the old Africa album

From The Old Africa Album: 5 ‘Best’ Shots

This week at Lens-Artists, Steven Hyde asks to see our 5 best ever photos. So how to choose? On the one hand I have a large archive of scanned photos (the Old Africa Album), taken in the 1990s when we lived in Kenya(7 years) and Zambia (ten months). On the other hand, I have an even larger file of digital shots taken over the last 20 years. The scanned images come from slide and film negatives that were processed a decade or more after the originals were taken; they are not as sharp as the original prints (and some of my scanning was distinctly incompetent).

So it is perhaps a touch perverse to choose my five ‘best’ from this scanned collection. And also to further to discount photos from the ‘on safari’ archive (i.e. the so called Big Five wildlife attractions). Instead, then, here are five, mostly chance photos of local people. These are encounters that often hold many memories, far bigger than the sum of visual parts captured here.

The header photo was taken during a too brief Christmas-time stay on the island of Lamu. We had spent Boxing Day on a small fishing dhow, sailing through the mangrove swamps of the Manda Strait and out to the reef where some of us had fished for our lunch. The owner of the boat, seen dozing here, was Mzee Lali, a Bajun man who spoke no English, a devout Muslim and father of twelve. His youngest boy, ten year old Miski, came with us on the trip. He said not one word that I overheard for the whole trip. Meanwhile, Lali’s nephew, Athman, our guide, and for official tourism purposes, the boat’s captain (since he spoke English, Kenya’s official language, and could sit the necessary captain’s exams) told us much about island life, of livelihoods dependent on tourism and fishing now that the big Arab trading dhows no longer plied the East African coast.

This is Esther and Tom. Esther had a curio stall on the roadside in Kiboko, on the Mombasa Highway some hundred miles south of Nairobi. I saw her now and then when we were staying at nearby Hunter’s Lodge. (Graham had a project in progress at the Kiboko agricultural field station). She was very keen for me to trade any spare clothes for some of her Akamba wood carvings. She also had a notion about where she wanted to have her photograph taken, and took me along to the Kiboko petrol station where there was also a cafe with this zebra mural. She then told me her address in nearby Emali where I could send the photos.

A young woman with a plan, or indeed several.

While Graham worked, went to seminars, visited Kenyan farmers, I camp followed. And so here I was passing time, sitting in the garden of a Mombasa beach hotel with a fine view of the shore. Some of the transactions taking place there were tawdry to say the least – everything for sale at a good price, but then these Digo girls came laughing by. Probably going shopping, but so brilliant in their kanga wraps…

Taking photos of sweet Kikuyu lads wasn’t the idea. I was supposed to be manning the fieldwork clip board and recording data. Or when required, holding the end of a large surveyors’ tape while Graham measured a plot of Napier grass. (There’s clump in the top left corner).

Napier grass is a staple fodder crop in the highlands above Nairobi, essential to smallholder farmers who, lacking access to pasture, must zero-graze their animals i.e. take feed to cattle and sheep kept in pens or small paddocks. The grass grows quickly and could be found planted out on any ground not given over to human food crops. This included roadside reserves. It’s a vigorous plant, but can also be susceptible to a fungal smut disease, which happened to be the subject of Graham’s field research. Our visits to the Kikuyu farms and the welcome we always received there, even when we told the farmers that some of their grass had smut and should be burned, were some of the best times of our years in Kenya. We always came home with gifts – sugar cane, orchard plums and pears, a live cockerel…

Another country.

While we were living in Zambia, we took a road trip south into neighbouring Zimbabwe. This snap was taken one early evening in Harare. I wasn’t even intending to take any photos; for one thing the light wasn’t very good. We were coming back from the post office, but the young man with the biggest grin, spotted the little Olympus-trip in my hand, and asked me to take a photo. These are security house and shop guards waiting for the night shift pick up to take them to work.

Those smiles remind us of much that we miss.

