Pate town on Pate Islannd - Lamu archipelago 13 September 2012

It’s an hour’s sail by speedboat from Shela on Lamu island to Pate on Pate island. A rich bed of sea grasses fringe the island where Yellow-billed storks and the African fish eagle and many other waterbirds feed on the rich shoreline and Bajuni boys race their dhows, fashioned from plastic debris and banana stalks for rudders in the creek.

The local Bajuni fishermen show us huge stingrays with their heads chopped off, a blue-spotted smaller one, crabs and lobsters. Dhow-men paint their favourite star on the hull – Jeniffer Lopez sails alongside Mausam and other with the dhowi-eye nailed n to protect them from the evils at sea.

Pate island spans centuries of civilization with Arab and Portuguese invasions to give it its present character.

Pate island is much bigger than its more famous cousin, Lamu island. For most of the past, the two islands were at loggerheads trying to conquer each other with the final battle played out in the well-known Battle of Shela in 1813 where the Pate army was slaughtered on the Shela beach because the nabhwani errored on the tides and the retreating army was caught on the dry sands.

Little has changed over the centuries in this town that once boasted wealth beyond belief. For more than a millennia Arab, Indian, Chinese and much later Portuguese fleets sailed in regularly for mangrove, turtle shells, ivory, rhino horn, slaves and more. Today, there’s an M-Pesa office operated by a young woman and dhows still being built by hand.

                                                                     

Centuries-old coral houses lined narrow alleys. A disused administrative office from the colonial days is close to a blackboard with chalk-scribbled handwriting announcing a Bollywood movie. Rich farms of bananas and other tropical fruits are interspersed with abandoned ruins of an ancient sultanate. By the mosque, there’s a motley of crumbling graves with sacred verses from the Koran.

The upper village is the Portuguese section where many could pass for Indians, Chinese or Portuguese. It’s given rise to a spate of excavations and research from the current Chinese to search for evidence of Chinese ancestry on the island. On the European side, after Vasco da Gama’s ‘discovery’ of the sea-route to India via Africa at the close of the 15^th century, Pate came under Portuguese .

In the crumbling centuries-old sultanate, there a grand mansion that  could have been a nobleman’s house with the remain of the zidaka and etched doorways and columns. There’s an ornate mihrab facing Mecca and a smaller one near it. On an outer wall, is the remain of an elaborate washroom.

Other towns on Pate Island are Faza, Siyu and Shanga which were trading ports during the monsoon trade dating thousands of years. The town of Shanga is a ten-minute sail from Pate village and the word is reputed to originate from Shangai, like the Chinese one.

Landing on-shore the very sands that the Nabhwani of Pate tried to invade Lamu from Shela, we relax in the cool baraza of Banana House. It’s tranquil as we wander around the green garden and the yoga room where Monika Fauth teached yoga with a smile. On the wall is the OM instead of the dhowi designed by Monika husband Banana (nickname for eating too many bananas as a child). Relaxing under the stars on the swinging Lamu beds on the penthouse suite, Monika relates her own story into Lamu and her eventual home.

Lamu’s splendor ebbed away with the end of its slave trade in 1907 but trade in mangrove, ivory, rhino horn, turtle shells continued between the Arab world and India until the ban in mangrove in the 1970s.

Lamu Stone Town is a World Heritage Site. The town was founded in the 14th century and it contains many fine examples of Swahili architecture. The old city is inscribed on the World Heritage List as "the oldest and best-preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa".

Kenya’s second seaport at Manda Bay, in Lamu kicked off this year. Three berths will be constructed initially of the planned 32 berths.

Lake Nakuru - Brimming with Birds

 

Lake Nakuru

 

  Lake Nakuru is flooded – it’s at its highest level recorded for the first time in living memory

 

By Rupi Mangat

Email: rupi.mangat@yahoo.com

“The lake is full,” announces Maurine Musimbi, the tourism warden at Lake Nakuru National Park. 

As such it’s brimming with birds of many species.

