My first night in Kenya certainly lived up to expectations – the whirring of mosquitoes sounded like it was coming from inside my skull, the local dogs barked with such gusto that I thought half the lions in Africa had descended on them, and I felt very small and mortal indeed. Although I slept fitfully, I awoke with a sense of groggy optimism. What adventures would our first full day hold? Apparently, chilli for breakfast. Chris, our cook and soon-to-be favourite person, served up a selection of beans, tomatoes and yams (if you’re unfamiliar with the latter, imagine a starchy loaf of rice as a rough approximation). Alongside this fairly standard fare was a bowl of freshly cut chilli (pilipili hoho), which we were informed would cleanse our bodies of toxins, if we could handle the spice. Naturally, we took this as a challenge, but any veneer of bravado soon crumbled into a mess of watery eyes and gasping throats.
Once we had recovered from our ill-advised bout of chilli-eating, we decided it would be a good idea to explore the place that would be our base of operations for three of the next four weeks. Kiboko Camp is a decently-sized plot of land on the side of a gently sloping hill, dotted with huts and connected by dusty paths. As we meandered aimlessly along one of these paths, admiring the basket-like weaver bird nests that festooned the trees, we suddenly found ourselves in somebody’s garden. That somebody was standing in the doorway of his house, giving us an inscrutable look through his thick mane of grey hair. He was the first white person we had seen since leaving the airport, but something told us that he wasn’t a tourist. The assortment of skulls dotted around his garden were a good indication that he had been here for a while, at the very least. When he opened his mouth to greet us, the most remarkable sound emerged – a sort of dry rattle, as if his voice had been put through a blender and then laced with gravel.
He introduced himself as Oscar, a name that sparked recognition among our group. We had been told about an eccentric old man who owned half the land that the camp was built on, and apparently had a knack for surviving things that people tended otherwise not to.
“Oscar has lived nine lives,” explained Enoch the night before. When we asked Oscar if this was true, he let out a bark of a laugh.
“No, no. Not nine lives. Eleven.”
Among his near death experiences were a plane crash, a brutal attack by a group of thugs, and a dicey incident involving a car and a cliff. As for his shredded vocal cords, it surmised that they had quite literally been torn apart in a lion attack. Before that, Enoch had told us, Oscar could roar just like a lion. Perhaps, I thought, the lions got jealous. Although Oscar spoke with an English accent and had attended a university in London, he explained to us that Kenya was his birthplace and he considered himself first and foremost a Kenyan.
At this point, our guides for the day caught up with us, and quickly dragged us away from Oscar’s garden. Once we were out of earshot, they explained that Oscar could be very temperamental, and often took a strong dislike to guests if they wandered onto his property and caught him on a bad day. We were relieved not to have seen the grumpy side of a man who had survived a lion attack, and decided it was best not to push our luck. The two men taking us around the camp were Vincent, a conservation journalist working for The Wildlife Foundation (TWF) who seemed to know his way around the place rather well, and another Enoch (sadly but inevitably dubbed Enoch Number 2), who worked on something environment-related in urban Nairobi and seemed to be even more scared of running into a lion than we were. Vincent gave us a proper tour of the camp’s facilities, which included a cosy-looking firepit, a large communal dining area, and a formidable electric fence that we found ourselves glancing at with a mixture of fear and gratitude for the rest of the day.
We were then introduced to the real celebrities of the camp, Impi the impala and Tommy the Thomson’s gazelle (creatively named, I know). Although a different species, Tommy looked very much like a miniature version of Impi, as though they were twins and one of them had been hit with a shrink ray. Vincent explained that they were Oscar’s pets, orphans that he had rescued and now reared himself. They were a little shy, but this of course only made them more adorable, and we clucked and cooed at them without a shred of embarrassment. This taste of Kenyan fauna had made us keen to see the real thing in the wild, so we left the borders of the camp and the safety of its electric fence for an excursion into the surrounding bushland.
When Enoch Number 2 heard that we were making a foray out of the camp, he disappeared, which we assumed was a sign that his lion-phobia had got the better of him. To our surprise, he reappeared as we were working our way up the first hill past the camp’s gate, with a sturdy wooden club in hand. He explained that it was a rungu, which Maasai men used to protect themselves from wild animals out in the bush. We all eyed it enviously, and wondered how our bare hands would fare by comparison if things got hairy. In the end, we saw nothing hairier than some zebras and impala, as well as an impressively large eland. Our most eventful encounter was with a small group of local women, who had set up shop by a river and were selling an impressive selection of jewellery, carvings and other trinkets. We hadn’t come with the intention of buying anything, but we soon found ourselves at the receiving end of such an emphatic sales pitch that we knew some money was going to have to change hands. The prices were eye-watering, and we gamely tried to haggle, but our hearts weren’t in it and the smiles of the women were unwavering. We came away feeling like we had experienced an extremely polite mugging, and our newly acquired bracelets and beads were compensation for going along with it so cheerfully.
After dinner, we set out on an evening game drive, bundling into a bashed-up jeep who we decided ought to be called Jeeves. Though a sturdy specimen, Jeeves looked as though he had seen better days. One of the doors refused to fully close, so Enoch’s innovative solution was to tie it in place with a bit of rope. This didn’t bother us too much, because we were already voluntarily exposing ourselves to the elements, heads poking out through the openings in the roof while the wind did its best to rearrange our faces. There was a heady thrill to the whole thing, driving off into the fading light and gazing out to see what Jeeves’ headlights could pick out of the shadows. Whenever the lights caught a pair of eyes, they would glint back at us, and we would shriek in excitement until the poor creature scampered off to find some peace and quiet. Once we managed to pull ourselves together, we started to get some good sightings, with the undeniable highlight coming in the form of a trio of ostriches. Upon noticing us, they hurriedly got to their feet and launched into the most ridiculous run I had ever seen. Enoch pointed out that those comically long legs could deliver a devastating kick, and I decided it was probably best to stop laughing.
In the end, it was the Kenyan bushland that got the last laugh. Jeeves was dutifully trundling along when we felt a sudden jolt, hurling us halfway out of our seats. Far more ominous than the loud thud was the silence that followed. We appeared, quite regrettably, to be stuck. Enoch put his foot to the pedal, but the wheels of the jeep seemed to be struggling to gain any traction, and the engine roared impotently while we continued to stay in precisely the same place. Gradually, it dawned on us that we were in the middle of a sizeable expanse of land, night had fallen, wild animals were at large, and our sole means of transport had fallen halfway into a ditch. Our entirely reasonable response was to get out of the jeep, and try and push it out of the ditch. When this of course failed miserably, we lay in the grass and stargazed while Enoch took the more practical route of calling some rangers. Once the rangers arrived, it turned out their plan was the same as ours: push the jeep out of the ditch, but with more manpower, and a stick. Finally, someone suggested towing the jeep, which was exactly the sort of logical solution that we had wisely resisted until then. With Jeeves rescued from his shallow grave, and our song repertoire exhausted for the moment, we decided it was time to hurry back to the camp and get to bed before the lions finally got busy.