Lens-Artists: Five of the best This week Steve Hyde asks us to post our 5 best ever photos. Now there’s a challenge.

Looking Back Through The Old Africa Album

The Great Rift Valley surely is a world wonder, the four-thousand-mile system of volcanic fractures and fissures that stretches from the plains of northern Syria, across Arabia and the Red Sea, then cuts down through Ethiopia, on through Uganda and Kenya (with a westerly Albertine branch around Lake Victoria), pressing on through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and finally finishing in Mozambique. I read somewhere it is the only geological phenomenon that can clearly be seen from space.

The aging photos in this post, then, show scarcely a glimpse of Kenya’s Great Rift. Most were taken at different seasons from the 9,000 foot viewpoint on the highway north of Nairobi. The road itself, the country’s major route to Kisumu on Lake Victoria and Uganda beyond, climbs from the city, up and along one of the East Rift’s faulted terraces before descending to the valley floor at Nakuru.

The volcano you can see is Longonot, quiescent now and containing a lost wildlife world within its massive crater. You can walk around the rim, and it’s one of my regrets that we never did. But then in the ‘90s when we lived in Nairobi, security everywhere always seemed an issue.

The foreground farms lying in shadow are on a lower Rift terrace. This is Escarpment village where Graham did a lot of his fieldwork on Napier grass smut for his PhD thesis. I went along to hold the clipboard and one end of the tape measure. For that story see Past Lives – Beneath A Tropic Sun.

Next comes a rainy season view. This was probably taken during the very wet 1997/98 El Nino event:

But then…

…the dry season, both above (July) and below (August) on the valley floor:

And finally…

…here’s a late afternoon view, further south from the Ngong Hills near Nairobi.

Looking back on these photos, the biggest wonder is that I was ever there at all. Even at the time, much of what we saw was too astonishing to grasp.

Lens-Artists: Looking back at #1 Wonder This week Sofia reminds us to be amazed by life’s wonders. Please visit her beautiful photo galleries.

Lens-Artists: Elephants In Words And Pictures

“I have seen a herd of elephant travelling through dense native forest…pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world” Isaak Dinesen

No dense forest here, only a rare scatter of thorn trees on the Maasai Mara plains. And yet early one December morning, when we found ourselves in the path of an elephant herd, the sense of their concerted purpose flowed round us like a slow tide. They did move as one – elders, adolescents, infants. And so softly too. An elephant mirage then.

As they passed on by, not one member of the herd showed any reaction to our presence. And so there was that moment – the urge to follow, to walk with elephants, pace for pace. How astonishing might that be? (Or how invasive).

Of course we were not on foot, but in a truck with our driver-guide, Dan. He drove quietly away and parked on a ridge above the thorn trees; even suggested we should get out and eat our picnic breakfast while we watched the herd fan out below us.

Some members climbed over our ridge, but again seemed not to acknowledge our existence.

“The herd moves as one, yet each elephant knows its place.” African saying.

At sundown the herd met up with us again, travelling at the same slow, purposeful pace, but now in the opposite direction. We were on our way back to camp. Dan stopped the truck while they moved on and on around us. So close we felt their presence as they passed. The musky smell of them.

Lens-Artists: favourite quotes illustrated This week Ann-Christine asks us to illustrate our favourite quotations (No more than 5 photos). She has some stunning examples. Go see!

Lens-Artists: Lucky Shot

For most of the several years we lived in Africa I only had a small film camera – an Olympus-trip. It had a good lens and was great for general landscapes, but of course it had no zoom facility. Obviously, this was a big handicap when driving through bush country in search of wildlife to photograph. Also I did not have the aptitude to make the best of varying light conditions. E.g. The header photo was taken in Zimbabwe in July, winter in the southern hemisphere, with a midday view in Hwange National Park as gloomy as an English November. In other words, that this photo worked at all was sheer good luck. In fact I could probably say the same for most of the photos in the old Africa album. There’s another problem too: old film does not keep well.