Lake Nakuru and the other lakes of the Great Rift Valley have baffled scientists and researchers for years. Despite all ends, they survive the pressures of modern age – human increase, deforestation and industrial pollution. But Lake Nakuru is in a legend of its own for its millions of flamingoes that flock to feed when conditions are perfect. When the water level is just right for enough sunlight to filter through it, the lake is a food basket full of algae. But at this point, there’s too much water in the lake and the sun’s rays can’t penetrate deep enough for the algae to reproduce. The ‘pink lake’ is devoid of the lesser flamingoes with only a handful of the greater ones.

But the other feathered species make up for it. Flocks of Yellow–billed storks, African spoonbills, Grey headed gulls, herons, cormorants, different species of kingfishers, ducks and geese are having a ball. We follow the piercing call of the African kingfisher in robes of copper-gold and white mantle. It’s perched high on a tree half submerged in water. On the very edge of the road, the Blacksmith plover sits on its brood of eggs because it’s too wet on the plains. I marvel at the bird’s bravery as a huge tour-van drives only inches away from it. Fairy white egrets and the most beautiful Great white egret forage for insects by the shores. It’s a dream-world out here.

Common zebra in park

“The lake is more than 50 square kilometers and 4.2 meters at its deepest,” tells Samuel Mungai the assistant research technologist at the park.  High up on Baboon Cliff, the lake looks awesome with the contrast of the wild zone and the industrial town in the background. The president’s pavilion, a favourite haunt of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta is invisible in the flooded lake. The baboons are busy as usual, their antics delighting visitors while the rock hyrax prefers to live a quiet life hidden in their rocky abode. Driving down to Makalia Falls, there’s a traffic jam caused by the leopard stretched out on the horizontal branch of a Yellow-fever acacia. He or she is oblivious to the queue waiting to catch a glimpse of it. Pot-bellied zebras and buffaloes cast textures on the plains. “The carrying capacity in the park for the buffaloes is 500,” says Mungai. “But at this point we have 4,000.”

On the far end of the park, Makalia Falls thunder down the cliffs. A pair of buffalos lounges on its banks happy with the muddy spa and further down the road, a pair of white rhinos graze in the eventide.

Mungai on his morning patrol saw a maneless lion on a tortilis tree. The tree makes a nice picture with its huge canopy set in a wide field. Approaching it slowly, the cat’s hidden in its branches and then he faces us with his tawny eyes boring into ours. “It’s the same kind as the man-eaters of Tsavo,” says Mungai. “They were maneless too.”

Fact File

Makalia Falls

Lake Nakuru National Park is 150 kms from Nairobi. Get your Smart card from Nairobi KWS HQ and load it at the same time.

You can camp at Makalia Falls which is very picturesque or by the main gate or take the special campsite, Nderit which has been voted the best campsite in Kenya. Or stay at the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya banda which sleeps four – it has all the amenities – just carry food to cook. It’s cheap and cheerful with lions and the old leopard seen regularly by the fence – call Fadhili Mwachitu on 020 2671555/6

Or stay at the WCK guest house - call Eric Mbaraki - 0710 579944/020 2671742 or 020 2671742.

If budgets not a constraint, head to the lodges in the park.

Published in Nation newspaper Saturday magazine 20 October 2012

Rock Art on the Kitengela Plains

The Serval cat in Nairobi National Park

By Rupi Mangat

Email: rupi.mangat@yahoo.com

A beautiful, spotted cat stalks on the track in Nairobi National Park. The cat, a serval with pointed ears is on the hunt using the clear road as a vantage point. It spots the prey and with a leap vanishes into the long grass. I’ve only seen this elusive cat twice – both times in Tsavo West but in its melanistic form – that is pure black. A strong cat, the serval has the largest ears and longest legs relative to its body size. A subspecies, the barbary serval, only found in Algeria, is endangered, if not already extinct.

