‘Knock, knock...’ We nearly jumped out of our skins in shock! In one fluid motion, I yanked out my oversized Bowie Knife with such speed that it felt as though it might have travelled back in time.
Sitting in our capricious Land Rover in a small village called Aitong, all we could see outside was a deep black void. Yet, there appeared to be a vague shape standing only a foot away from our vehicle.
There wasn't the slightest suggestion of light anywhere - no moon, no stars, no lampposts, not even an illuminated Coca Cola or McDonald's billboard. And as for people? There were none. Not a soul in sight.
A graveyard would have been more crowded than this.
It was clear that Aitong was no bustling hub of activity, nor did it remotely resemble a merchandising mecca.
We could not have felt more marooned if we had been stranded on one of Saturn's outer rings.
Still, at the tip of my blade, I could just make out a pair of terrified, white-open eyes. A quick mental calculation - factoring in the location, size, and the sheer horror emanating from those eyes - led me to conclude that they were, indeed, human.
My conclusion was immediately confirmed when a petrified voice stammered:
‘Stop!! I am Rafael, your guide from Ol-Seki. James sent me to rescue you! Please to do not stab me with your sword!’
I couldn’t help but smile. The scene instantly brought to mind one of my favourite childhood TV shows, The Little Rascals. I remembered the black character little Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas, who had an uncanny knack for disguising himself during hide-and-seek. Tragically for him, his bright white eyes always gave away his hiding spot.
We were, however, genuinely delighted that Rafael had finally found us.
But how had we even gotten here in the first place?
Nairobi, Spring 2012
Henry—the kind and capable individual from Nairobi who had so boldly rescued us from certain starvation when our American Express credit card had been persistently rejected by every ATM in Kenya—had, without intending to, led us straight into this predicament.
Just a few days earlier, we had decided it was high time to explore Kenya’s famous Maasai Mara National Park on our own.
For this daring expedition, we planned to use our most recent acquisition: a lovely but utterly temperamental, doddering and fickle Land Rover.
As I’ve mentioned in a previous story, Henry was, at the time, a director of sorts at a hospitality company called the Hemingways Collection.
Now, while I wouldn’t call myself a fervent admirer of Ernest Hemingway’s literary works, I must admit that naming an African hospitality enterprise after him is a clever marketing move. It certainly has a more alluring ring to it than, say, Bukowski…
A key part of the “Collection” was a recently acquired safari camp located on the outskirts of the magnificent Maasai Mara National Park. Its name was Ol-Seki, and judging by the photos Henry had shown us, the camp promised to be nothing short of spectacular!
Of course, first we had to get there, which is where our difficulties began.
There are numerous occasions throughout the year when it’s recommended to visit the Maasai Mara. The summer months, for instance, are delightful. Early fall is equally charming. The time around Christmas and New Year offers a quieter yet no less breathtaking experience.
Even January and February, though rather hot, can be quite enjoyable.
However, we chose none of the above.
In our boundless naivety as inexperienced novices, we decided that April, smack in the middle of the great rainy season, was the perfect time to hone our nonexistent camping and off-road driving skills.
What could possibly go wrong..?
It also seemed like the perfect opportunity to put our new Land Rover to the test. After all, we knew next to nothing about this vehicle at the time. The off-road capabilities of this ancient piece of British ingenuity were, of course, legendary.
What we were blissfully unaware of, however, was another equally famous feature of this model: its downright unreliability.
But ignorance, as they say, is bliss, and luckily, we had no clue about that either.
Our experience in preparing for such an outdoor endeavour wouldn’t have passed even the most forgiving laugh test, but still, we prepared for the trip as thoroughly as we thought fit. We tried, in earnest, to accommodate the basic concepts of outdoor survival.
We fuelled up and even took a few jerry cans of petrol with us, just in case. We brought plenty of water and food, supplemented with chocolate and sweets to meet our nutritional needs. Naturally, we also brought along red wine, a nod to the spirit of Out of Africa, both for savouring by the fire and, of course, to ease our nerves.
And so, off we went…
Since we were based at a beautiful tea plantation in Limuru, north of town and blissfully removed from the chaos of Nairobi traffic, finding the right highway to the Maasai Mara was a breeze.
Unfortunately, everything else was not.
We had barely cleared the grounds of our Limuru premises when, to our dismay, we started collecting punctured tires with the enthusiasm of a gullible COVID-19 hoarder stockpiling toilet paper.
Luckily for us, the flat tire incidents just so happened to coincide with our refuelling stops, so all we really added to the regular pit stops was the added joy of changing and fixing a damaged wheel... three times, if I counted correctly.
Anyway, such is life! None of these minor setbacks could dampen our euphoric enthusiasm. The lingering memory of Nairobi’s bureaucratic nightmares had faded from our minds, and like a bad taste in your mouth, we were about to wash it away with the thrill of a new adventure. We had faced and conquered countless disheartening challenges since our arrival in Kenya three months prior. We had encountered more hypocrisy and lies than we ever imagined possible. And it wasn’t just Kenya, back in good ol' Germany, former associates and colleagues were doing their best impression of backstabbers, trying to bring us down at every turn.
But none of that mattered at the moment. We were buzzing with adventurous spirit once again, thanks to the fact that just a few days earlier, we’d stumbled upon the first decent and helpful individual we’d encountered in what felt like ages. Another one was waiting for us at Ol-Seki, though, at that point, we had no idea.
You see, I have this peculiar knack for John Wayne-like integrity and an almost stubborn commitment to my moral principles. I’m not sure where or why I picked up this trait, and frankly, I’m not convinced it’s all that great of a quality to have. Let’s be honest, sometimes, it sucks. Big time!
