Mystery at the Ewaso Ngiro River

Elephant dung in a sand river near Archer's Post. Photo by David Lansing.

After crossing the muddy Ewaso Ngiro river at Archer’s Post, we stopped in a lugga, or sand river, to take a piss. Fresh elephant dung stretched across the sand river towards the trees on the far bank. I did my business wondering if the ellies were hiding in the trees, watching us.

We still had a long drive ahead of us to make Sarara Camp in the Namunyak (meaning Place of Peace) Conversancy, located in the southern end of the Mathews Range. At first Calvin had said we’d reach Sarara by two or three in the afternoon but the road had been even rougher than we’d imagined and we were way behind schedule. Now we were all silently hoping just to make it before darkness. You don’t want to drive the corrugated roads of Kenya’s Lost Land at night, and you particularly don’t want to be looking for obscure dusty tracks in the thick commiphora bush country that we’d entered.

When we’d stopped, Pete, who was traveling with Calvin, had wobbled out of the Land Cruiser looking dazed. “You need to ride with him,” he said. “You need to talk.”

About what? I asked him. Everything, he said. “The whole Osa and Martin Johnson thing and his great uncle Bud and what happened.”

“What happened?” I asked him.

“Just ride with him,” Pete said. He climbed into the other vehicle, the one driven by Keith, where Hardy and Fletch were sitting in the back dozing.

I told Calvin I’d ride with him to Sarara, if that was all right by him. We started back up the red dusty road. The way to drive this corrugated stuff, Calvin said, was to go fast. Sort of riding the crests of the corrugation like a speedboat over waves. But we couldn’t do that because of the trailer we were hauling. On some stretches of the road, where sand had filled in some of the corrugation, we could make 30 or 35 mph, but for the most part we settled around 20 or 25. Keith’s vehicle, tired of riding in our dust, soon passed us and disappeared over the horizon. I braced myself by putting a hand up against the ceiling of the Land Cruiser and cinching up my seat belt to keep from banging around the cab. Maps and sunglasses skid across the top of the dashboard; a pile of equipment—binoculars, 2-way radio charger, torch, water bottles—bounced around at my feet. I shoved my camera underneath my shirt to protect it from the cloud of rest dust swirling around us.

“So Pedro says you guys had a good chat on the drive up,” I said, trying to initiate conversation.

“Yup,” said Calvin.

“About Bud and the Johnsons?”

Calvin shrugged.

“I guess this is where the trouble started,” I said.

“Probably,” Calvin replied.

“On the second expedition. The one in 1924.”

“Yup.”

Maybe Calvin had been chatty with Pedro but he certainly wasn’t in the mood for conversation now. Maybe it was me or maybe he was just tired. God knows I was. I decided to just wait him out. It would be hours before we got to Sarara. When Calvin felt like talking, he would. Until then, I’d just hang on and take in the scenery, looking for the odd dik-dik or gerenuk that seemed rather common out here, hoping to spot a Grevy’s zebra which were supposed to be in abundance though we’d yet to come across one.

It wasn’t just coincidental that we were traveling into the Mathews Range. Something had happened around here between the Johnsons and Bud Cottar. According to Osa Johnson, early in March, 1924, the expedition, led by Bud Cottar, arrived at the Ewaso Ngiro at Archer’s Post with their “vehicles, wagons, camels, and seventy men,” where they waited for their friend Blayney Percival to catch up to them from Nairobi.

The Percival family was famous in Kenya at this point. Philip Percival was one of the great white hunters on Teddy Roosevelt’s safari in 1909. His older brother, Blayney, started out as a white hunter as well but ended up as Kenya’s first chief game warden (he was also the charming hunter called “Pops” in Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa).

By the time the Johnsons met Blayney Percival he was in his late 40s and nearing retirement. Bud Cottar, on the other hand, having just turned 23, was just getting his feet wet in the safari business. Still, it was Bud that the Johnsons had turned to organize their expedition to Lake Paradise as he had three years earlier. This time, however, he never made it past Archer’s Post. A day or two after Blayney Percival caught up with the group, plans changed. Blayney Percival took over the expedition. Bud Cottar headed back to Nairobi alone. And never worked for the Johnsons again.

What happened? This was the story I was waiting for Calvin to tell me. But obviously he was going to do it on his own time.