We later find out that Sanjay had to buy Harrison out of prison the morning he collected us from the airport—probably why he was late—because he had been arrested the previous day for the same infraction and had refused to pony up the bribe, which he more than likely didn’t have. When Harrison lamely tries to suggest that this latest fine was actually because I was lying down in the back without my seatbelt on, Pami declares curtly, “No way.” She understands enough Swahili to be certain that wasn’t the case but warns me that I’d better stay buckled up for the rest of the ride to the Great Rift Valley because the Kenyan police are notorious for harsh retribution when penalizing seatbelt violators. This all seems absurd to me. I’ve barely stepped foot in the country but I am already getting an inkling of what the great rift is really all about.
I am thinking that at fifty miles an hour it is going to take us forever to get to our first destination; however the roads are so awful that we don’t average more than thirty miles per hour. I am desperate to sleep during the drive but the steady stream of crater-sized potholes, in conjunction with Harrison’s erratic steering to avoid careening us into them, keeps bucking me off the bench, even with my seatbelt on. It takes us over six torturous hours to get to Keekorok, our first lodge. When I comment on the deplorable state of the road, evidently heavily utilized by safari-goers, Harrison tells me that a French safari company got so fed up with listening to their clients grouse about it that they offered to pay to have the stretch of road paved between Nairobi and Masai Mara. They would only front the dough, though, if it were guaranteed not to first pass through sticky government hands. The Kenyan government flatly rejected any offer with such a proviso and so the road was left as is. “Now the most expensive safari tours fly their clients in small private planes directly from the airport to the Mara. These tourists know nothing of the condition of the roads they are riding high above.” Harrison snorts.
Our driver squeals up to the lodge mere minutes before the dining room closes the lunch buffet and commands that we run to get in line. We obey, ecstatic just to be on solid ground. Pami and I eat and then check into our room. We take a much-needed, and for Pami, decadently luxurious bath, change, and rest before reconnoitering back at the van for the first leg of our photo safari. The Masai Mara is reported to be thick with exotic wildlife. As a matter of fact, most safari companies will guarantee that you will see the Big Five—elephant, lion, rhino, leopard and Cape buffalo. We never do see a rhinoceros. I consider asking for a partial refund, not for the rhino-miss but because of a more critical breach in our vacation contract, the one that materializes later on.
“The Mara,” as Harrison refers to it, has no roads and is vast and dusky, rather like our local San Diego Wild Animal Park on steroids. And the big cats don’t have a separate enclosure. Everywhere you look there are small herds of wildebeests intermixed with zebras. Harrison explains that the wildebeests hang out with the zebras because the zebras are more astute at sensing danger. When the zebras take off running, the less wily wildebeests know it’s time to vamoose also. I would list the animals we see, but you name it and we see it . . . except the rhino.
We arrive back at the lodge by sunset, just in the nick of time for dinner. I’m beginning to get the sense that making it to all our designated meals is pretty important, as if it’s written in our contract’s small print or something. The buffet is again extensive considering that the local people are starving. We have all-you-can-eats everywhere we stay. It reminds me of Hometown Buffet except for the token Kenyan food mixed in here and there. When we get back to our room, Pami is yakking gaily, and apparently loudly, as she undresses for bed, while modeling for me the deplorable state of her underwear. “Joey, look!” she guffaws as she poses in her African undergarments. At the end of every day at the mission, she’d walk fully clothed right into her dorm’s cement shower and begin her ablutions. In a lightning-fast five minutes she would have washed her hair, body, and all her clothes right down to her shoes. Then she’d wring everything out on the rusty spigot and hang the damp items all around the grounds. “Now just take a gander at these panties. They are so baggy I can stretch them all the way up to my armpits!” She does, and we both begin to howl just as we hear a timid knock at the door. When I open it, a wimpy young Brit appears, beet-red and desperate to avoid eye contact.
“Could you lot please be a bit quieter and frankly behave with more decorum? My new bride and I are in the next room and we can hear every word, even the part about the n-n-n-nickers.” He stutters through a trembling stiff upper lip. We apologize and stifle our bubbling hysterics for a good hour after he leaves. I have to wonder what else our prudish neighbors think as Pami describes for me some of the more grisly and immodest Maseno Mission Hospital scenarios.
That night we leave our first-floor, wall-length French doors wide open to the lovely African breeze that brushes across the wide savannah. Only a floor-to-ceiling, king-sized canopy mosquito net separates Pami and me from the Mara. Sometime in the middle of the night—we have no idea what time it is because the lodge shuts off all its power just after midnight to conserve energy—I startle awake to the unmistakable sound of big cat chuffling right outside our room. I have been many times to the San Diego Zoo and I know a chuffle when I hear one. “Pami,” I whisper, nudging her forcefully. “I heard a lion!” She giggles, says I’m having African safari dreams, pats my head, and rolls over. Then we both hear it—right . . . outside . . . our . . . room.
“Jesus!” Pami screams as we leap from the bed. We bounce into one another, trip into our mesh shield and sprint for the doors, slamming them shut and bracing ourselves against the glass in breathless anticipation of the fully expected charge. When nothing happens, we untangle ourselves from the sticky webbing and open the doors just a crack. Flashlight beams are scouring the tall grass like light sabers and excited human voices are whispering, so we cautiously venture out onto our deck. The neighbors on both sides of us are peeking out from their rooms.
“There were lions! Right here!” they report, terrified. “Did you hear them?”
“Oh yes,” I assure them. “I definitely detected a chuffle,” I add with authority. I don’t think they know what a chuffle is, though, because they just blink back at me.
The next morning I am still exhausted and don’t feel like getting up but we have a scheduled drive at six a.m. into the Mara to catch the animals before the heat of the day sends them scurrying for shade. While Harrison chauffeurs us around, he injects random tidbits of useful information. He explains that the spelling of the game park has been shortened to Masai Mara, but the tribe itself maintains its original Swahili spelling with two a’s in the word Maasai. Once again we see and are educated about an amazing variety of animals. On the ride back for the “obscene” breakfast spread, as Pami describes it, I tell Harrison about the