The schedule that I’ve developed for the resident’s here at FAME, and in Tanzania, has, or course, been done so with plenty of thought on my part to make sure that everything is planned just so to maximize the experience for them. In addition to the medical work we do here, where the residents become part of the FAME family, I also expose them to both the culture of Tanzania as well as what the country has to offer. Tanzania has always been considered the premier game viewing country in Africa for many reasons, though in particular it is because of Serengeti National Park – a vast expanse of plains and woodlands, larger than the size of Connecticut, where the bulk of the Great Migration occurs. In combination with the neighboring Ngorongoro Conservation Area, their area is larger than the state of New Jersey and encompasses the vast majority of the migration route of the Wildebeest and Zebra (save for the small, though important, portion in the Masai Mara of Kenya, where calving begins once they cross the Mara River on the northern border of the Serengeti before returning to Tanzania) as they move to find greener grasses in a clockwise fashion that remains the largest movement of land mammals on this planet.

We visited Ngorongoro Crater for a day safari last weekend which was a primer for this weekend’s activities in which we would be spending two nights in a tented camp in the park itself and three days of game drives in search of the many species of mammals and birds that are found here, though in particular, the three big cats, and hopefully witness one of them hunting. Ngorongoro Crater is a compact, ten-mile in diameter, garden of Eden containing most of the animals one would like to see on a game drive. The Serengeti is immense and certainly lives up to the meaning of its name in KiMaa (the language of the Maasai), Serenget, which literally means, “endless plains.” Visiting the crater prepares one for the magnificence of the Serengeti, allowing you to appreciate the sights that go far beyond just the animals, and take in the entirety of one of nature’s most miraculous demonstrations of its power and skill.

Our day began with Vitalis coming to pick us up from the Raynes House with Turtle at 8:00 am – everyone was packed and ready to go. After a quick stop for petrol and our supply of bottled water as we would be heading into the bush for several days where there are no services and AAA is non-existent. Leaving the service station, though, the same problem we had in the crater with one of the brakes locking in the rear and making the vehicle almost non-drivable occurred. It was actually quite fortuitous that this occurred while we were in Karatu since it had been an intermittent problem and never present when we had the vehicle in the shop. We drove immediately to the fundi (expert) who happened to be close, and with the brake still locked, the problem was immediately diagnosed and fixed while we remained in the car – it was an issue with air in the master brake cylinder and even though someone had tried to bleed the brake lines earlier, they hadn’t done it from the top. After probably ten minutes, we were on our way to the Loduare Gate, entrance to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area that we would have to traverse to get to Serengeti National Park.

The road to the Serengeti is the same we took last weekend while visiting the crater, except rather than taking the descent road to the bottom after driving halfway around the rim, we continued on the main road which descended to the Eastern Serengeti much less precipitously. We were heading to the world famous Oldupai Gorge, cradle of mankind and the single most important archeological site in the world for the number of discoveries that were made there by Louis and Mary Leakey. It has been “discovered” by a German neurologist who had been researching sleeping sickness, or trypanosomiasis, in 1911, but instead he found numerous unknown fossils that he subsequently brought back to Germany, where they were studied and placed in a museum. The name of the site was unfortunately misspelled as “Olduvai,” rather than the correct name of “Oldupai,” the Maasai name for the local sisal plant that grows extensively around the gorge and everywhere else in the Eastern Serengeti (interestingly, the sisal plant was not native to Tanzania, but had been brought to Tanganyika in the 1800’s during the its German occupation) . Leakey saw the fossils in Germany that had come from Oldupai and, as they say, the rest is history.

Though Louis Leakey came to Tanganyika in 1935, it was not until 1959, when his second wife, Mary, discovered Zinjanthropus, or Nutcracker Man (Paranthropus bosei or Australopithecus bosei), the oldest hominin to have been found at the time dating to 1.6 million years ago. It was a monumental breakthrough that was the first of many discoveries for the Leakeys at Oldupai Gorge and elsewhere in the Rift Valley, including Mary’s incredible discovery of the nearby Laetoli footprints in 1978 (several years after Louis’s death) that remain the oldest evidence of hominin bipedalism at 3.6 million years ago.