More often than not, integrity stands squarely in the way of social progress. I’ve lost count of the times my pigheaded stubbornness to stick to my principles has landed me in truly troubling situations afterward.
To illustrate my point, here’s an exquisite, though by no means exhaustive, selection of life events where my pesky conscience got the better of me. Some of them are definitely worth elaborating on at another time.
My father, for instance, was a zealous Muslim, part-time preacher, who desperately, though unsuccessfully, tried to persuade me to adopt his interpretation of the true faith. As far as I can remember, I had an inquisitive mind. I questioned everything and anything that came my way.
My intention wasn’t to annoy, but rather to get to the bottom of how things really worked.
Unfortunately, when you start asking sensitive questions about the true faith, you quickly earn the label of "unbeliever" or Infidel.
Naturally, when my father realized he’d failed with me, he turned his attention entirely to my younger brother. Even at that young age, it struck me as a bit fishy to be so easily cast aside just because I had a thirst for knowledge.
Not long after that, I moved in with my grandparents when I was only 13, and hardly ever spoke to my father again after that. From there, I believe my moral compass began to evolve. It became a guiding star, quiet but persistent, a gut feeling that was impossible to ignore, no matter the consequences. Luckily, I was blissfully unaware of the doom that would descend on me for standing my ground.
A never-ending string of incidents like these are woven into the carpet called my life. Whenever my sense of right and wrong didn’t align with what was being offered to me, I simply turned my back, counted my losses, which were plenty, and started fresh.
It never stopped:
I enlisted with the German Navy to make my grandfather proud, as he had served on the famous battleship Prinz Eugen during WWII.
Unfortunately, he passed away just three months after I enlisted, and I was left with the harsh revelation that the glorious days of Germany’s navy had long since faded. Instead of heroic valour, all I found was a culture of brown-nosing and serious butt-kissing if you wanted to get promoted.
Another time, I was offered a very lucrative job as a Chippendale dancer when I was still young, chasing the Hollywood dream in Los Angeles during the '90s. To this day, I can vividly picture myself standing in an agent’s office on Pico Boulevard, flexing my abs and biceps.
All I had to do was sign the contract, collect $1,500 a week, and live happily ever after. But the idea of jumping up and down on stage in my underwear in front of a group of horny cougars was something I couldn’t bring myself to do.
Boy, did I need that money! But would the icon John Wayne have done that? Sell his pride just to buy a bunch of meaningless stuff? I didn’t think so…
The list goes on and on... I could have worked at a high-end gay club on Sunset Strip, probably making more money than an ice vendor in the desert. I didn’t.
I could have worked as an escort in Beverly Hills. But no, I’d rather not.
I entered law school in Santa Monica, driven by the belief that being part of a just cause would be a noble pursuit. It wasn’t. My fellow students soon began chasing ambulances down the streets of L.A., eager to hone their skills at convincing barely conscious accident victims, fresh out of a coma, that they urgently needed legal assistance. It didn’t take long for me to realize that "just" and "justice" are far from synonymous. All they spoke of was money, money, money. So, I took off…
I could have joined a band of Latin American drug and arms dealers in Mexico. Though I really love arms and excitement, I got the nagging impression that they lacked a certain degree of moral values so, I moved on.
I could have been the right hand of my martial arts instructor and together built a network of fighting schools around the world. But when our moral views clashed, we parted ways.
I could have worked for a prosperous major elephant rescue organization in Nairobi after selling my plane to them. It was good money and my dream place to work, but after seeing behind the scenes and meeting the people running the project, I was utterly disappointed by their true agendas. So, once again, I walked away.
Working in the Yukon, flying float planes in the remote wilderness, sounded like a dream. That was until I got a glimpse of the filthy (literally) operation and met the disgusting customers, rich, spoiled dentists who enjoyed killing beautiful animals for no reason other than sport and to brag about it at home. Farewell…
A pleasant ranch job as the head wrangler in Wyoming, my absolute favourite state in the US, turned sour when I realized the owner was a greedy, recently converted Mormon hag with a profound distaste for paying her employees. Off again.
I concluded long ago that there’s no place in this world for a Samurai anymore… veracity and integrity seem to have gone out of fashion.
Again, I digressed…
Back to Africa and the Maasai Mara, where the point I was trying to make is this…
In retrospect, it was Henry who, unbeknownst to him, gave us the crucial confidence boost to keep pushing forward in Kenya.
Eventually, a couple of hours later, we caught our first glimpse of the stunning Maasai Mara.
All in all we had endured three punctured tires. An experience utterly foreign to us pampered western world pussies. As if that wasn’t enough punishment, our decrepit Land Rover seemed to have, instead of a real engine under the hood, nothing more than a crude drawing of one.
This resulted in us crawling up countless hills at a painfully slow pace, as our Land Rover had no real horsepower to speak of.
By then, the highway had transformed into a gravel road, which soon morphed into a slippery, muddy red path. More times than I cared to admit, I found myself watching the scenery through my side window as we drifted aimlessly, struggling to stay on course. The road was soaking wet and only seemed to worsen the closer we got to the park's main entrance, the Musiara Gate.
Of course, the guards fell into their usual routine, and once again we found ourselves thrust into a maze of endless and intricate bribery negotiations.
I can’t really blame them.
They saw two white folks in a Land Rover, clearly looking like tourists. To them, this was an opportunity ripe for the taking. A quick glance confirmed that we didn’t have the magic red diplomat license plates that usually offered free passes to UN and NATO tax-dodging cheapskates.
The fun was about to begin—but that’s a tale for another time.
To be continued….
Marcel Romdane
Nicole and the fickle Landrover. our premisses at Limuru... ... amongst the tea plantation