Ancient concentric circles of the Twa-dorobo tribe and the modern handprints of the Maasai morans

We’re using the park to bypass the city on our way to the Athi-Kitengela plains in search of ancient rock art. I’m in the company of David Coulson, the founder and executive chairman of the Trust for African Rock Art (TARA) and his assistants – William Omoro who deals with community awareness, Evan Maina the archaeologist and Jagi Githinji the driver, Paula Kahumbu the chairperson of Friends of Nairobi National Park (FoNNAP) and Nickson ole Parmisa, a FoNNaP member and recently appointed as a Maasai chief. He guides us to the site in Ololoitikoshi on the Athi-Kitengela plains 14.35 kilometers as the crow flies southeast of Nairobi.

Away from the shanty town of Athi and its myriad of cement factories, the grass plains open up. The Maasai lead their cattle for pasture and water. The traditional manyatta of cow-dung and earth have been replaced with mabati houses. An hour later, we halt at a lone hut where three young Maasai await us to guide us to the rock-art site hidden in a ravine.

Enkinyoi - a place where there is always water - the cave with  the rock art is on the right below

“We call this place Enkinyoi,” says Isaac Malit. “In Maa, it means a ‘place where there is always water’.” It’s a deep gorge. Scrambling down to the river, we see the caves that house the ancient rock art. It’s another scramble to the deeper gorge. From this angle we’re looking up at the boulders where we were a few minutes ago. The waterfall plunges into a pool and continues down-stream. The caves on the side are dark. We enter and using flash lights, we see faint white etchings on the cave walls juxtaposed with red-ochre hand prints belonging to the current Homo sapien.

“This is a place where the Maasai morans come to slaughter cows and feast,” tells Malit whose ambition is to be a lawyer. The red hand prints belong to the morans. “The young age group leaves their marks because they say that as the old left a message, so should they,” explains Parmisa. However, most rock art sites today are protected by law and must not be tempered with.

Looking closely at them and photographing the etchings, Coulson is impressed. “This is an amazing site for its caves, water and the mystery of the art,” he remarks. “It’s fascinating to think what this place might have meant to the people – could it have been spiritual? These concentric patterns are not typically done by Maasai but by the Dorobo/ Twa, hunter-gatherers who lived all over East Africa and left lots of geometric symbols or patterns in caves. The best examples are on the islands of Lake Victoria which were used for rain-making until the 1890s.” By Coulson’s educated guess, the rock art engraving in these caves are only a few hundred years ago unlike some of the oldest found on the continent dating thousands of years.

Africa is the richest continent for rock art today and most sites are protected thanks to the efforts made by people like Coulson. Introduced to this ancient art by the legendary Mary Leakey famed for her work in fossil finding and the Laetoli footprints dating 3.5-million-year-old of three individuals which are the earliest record of human ancestors going bipedal, Coulson a professional photographer went on to capture images on the continent – many never seen before like the life size giraffes of Niger on a high rock dating between 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Coulson doesn’t boast of being an academic but is compelled to create awareness about this ancient heritage and as a photographer to reach a global audience.

Inside the rock art cave with David Coulson founder of The African Rock Art (TARA) and others

 “Rock art is all we know of Africa’s past,” he says.  The acclaimed photographer, illustrator and writer has been climbing rocky mountains and gorges – many inaccessible - for the last four decades, because most rock art that exists is only found where humans have still not tempered with the sites. Coulson with Alec Campbell, a founding trustee of TARA, has produced a stunning tome entitles, ‘African Rock Art, Paintings and Engravings on Stone’ - the first comprehensive illustrated book on African rock art. It took six years to complete covering thousands of miles in 20 countries.

 

Fact File

Visit TARA on www.africanrockart.org

 To join Friends of Nairobi National Park (FoNNAP) email: fonnap1@gmail.com

Published in Nation newspaper Saturday magazine 27 October 2012
 

 

 

Tarangire National Park, Tanzania (02/09/2012)

 

“Tarangire is mostly about baobabs and elephants,” remarks Annette Simonson of Tarangire Safari Lodge. The exquisite tented lodge is the first to open in Tarangire National Park in the 1970s.