And yet I love this shot. It has the look of a painting; an air of timelessness. And besides which, the scene did seem to materialise by chance.

At the time we were living in Lusaka, Zambia, and had driven down to Zimbabwe to meet up with New Zealand friends and take them on a short tour through Zimbabwe back to Lusaka. We spent two days driving around Hwange under lowering skies. The bush was parched, so many shades of brown, and anyway the likelihood of spotting anything much from a Subaru estate car seemed slim. We thus spent our first morning on a high-rise game viewing platform, gazing at a very distant waterhole with some faraway buffalo and one giraffe. It was very mesmerizing, surreal even, but in the end one forgot to feel grateful for witnessing such a scene, and began to feel frustrated by the limited photo opportunities.

We left the hide and returned to Hwange’s paved access road, trundling between wide grass verges, that truth to tell, had a rather managed, suburban look about them. Finally we found a dirt trail that led to another waterhole, and parked up under a rain tree. There was no sign of wildlife when we arrived, but it seemed a good spot to eat our picnic lunch. It was only as we were driving away that we saw the elephants had arrived. One of those moments you don’t forget.

Lens-Artists: Lucky Shot This week Sofia sets the theme. Great fun!

Mara Sundowner: Plains’ Shadows

Back to the Farrell ‘once in Africa’ archives for this final ‘shadows’ post.

Here we have the Maasai Mara in December, a desert date tree, a shadowy glimpse of the Oloololo Escarpment, lots of stunning memories invoked, plus a few pangs for Kenya days long gone.

And talking of gone, where did this month go? Now as ‘November Shadows’ draw to a close, a big round of applause for Becky who has kept so many of us so well occupied.

Cheers, my dear!

November Shadows #30

A Red Letter Day ~ Glimpsing Kilimanjaro

We were up in the Taita Hills. It was the final phase of the Larger Grain Borer (LGB)project (see previous post). Graham was checking on the on-farm release of predator beetles, Teretriosoma nigrescens (TN). There were high hopes that TN would be a viable control for LGB, a voracious (and imported) pest in grain stores. (In the project’s trial stores you could actually hear the gathered tiny entities grinding through maize cobs, one of Kenya’s essential food crops being turned to dust).

I was along for the ride. And what a ride it was up from the hot plains: hairpin bends and a rapid climb through 1500 metres, verges bursting with wild flowers – black-eyed Susan, wild hibiscus, morning glory, goats grazing, hillside farms steeply terraced, the scattered plots of maize and banana, the cooling presence of cypress forest. Everywhere along the road people walking, transporting something; jerrycans of cooking oil, sacks of maize flour, women hauling firewood, bundles of sugar cane, mamas with infants.

The Taita Hills comprise three massifs formed during the Precambrian era – i.e. between 650 and 500 million years ago. The peaks range from 700 m to 2,208 meters above sea level, and are covered with remnant cloud forest, which also has very ancient origins. The land is mineral rich and highly fertile. The flora and fauna include species endemic only to these hills, butterflies and orchids among them.

It is a landscape that scarcely fits the usual visions people may have of Kenya. And on top of that, if you choose your spot, there can be moments there when Kilimanjaro (just over the border in Tanzania) deigns to show itself. It is a capricious mountain, coming and going in a matter of seconds, dissolving impossibly into a blue and cloudless sky. It changes size too. Some days it can appear huge, shimmering in the sky with all the substance of a giant soap bubble; other times, as in the photo, it is more discreet. But however one sees it, it changes the day. The nervous system fizzes from head to toe: we’ve seen the mountain! We have!

#SimplyRed Day 26

Red In Tooth And Claw?

Well, it had to be done, didn’t it – that particular ‘red’ title for Becky’s month of #SimplyRed squares, and this despite the apparent lack of ‘red’ in the photo. But then, if you look very carefully, the dozing lion does appear to have a bloody nose.

