10/08/2010
Here’s what we’ve heard: a few weeks ago two Samburu warriors brought their cattle to the top of Ol Donyo Wargis, a peak in the Mathew’s Mountains. While they were up there, they saw a great big hairy creature walking on two feet and carrying the leg of a cape buffalo over its shoulder. It was Ngambit, the Yeti equivalent of the Samburu country. So here we are, seven wazungu, five pack camels, and a handful of Samburu guides on a week-long trek through the mountains of Namunyak in search of Ngambit.
After tracking Ngambit for a week in constant danger, we ultimately came home empty handed. To lift our moods, Bing wrote a poem about saga:
In Search of Ngambit
Here today and gone tomorrow—
A visitor’s week to Camp Sarara.
We sip our final coffee to the sunrise above Namunyak,
And, like the kudus below us, we’ll be back.
The disappearing edge rock pool had swimmin’, but no divin’;
The hornbills entertained us, especially Ivan;
We were escorted by hyrax, dik-dik and lizards at play,
And fed the visiting jennet cat our hot cheese souffle’.
Host Jeremy tried to match Robert’s acrobatics on the water slide,
Damaged his knee slightly, but badly damaged his pride.
“Jem” is an accident-prone sportsman, or so it seems,
Who should avoid rugby buses and elephant dreams.
So it was Katie who provided the muscle, Jeremy just brains,
When our walkabout campsite met unseasonable rains.
Instead of infinite stars through our fly tents, we looked at tarps and raindrops,
And a Samburu dance around the campfire that would never have stopped.
We munga-munga’ed up waterfalls, fig tree valleys; looked for wildflowers, saw some;
Philip “Plastic Warrior” crafted rope bracelets from fresh elephant chewing gum.
Camels carried us up the steepest climb to a glorious sun-downer,
Where Wangesha proved to be photo model, mimic, and ngororo elder clowner.
Then! Fear struck the hearts of our adventurous group,
When Wangesha stepped in a pile of fresh Ngambit p**p.
He is the mythical yeti of Lololakwe, who lives fiercely alone,
Twice as tall as any warrior, carrying a huge giraffe leg bone.
Our very lives were at threat, though we had machetes and rifles,
But Bing proposed a solution, that transformed mortal danger to trifle:
We would offer Allegra to Ngambit, for the monster to marry,
For a bride price of 3 camels, to start an Idaho sanctuary.
Now aggressive, Wangesha and Philip searched high and low,
Singing to the mountaintops, echoing with bravado:
“See him there, Samburu Ngambit; see him there, Samburu Chief.”
But the abominable creature remained hidden, and must have been deef.
We searched the crags and the thorn trees for signs of his kills,
We followed elephant highways with vervet monkeys, improving our bush skills.
Chloe practiced prying bottle caps open, and flattening Tusker cans,
And taking showers in full sight of the Samburu camp hands.
Ngambit-less, we returned to Sarara Lodge, our bush skills the surer,
Allegra still with us, but three camels poorer.
Piers lifted our spirits with a flight to Womba, where Chloe researched door-to-door,
And discovered what mobile charging entrepreneurs consider an “App Store.”
Though we never found Ngambit and his club of giraffe,
We captured tens of gigabytes of Sarara memories in Canon photographs.
We explored leopard country, because this land is the best,
And we followed a super young male stalking for 2 hours, with an “S” on his chest.
We “suffered” through massages, cheese overdoses, and internet outages,
Scrumptious tea cakes, fine wines and paths swept to our cottages,
Hot showers 24/7, so that each day we took two,
And endless hours of just chatting, reveling in the fine view.
We attempted a blog, which we imagined quite smartly:
Text by Rumpus editor Chloe, artistic pix by Robert Carr-Hartley,
Technology by Allegra, with Debra as publisher and motivation.
But, alas, Wordpress and bush modems led us just to frustration.
But Debra loves mountains, one of the things she lives for,
And the Mathews Range soars five thousand feet from the lush valley floor.
This Conservancy is a spectacle of wildlife, and good for the soul---
And, just as I write this line, a huge bull elephant strolls up to our watering hole.
We leave in two hours on Bosky’s to fly to the Masai Mara,
The richer for a timeless week here, new converts to Sarara.
There is a stillness and magnificence here that will draw us all back,
Like the Samburu sing to their wells, we sing to the beauty and bounty that is Namunyak.
Afterword:
Such a profusion of memories, we recounted but just a few—
At the end, it was Jeremy, not us, who earned the Prize of the Gnu.
This was quite a relief for “Wait, what?”, you-know-who,
Who didn’t win a T-shirt, but has been re-nicknamed, “Fruitledoo.”
Bing
28 July, 2010
