Hemingway Adventure

Series: Hemingway Adventure
Chapter: Amboseli National Park, Kenya (second day)
Country/sea: Kenya
Place: Amboseli National Park
Book page no: 166

Amboseli National Park, Kenya (second day)

Amboseli National Park, Kenya
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Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Seeing game on foot is not an option for most tourists, but it was the way Hemingway preferred to do it. Thanks to my trusty escorts, Ali and Jackson, I can get safely close to flamingo and elephant.

Being British, we regard the lion as a symbol of pride and invincibility. To the Masai he is Simba, killer of cattle and Public Enemy Number One. Jackson was in his teens when he was one of a group of ten young Masai who confronted a lion and killed it with spears. I ask him from how far away.

He grins. ‘As close as possible.’

Which, when pressed, he reckoned to be no more than four feet.

Though the Masai see the lion as a pest, the tourist sees him as a star whom he will pay good money to see. There have been recent moves to try and reconcile these positions. Any agreement ultimately rests on whether the Masai believe they can make enough money from tourism to justify the loss of their cattle.

As we draw a little closer to the swamp bird life proliferates. The delicately pretty lily-trotter, or African jacana, with its enormous clown’s feet, and the black-winged stilt, whose most striking feature is a pair of long, very red legs, pick at the mud with their beaks whilst brown herons and crowned cranes with jazzy yellow crests take a more leisurely approach. Tawny eagles turn and turn above, and swallows, migrated here, like us, from Europe, dart around, low to the ground.