Of course I’ve posted this photo a few times before. It’s probably one of my best ‘caught moments’ from the old Africa album. We were staying at the Taita Hilton in May 1992. Our other bolt-hole, when Graham was working in the Taita Hills, was the very basic Danish Guesthouse in upland Wundanyi, but on this occasion a room wasn’t available. Oh dear. That meant five days of wall to wall luxury down in the bush country, although that said, I loved the simplicity of the guesthouse too. The Taita hill country is anyway very beautiful.

And the reason we were there at all, Graham was supervising the release of predator beetle Teretriosoma nigrescens (TN for short) at sixteen highland farms. There were high hopes that it would begin to control the spread of larger grain borer (LGB), locally known as dumuzi, which had been introduced to the continent around the 1980s in cargoes of food aid maize sourced in LGB’s native South America. (For those who want the scientific details there’s a short abstract here of a related project in West Africa. It gives the gist of the experiment.)

Our stay coincided with a weekend, so on Sunday afternoon we thought we’d take a drive around the hotel’s small game reserve. It was the start of the dry season and a time in Kenya when skies are often overcast, the light lacklustre. We bounced along the dirt tracks scanning every tussock of brown grass for big cats. That day at the hotel there had been talk of lion sightings. We felt hopeful, but instead, we spotted zebra, hartebeest and waterbuck, all grazing peacefully.

We were giving up on the quest when a park truck pulled up in front of our land rover. I thought the ranger wanted to check our tickets, but he only wanted a chat. When he discovered that we hadn’t seen the lions, he told us to follow him, and zoomed off track and into the bush. We trundled behind. Soon he had us lined up by a thorn bush. There, beside my car door was a slumbering lioness. She opened her eyes to check me out and then went back to sleep. (Lions sleep around 23 hours a day). The ranger then pressed on to the next bush, and there were the two males. I leaned out of the car window and simply took the photograph – just like that. It’s still hard to believe. I think I was there.

#SimplyRed Day 23

Taita Continued ~ Of Red-Billed Hornbills

The hornbill in the photo is not the one I’m going to talk about – for reasons that will shortly become clear.

It was a quiet afternoon at the Taita Hills Hilton. The lunch-time safari vans had come and gone. I’d been writing letters, sitting in the shade by the teardrop pool (see previous post). Its heavenly blue, the shimmer of it, was mesmerizing, as were Robert’s passes with the pool net. The lack of guests meant he could take his time sifting out the tiny acacia leaves and assorted bugs. He moved quietly and with ease. My attention drifted.

And then Robert was at my side. Would madam like to see something very interesting. I must have looked doubtful because he assured me I did not need to go far. I then noticed he was holding a moth between thumb and forefinger. It looked dead. But this wasn’t it. He led me to the largest of the poolside flame trees, had me stand directly in front of the trunk. Look, he said, holding the moth towards the tree. In a trice it was gone. Something had moved, but I could not see what.

Robert pointed to a slit in the bark. I leaned forward and saw that behind the slit was a hollow. A very dark hollow. Except for two bright, beady eyes looking straight back at me. It was a very odd experience – to be watched from inside a tree. It was then I noticed how close my nose was to a shadowy scimitar bill. I stepped back.

Robert found another bug and held it near the slit. Another twitch of the air. And that’s when he told me about the remarkable nesting habits of the hornbill family. The mating pair find a suitably hollow tree, he said. The female then allows herself to be imprisoned, the male building up a mud and dung walled nest around her. A small opening is left so he can deliver food. And there the female stays until the eggs are laid and hatched. When all becomes too crowded in the nest, the female breaks out, and the parents then rebuild the mud wall and continue to feed the chicks through the slit until they are ready to fledge.

Well!

