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