It’s a quiet afternoon save for the occasional trumpeting of the elephants. The wide, endless panorama of the savanna is stunning dotted with enormous baobabs. From the edge of the bluff sandwiched between the tents and the river below, a lone giraffe seeks shade under an acacia and reminds me of the old East African stamps depicting the scene. The Tarangire not only lends its name to the lodge and the park but also to the river that is the soul of the land. It’s a busy scene below with almost a hundred elephants strolling to the river for a drink – big bulls, protective mothers and tiny calves. It’s ethereal - a page from another planet. A herd of zebra saunters across the river. Moments later, it’s followed by the gnus. Vultures soar in the air and land in a thick flock at the far end of the river. In the lull that ensues, l have no desire to move, contented to watch the rich abundance of game from atop.

Well rested, we make our way out for the late afternoon game drive. “During the dry season, the elephants are in the park because of the river. Then when the rains come, they disperse out,” continues Annette. The great pachyderms are everywhere, the river attracting them like a magnet. We choose to drive along its course and aren’t disappointed.

A pair of giraffes stop for a drink at the river. A family of elephants – the largest mammal on land walk in a single file towards the tallest land creature. The giraffe looks around, the elephants pass and the towering frame drops its neck 20 feet down and with legs splayed and proceeds to drink as the ox-peckers on its neck jump off to wade in the shallow water.

Something catches the eye of our friend – it’s a huge bird he says. “It’s there, in front of you”. We scan the tree and it’s only a subtle flick of the camouflaged Verraux’s eagle owl’s ear that gives it away. It is so perfectly camouflaged in the crook of the trunk and yet completely exposed. It’s a powerful raptor that needs wide open spaces to live and hunt in. Considered a bad omen, most are killed on sight and today few are found outside protected areas. Yet they are invaluable in getting rid of vermin like rats.

Gigantic baobabs continue to dot the gold-coloured plains. The sun begins to slink just when we see a golden lioness draped around the branch of tree. The owl has brought us good luck, we joke.

It’s the night of the full moon. The terrace is alive with holiday makers watching the wildlife below while enjoying hot canapés and cocktails. The moon rises – a golden orb and spreads its sheen on the plains below. The river glimmers. I watch from my verandah till the lights go off and zipping the screen, fall asleep wanting to awake to the surreal panorama in the first light of dawn.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, the elephants trumpet. I hear them around the camp browsing. The lion roars as if holding a microphone. I’m still in the dreamy stage when the noises are too close. I open my eyes and see a lion cub walk past my tent. In a flash two of them jump onto my patio and play like kids knocking down the chair and table when suddenly l’m staring into the eyes of the female lioness on the patio. With just 10 feet between us and separated by a net screen l freeze. She’s a beautiful cat in the silver moon, growling while the cubs scrabble around. After what seems eternity, she lets out a stern call and whisks the cubs away. It’s an unforgettable moment in time. “The lioness’s concern was her cubs,” remarks Shivani Bhalla of the Ewaso Lions in Kenya who has pioneered lion research in the Ewaso region in north Kenya. As the feline and l stared at each other, l’m sure that was her priority. And the owl brought me luck again.

Time at Tarangire

It’s a 118 kilometers from Arusha on the road to Dodoma. It’s on the northern Tanzanian circuit which includes Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro and Serengeti.

Stay at the Tarangire Safari Lodge: www.tarangiresafarilodge.com bookings@tarangiresafarilodge.com  +255 (0) 27 254 4752,  +255 (0) 27 253 1447

It’s upmarket with the best location, merging exquisite in the natural landscape. The food is delicious. It’s strong on supporting communities and keeping the wildlife migratory corridors open without which the parks of Africa would not survive.

Entry into Tanzanian national parks:  info@tanzaniaparks.com www.tanzaniaparks.com

Pay by VISA card at park entrance. Or go to TANNAPA HQ which is on the Arusha-Tarangire Road. You will be issued with a card to load at the bank. Essential – a yellow fever certificate.