Robert then alerted me to the fact that the male was hovering nearby, waiting with the food delivery. We quietly withdrew. And then my new wildlife guide wanted to know what I was doing in Kenya. I told him how Graham was working on a project to control the Larger Grain Borer (LGB), an imported pest of grain stores, and that there were plans to introduce a predator beetle to reduce its numbers. Robert then said he hoped the predator would not cause harm to Taita’s butterflies. I assured him that it had been meticulously screened to have no impact on anything but LGB.

It was some eighteen months later when I talked to him again. In the interim Graham and I had been in Zambia, and when we returned to Taita Hills I found that the hornbill tree had been felled, was nothing but a stump. I was so surprised I remarked on it to the pool attendant, at which point we recognised each other. Robert then recounted all I had told him about the LGB project in the Taita Hills. I was very touched. It was as if he had thought often about our one previous conversation, as day in and day out he gracefully sieved bugs and leaves from the teardrop pool that shimmered like a mirage.

P.S. On later visits we found Robert had been promoted to camel handler; at least one assumes it was a promotion. The camels in question were ever surly creatures. Here he is in the hotel garden; the Taita Hills during the short rains.

Birds of the Week

#SeeingRed Day 22

The Nairobi Elephant Orphans

Undoubtedly an ‘aaaah’ moment, but don’t be misled. Nairobi’s elephant orphanage is not about elephant pets. It’s about rearing orphaned infants so they can be returned to the wild. This is a painstaking process, using techniques derived from years of experience by Daphne Sheldrick. She established the orphanage in 1977 in memory of her husband, David Sheldrick. He was the founding warden of Tsavo East National Park (see previous post), appointed to the task of creating the park out of the Taru Desert thornscrub in 1948. For the next 25 years he, with Daphne alongside, laboured there to create access to the 5,000 square miles of wilderness reserve that visitors can enjoy today.

Part of the Sheldricks’ day to day living at Tsavo involved rescuing orphaned and injured animals. There were losses as well as successes but this work sowed the seeds of the orphanage to come. Daphne had learned that elephant infants die without constant emotional support. She also struggled to make an appropriate milk formula. Finally she evolved the system that provided each infant with its own keeper who, as surrogate mother, would be with it at all times, including sleeping with it.

Once the infants begin to thrive and grow, they are taken out for walks in nearby Nairobi National Park to begin their bush education. Later, when they grow too big for the orphanage, they are transferred to Tsavo East to continue their education. So far over 300 elephants have been returned to the wild.

Daphne died in 2018 and the enterprise, which extends to conservation initiatives beyond the orphanage, is now run as the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust by her daughter Angela Sheldrick. The website is well worth browsing.

But for the process of raising an infant and re-establishing it in the wild go HERE

For more about the pioneering work of David Sheldrick go HERE.

#SimplyRed Day 18

Red Earth, Red Roofs…

In my last post I mentioned my sense of shrinking horizons now we no longer live in far-flung places. Those who come here often were quick to see I didn’t mean this in a negative sense. It’s more about feeling satisfied in the place and space we occupy. I don’t need to go anywhere else – though that said, a little trip to the nearest seaside before summer ends might be welcome. But paddling prospects aside, these days I am happy to look out on the hills and farmland around the town, and inwardly at the motley fabric of this ancient border settlement, a place which locals call the Castle.

But then on these warm July days, I can’t help slipping back to Kenya, to Hunter’s Lodge, an oasis of a place that was pretty much ‘home’ in our first nomadic days in Africa. The research station where Graham was carrying out experiments on an imported crop pest, larger grain borer, was up a track behind the lodge garden. While he toiled, I sat under a thorn tree and dreamed. Did I really see Maasai women in their full red regalia delivering the hotel milk from gourds slung on a donkey…or a kingfisher the size of a crow strike the pool like some avian pile-driver…

More of this story in several places including: No way back from Africa – the road to Hunter’s Lodge

Also Once in Africa, Kenya Diary Continued and In an equatorial light

#SimplyRed Day 11

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge