One Heck Of A Ride

124 and rolling hills, and vast wide-open plains that seemed to go on forever. Here and there were low huts plastered with mortar made from cattle dung mixed with grass and human urine. The huts were surrounded by “bomas” created by piling thorny acacia brush to deter lions. The Maasai men wrapped themselves in red or purple sheets and wore crude homemade sandals. The women were similarly dressed but mostly wore blue. Everyone had beads on their ankles, arms, wrists, and ears, as well as in their hair. Many of the men and women had holes in their ears large enough to hold plastic bottles. Children and women were along the road, selling barbecued corn, bread, coconut cakes and souvenirs carved from African blackwood. We stopped only for lunch at a wildlife lodge along the way, and followed the main road west to a town called Mto wa Mbu, a favorite stop for tourists, before turning right at a junction and continuing on to the hunting camp, also called Mto wa Mbu. (Both were named for one of the rivers that feed nearby Lake Manyata.) I had to force myself to keep from pinching the back of my arm. I was in East Africa, a place I’d dreamed of hunting ever since I saw Gregory Peck in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” as a boy in the 1950s. Our camp looked as if it were a set from that film! Each sleeping tent had an en suite bathroom with a shower and a flush toilet, and there was a separate large tent that served as a kitchen and dining area. It was obvious that the site had been chosen and cleared with care. There were white tablecloths at our tables, and our meals were served with all the elegance of a five- star restaurant, even though I was the only client in camp. My first day of hunting in East Africa began at 7:00 the next morning, when we drove out to search for lesser kudu the first of the eight animals I wanted to take on this hunt and a scaled-down spiral-horned cousin of the southern greater kudus I’d taken in Zimbabwe and elsewhere on previous safaris. It is found only in East Africa. We saw a great many zebras, giraffes, impalas, and Thomson and Grant gazelles, as well as dik-diks and ostriches, but there was nothing I was interested in shooting until Charlie’s trackers located a male gerenuk feeding in a grove of thorn trees several hundred yards off the road. As we watched it through our binoculars, it was easy to see why some people call these tall, hundred- pound antelopes “giraffe gazelles.” With their ridiculously long necks and slender legs, they do resemble giraffes. As we watched, the ram stood on his rear hoofs, stretched his long neck, and began nibbling on leaves at least six feet off the ground. He reminded me of the men who walk around on stilts to hang and finish drywall. “He’s a good male,” Charlie said without Fabled Land Of The Maasai Author with colorful Maasai tribespeople in their traditional apparel. Note the shaved heads on all the women