Across the Great Rift (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine March 2002

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Across the Great Rift (Cont.)


	A boy herding cattle in the Loita Hills

ONE HUNDRED MILES SOUTH of the Loita Hills stands another Masai landmark, one even more venerated than the Naimina Enkiyio. The cosmic punch bowl of Ngorongoro Crater, 11 miles in diameter, had been Mbatian's home, the majestic throne of Masailand. In 1956, it became a national park, and the stubborn Masai who remained were finally evicted from their villages about 20 years later. From an economic standpoint, Ngorongoro had been a great success—one of the destitute country's biggest moneymakers.

When Mike proposed an investigatory safari, Mokope and Lulunken immediately signed on. They weren't particularly interested in park politics, but Lulunken had been down that way as a moran, and Mokope had roamed just as far selling veterinary medicine.

It wasn't easy to get out of the Loitas. In the first place, there was the Pajero, which took the better part of a day to dig out of the swamp. And then there was the question of Tanzanian visas. Liz and I had none, but Francis, Mokope's brother, had drafted a flowery letter, asking the authorities to look after us. I wasn't sure it would work, but Lulunken just shrugged. "It's all Masailand," he said.

The Tanzanian side of the Loitas was even greener than the Kenyan. There were big shambas, or farms, with endless fields of maize, roads with culverts, and in the border town of Loliondo, the shocking sight of electrical lines. The district officer there barely glanced at our letter. "Please make yourselves welcome in our country," he said. "Camp wherever you like."

We did, dropping through the cactus country of the Sonjo tribe to the very rim of the Great Rift Valley, and then plunging down the final step of the escarpment on an unspeakably bad road called 17 Corners. At the bottom was a vast soda lake called Lake Natron, a vision out of the Old Testament, with dust devils spinning across its alkali flats and crimson flamingos wheeling up to the heavens. At the end of the lake rose the perfect, smoking cone of Ol Donyo Lengai, Africa's Mount Fuji. I thought it one of the most amazing landscapes I'd ever seen, but the next morning Mokope said he'd had enough. He'd been kept awake by malarial mosquitoes and something Mike referred to as a "car-alarm bird" because it slept all day and went off all night.

"If the land committee gave me some land here I wouldn't even attend the meeting," Mokope said. "It's too hot. You'd wipe your skin off after a day."

Eight bone-crushing hours later we were at the gate of Ngorongoro National Park. Now it was my turn to moan—I couldn't believe the $155 entrance fee. But the view from the rim made it all worthwhile. Mokope and Lulunken grabbed the binoculars from each other, giddily pointing out every elephant and buffalo in the crater, while Mike, beaming wildly, filmed them up close. Liz and I decided to splurge, and the five of us checked into one of the tourist lodges overlooking the crater. Mokope and Lulunken had never been in a hotel before, and they entered suspiciously, clutching their rungus, wooden staffs, for protection. Lulunken took a shine to a girl in the gift shop and asked her to marry him, but she pointed to Mike, crisply turned out in a clean polo shirt. "I want that one," she said.

Mokope and Lulunken didn't have any extra shirts, so before dinner, they simply swapped. At the buffet table they went straight for the nyama choma, roasted meat. Afterward we sat in front of the fire like a bunch of colonial-era codgers. We were at 10,000 feet, and it was cold. "Yesterday we were almost dying of heat," Mokope said. "Today we're freezing. The human body is almost useless."

Lulunken's gaze kept wandering around the room. "They will be subject to a cross-examination when they get back," Mike said, "and they will have to recount the trip in the smallest detail."

Was Ngorongoro Park what Mokope and Lulunken wanted the Loitas to become? No, they said, but they knew the place could not stay the same forever. One thing for certain was that more schools would have to be built. "The Masai always thought of education as doom," Lulunken said, "so those kids loved by their fathers were never sent off to school. But the Masai were rich in those days. They don't have big herds anymore, and school is the only way to ensure the future."

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