonsense things that children drink?” Gin-and-nonsense was Gordon’s elixir of life mixed with Rose’s lime juice or tonic. Harry and Virginia usually drank gin-and-nonsense. I am a martini man myself. Over six weeks we used up forty-six bottles of gin and a little less than half a bottle of vermouth. I like martinis dry.

“We drank, sitting in the comfortable camp chairs, with the mess tent cool and breezy and the river trees green and soothing for us to look at, and the fact that the martinis were warm in their plastic cups and that the bees dive-bombed the attractive nonsense drinks did not detract from the flavor or the effect. We drank a lot. Three apiece before lunch killed the whole bottle. But we never got tight. We never felt bad.”

Wait…did he say that three people drank off 46 bottles of gin in six weeks? “But we never got tight. We never felt bad.” Holy shit.

Right about then, Jarso came back carrying my gin and tonic on a wooden tray. He started to set it down. It looked delicious and I was sure I could smell the juniper berries and lime even before my hand touched the beading glass.

“I’m sorry to bother you again, Jarso,” I said, “but I think I’ve changed my mind about that drink. Would it be possible to get a cup of tea instead?”

“Tea, sir?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t want the gin?”

“Well, yes, I do. Awfully much. Which is why I think I won’t.”

Jarso picked up the glass and put it back on the tray without saying a word. I’m sure he thought I was quite mad but then again, I think that’s the way they feel about us mzungus in general.

And the tea was just fine. Not delicious, not wondrous, like a wicked gin-and-nonsense, but fine nonetheless.