Across the Great Rift (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine March 2002

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Across the Great Rift (Cont.)


	Rim shot: Mike , and Lulunken gaze intoTanzania's Ngorongoro crater

WE TOOK A DIFFERENT ROUTE back to the Loitas, dropping down the west side of Ngorongoro Crater to Olduvai Gorge and then turning north along the edge of the Serengeti Plain. Down there it was already the dry season, and for a while we fought to stay ahead of our own dust cloud. Then, almost imperceptibly, the sere began to give way to green, and the first scattered game—gazelles and impalas—began to appear. For the next few hours it was as if we were climbing the great chain of life: we saw ostriches, hyenas, zebras, and eland, and the mighty armies of wildebeests that stretched in black columns to the horizon. Then the low hills, and finally the gorgeous green grass of the upcountry pastures, the painted cattle, and the Masai themselves.

"Look at that grass," Mokope said. "Why would anyone live anywhere else?"

We dropped Mokope and Lulunken at dusk in a village a few miles from Murja. Inside the thorn enclosure some young warriors were dancing, jumping high in the air with their arms at their sides. Mike watched for a minute before climbing back into the Pajero. "They are asking for a goat," he said. "Tonight in the bush they will be feasting."

We'd come all this way to walk through an ancient, supposedly pristine forest. Yet here was a towering fence and a trophy house.

It was another 85 miles to Narok. For a while we listened to a gospel tape Mokope had liked, then it was just the vehicle, bouncing and grinding. I glanced over at Mike, trying to guess what he was making of the whole long journey, what story he was shaping, what moral he might draw. I remembered a piece he'd written for his magazine, Nomadic News, in which he'd quoted an elder in Narragie Enkare on the role of the younger generation of Masai. "They live in their complex towers in towns and only come home to bury their dead and during Christmastime," the old man had said. "These prodigal sons and daughters should come back home and contribute to the development of the community that made them what they are today." Was Mike thinking now that he ought to heed the advice and go back home? Was it even possible?

Mike actually hadn't been thinking about that at all. "I remember something a lawyer in Nairobi once told me," he said. "'We cannot live in a cocoon,' and I think he was right. We'll hold on to some things, and we'll lose some others —it will have to be a balance. I laugh when I hear people say the Masai are doomed. Perhaps their way of life is doomed, but the Masai themselves, they are survivors."

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