As many of you have gathered by now, in addition to the work that we do at FAME and in the mobile clinics, we also have a number of activities that I’ve included in this global health elective or rotation that have less to do with medicine and neurology, and more to do with Tanzania’s colorful cultures and wildlife. As important as it is to familiarize yourself with the general practices of the physicians here, it is equally important that one fully appreciates the people and the land. Last weekend, I had the privilege to take my team to Ngorongoro Crater, perhaps the single most spectacular game reserve in the world when speaking about numbers of animals in a concentrated area and the geologic diversity of such a place. This weekend, we will travel to the Serengeti National Park, the quintessential and most famous of all African game parks.
The word Serengeti is derived from the word “seringit,” which in Kimaa (the language of the Maasai people) means “endless plains,” and once you’ve been there, you’ll know exactly what that means. Regardless of how far you can see, when you reach the next horizon, it just goes on and on from there and continues endlessly. I have lost count how many days I’ve spent in the Serengeti over the last 15 years, and without question, I can tell you that it never ever gets old. You could spend a lifetime exploring the park and you would not cover everything for it is larger than the state of Connecticut.
Vitalis arrived at the Raynes House shortly before 8:00 am and everyone was packed and ready for our adventure. We were again bringing lunch for the day with us but would stop by the Olympic fuel station heading out of town to top off Turtle and pick up some snacks (mandazi, samosas, etc.) for breakfast on the road. To get to the Serengeti, we would be taking the very same route as we did last weekend, but on the other side of the crater would continue on rather than taking the descent road to the bottom. The tarmac ends at the Lodoare Gate entering the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and from there all the way across the Serengeti to Lake Victoria in the northeast corner of Tanzania, the road is not paved. Any transportation across the country – buses, trucks, tractor trailers – all have to take the same road up to the crater rim and through the Serengeti, to reach the other side of the country and Lake Victoria. There have been proposals over the last years to pave the road that have all been defeated by environmental groups given the risk of disruption to the great migration and other wildlife movement. It would also completely change the character of Serengeti National Park in a negative way, so I’m glad it’s been defeated, though there have been frequent attempts to slide it through under the radar and I’m not overly optimistic that the road will remain unpaved forever.
Our first stop as is usually the case, will be at Oldupai Gorge. Discovered in 1911 to have early animal fossils by a German neurologist researching trypanosomiasis, the Gorge later became the life work of Louis and Mary Leakey with the eventual discover of Zinjanthropus, or Nutcracker Man, in 1959, oldest man at the time. The Gorge, which was originally misspelled in 1911 as “Olduvai,” and has since existed by that name in the majority of western publications, was actually named “Oldupai” after the Maasai word for the native sisal plant that dominates the landscape in this region and is very important to the local wildlife as a source of water. Oldupai Gorge is the single most important archaeological site in the world and continues to be a source of new discoveries and continuing research. Most importantly, all three human ancestral lineages, Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and Home erectus, have been found at the Gorge, and also amazingly co-existed here. We met up with Professor Masaki, one of the curators at the Gorge and someone I’ve known now for almost 10-years, for a short talk at the overlook and a visit to the museum before departing the visitor’s center and driving through the Gorge on our way to Shifting Sands.
Our visit to Shifting Sands not only allows us to see this remarkable geologic feature but also means that we can bypass the main Serengeti road which is tremendously dusty and bumpy with vehicles traveling at high speeds kicking up stones from the roadway with the risk of shattering your windshield (which happened to us previously on our way into the park). Shifting Sands is a huge mound of black sand that was ejected from Ol’ Doinyo Lengai several thousand years ago and has continued to cross the Serengeti plain by 5 meters a year, being blown by the wind, from where it was originally deposited. The sand has a very high iron content and is heavily magnetized, so the entire pile remains very intact as it is slowly moving in a single direction year after year, swallowing any small plants or bushes in its path. Given that Ol’ Doinyo Lengai, meaning “Mountain of God” in Maa, is sacred to the Maasai, so is Shifting Sands a sacred location for them.
We continued on through the bush on our own private path on the opposite side of the Gorge, seeing no other vehicles then entire way despite knowing that the main road was completely packed with those either en route to the Serengeti, or returning home. Once meeting up with the main road, though, we were back among all those coming and going, and reaching Naabi Gate, entrance to the park, there were easily 100 safari vehicles sitting in the parking lot, all with their guests eating lunch and preparing to enter. The minute Vitalis stepped out of Turtle to check in at the ranger station, and then shut his door, we were unable to reopen it. This is not an all too unusual situation as the bumpy roads loosen essentially every bolt on the car, including the door latches, which can then jamb, often quite irreversibly unless one removes the door completely which was not possible at that point given the lack of a workshop. This meant that Vitalis would have to enter the passenger side and climb over the stick shift to reach the driver’s seat. Vitalis is by no means a small person, so getting in and out of the car was not going to be an easy feat until the door was fixed.
From Naabi Gate, we descended onto the vast Serengeti proper and began our formal game drive for the afternoon, heading first in the direction of Gol Kopjes in search of big cats. It wasn’t long before we first came upon a cheetah mother with four older cubs, a hugely remarkable accomplishment given the harsh environment and the constant threat from the other apex predators who are constantly competing for prey. Cheetah will very often have their prey taken from them by nearly all the other predators – hyena, lions, leopards, and jackals. Once the cheetah catches and kills its prey, it will typically eat it on the spot and very quickly so as not to have it poached by one of the others. Cheetah will not defend their kill, nor their young for that matter, and their best defense has always been their speed and avoiding trouble as much as possible. This mother clearly knew her business and her cubs were quite lucky to have her as well as the lessons she was teaching them.
Shortly after spotting our cheetah family, we ran across a very large group of perhaps a dozen lion cubs and younger adolescents, all of whom were very, very thin with their ribs and hip bones strikingly prominent. It’s all a matter of how much prey is available and most of the migration was far to the north and west. The pride in this location wasn’t doing as well as they would be had it been earlier in the season with game aplenty. I felt fairly certain that some of these individuals would not be seeing another season.
From the Gol Kopjes, we traveled all the way to the Maasai Kopjes, so named for the Maasai had a large village here prior to it becoming a park. These Kopjes are quite large and stretch a good distance with lots of resident wildlife. The mornings are the best time to spot the animals here and we were arriving well into the late afternoon. Kopjes are the large rock outcroppings (think Pride Rock from the Lion King) that dominate the landscape of the Central Serengeti. All life here is centered on these islands of biodiversity where you can often find a lion pride sitting atop the rocks surveying their territory for any signs of prey off in the distance. Leopards will also occupy the trees or high spots in the Kopjes as long as there are no lions nearby.
Departing Maasai Kopjes, the sun was becoming quite low in the sky, and it was time for us to head to camp as we still had a significant amount of road to cover. We had to travel southwest in the direction of the Sopa Lodge that was located quite close to our camp, Dancing Duma, where dinner and cold drinks were waiting for us. It had been a great afternoon of game viewing, and we were all looking forward to more tomorrow.