Thankfully, the discoveries at Oldupai fueled much more extensive excavations throughout the Great Rift Valley of East Africa that included the remarkable discovery of Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) in 1974 by Donald Johansen and his team in Ethiopia, a 40% complete skeleton of a small-brained, bipedal ancestor dating to 3.2 million years ago. I was fortunate enough to have taken a professional seminar from Donald Johansen and Richard Leakey (Louis’s son) in 1977, while studying anthropology at UC Davis, shortly after the Lucy’s discovery. My fascination with anthropology and archaeology had begun in childhood, so visiting Oldupai Gorge in 2009 with my children, when we first came to Tanzania, was a monumental and life-changing event for me. I have brought my residents here on each and every trip to the Serengeti, and despite the fact that very few of them have heard of Oldupai before their visit, each and every one of them has left the gorge in awe.

After leaving the gorge overlook and the museum, we traveled back in time, descending into the gorge and crossing the typically dry Oldupai River to reach the other side en route to Shifting Sand. As we climbed out of the gorge and eventually onto the flat plain, it was entirely green and fertile, in stark contrast to the dry season when we’re here in September and October, and, most incredibly, it was completely covered with thousands and thousands of wildebeest, and nearly every female with a brand-new calf running alongside. As far as the eye could see, there were wildebeest and zebras throughout, a literal blanket of life, only broken by the occasional bleached white skull or skeleton, stark reminders of the unseen struggles encountered along the way. I had never seen quite this display of the migration in this location, but it was spectacular and seemed to be on display for us alone as almost no vehicles travel this route through Shifting Sand and along the western bank of Oldupai Gorge.

We stopped and explored the massive crescent-shaped mound of black sand, ejected 3,000 years ago from the volcano Ol’ Doinyo Lengai, or “Mountain of God” in KiMaa, and sacred to the Maasai for that reason. The sand is magnetized, causing it to remain intact as it is blown across the savannah in a single direction, covering more than 15 meters every year in constant motion. It had recently rained, so the surface of the sand today was damp with little movement, though in drier and more windy times, you can see waves of sand gently wafting over the surface as if creating a ballet for your eyes only.

Close by to Shifting Sands sits a lone hill that is usually occupied by Maasi herding their cattle, though today they are nowhere to be found as the migration has taken over the savannah and the herds of livestock are gone for fear of disease. As we drove to the top of the hill today, we could see forever in all directions and, again, the migration was everywhere – we broke out our lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pineapple, hard boiled eggs, and apples, and ate as the sole witnesses to this miracle of nature surrounding us. I had never been to the top of this hill in the past, but given the exhilarating experience, I will never miss it again.

Once finished with lunch, we continued along our near non-existent path in the direction of Naabi Hill, check in point for the Serengeti National Park and the step-off for all expeditions to its interior. The view from Naabi Hill reminds you of why it is named as it is, an endless plain in all directions and once again covered with wildebeest and zebras as the migration was passing through on its journey to the north, the Mara River, and Kenya beyond. They will not reach it until August or September, though, and will remain in the Central Serengeti for the bulk of that time, vacillating back and forth in search of the grasses and raising their young to endure the crossing that is inevitable. The migration is a huge circle that has likely continued for hundreds of thousands of years and will continue on, if we are lucky, for hundreds of thousands of years more.

Our camp was still several hours away, distant in the Sopa Valley, named for one of the lodges that sits close by. The effects of the recent heavy rains were clear as we left the main road and encountered long stretches of water and mud with frequent detours to avoid getting stuck. We eventually found our camp, well before sunset with plenty of time for a shower and a drink before dinner, which was unusual for us as we are normally arriving long after it’s become dark. Our tents were marvelous and we all enjoyed a hot shower after a long day on the trail. Dinner was delicious and I’m certain that each of us fell fast asleep given the comfort of our beds and how ridiculously tired we were. Tomorrow morning, we would be leaving before sunrise for a full day game drive with the camp packing us both breakfast and lunch for the trail. The anticipation of a successful day was palpable.