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An Illegal Border Crossing

JOSEPH took me a different way back along the river towards the bridge. We seemed to go inland a fair way. It was first apparent when we forded a small muddy creek where several storks foraging around the water. I didn’t see any carcases in the water, so I’m not sure what attracted them. Surely they weren’t here to drink the foul water even though it was running. It must be very muddy from the overnight rain.

A little further up the road a baboon was walking along the patch of short dry grass. It was a large male, a lot bigger than I had imagined them in the past. It was walking in solitude, briefly stopping before starting again and disappearing into the scrubby bush.

Joseph continued driving for a few more minutes passing a lot of scrub about three to four metres high before we reached a small clearing. Much of the clearing had no grass at all, just bare soil. In the middle of the clearing was a small concrete obelisk. It was a tapered square column sitting on a large square base about half a metre off the ground. Below the base was a smaller area but very rough cast. It seemed the ground below the base had somehow been eroded away even though it was quite flat. Perhaps the base of this obelisk was supposed to be elevated.

Then I noticed this obelisk was part of a straight row of similar obelisks about a hundred metres apart extending through the scrub. We drove through the imaginary line before Joseph announced we were now in Tanzania. Cool. This was my first illegal border crossing, though I will be legally entering Tanzania only tomorrow.

We stayed on the Tanzania side of the border for a few moments before heading back into Kenya. This is the first border I had ever seen without a secure fence or geographical feature clearly marking the boundary. A secure boundary wasn’t appropriate here though as the animals needed to pass through here to migrate back into the Serengeti.

Incidentally the Serengeti starts at the border, so thanks to Joseph, I have technically been in the Serengeti. Though being an illegal border crossing I have not been there in any official capacity.

Two minutes later we passed a couple of giraffe resting on the grassy plain. Then a bit further up was a large group of wildebeest all looking in our direction. They all seemed pleased to have crossed the river. Perhaps they had crossed over yesterday before the rain started. We cautiously drove through the middle of the herd along the dirt road.

A small great gazelle was by the road in the long grass. It has its eyes on something ready to pounce. I thought it was very dangerous that it would be alone in a large expanse of long grass. Any predators in this area and it would be history.

Looking along the plains I could no longer see the mountains in the distance. Large puffy clouds blocked the view. They were white on top, but very dark almost black, underneath. There was obviously another big storm coming. Joseph said it was very unusual for this time of year to have so much rain.

I agreed. The research I had done in this area revealed this was supposed to be one of the driest times of the year. I had deliberately chosen this time of year to travel this area in order to maximise the probability of getting clear views and fine weather during my climb of Mount Kilimanjaro. These storms were putting my climb at risk.

We were crossing over some rolling hills when Joseph suddenly stopped the van. He told me to look out to the right. There was a black rhino. Sure enough I saw a huge back in amongst the long grass about two hundred metres away. It wasn’t black though, more like charcoal grey.

I asked Joseph how he knew it was a black rhino from all this distance. He explained that there is little difference between black rhinos and white rhinos. The only real difference is the black rhino has a pointed mouth whereas the white rhino has a rectangular mouth.

The black rhino differs from the white rhino in that the black rhinos have long pointed lips for eating foliage. The white rhino on the other hand has broad lips for grazing. The two species diverged about five million years ago. The colours in their names are not distinguishing as they are both the same shade of grey. It is suggested that the white was a misinterpretation of the world wide, and then black rhinos were named to be distinctive from wide rhinos. This rhino was at least a tonne in weight, standing over a metre and a half high at the shoulder. There are only a couple of thousand left having been greatly reduced in numbers due to poaching.

The rhino continued moving through the grass occasionally giving us a view of its head and the enormous horn coming out over its nose. It had quite large ears.

There was a group of zebra and wildebeest on the other side of the road about a hundred metres into the long grass. One solitary wildebeest crossed over our dirt road to join the rest of the group.

The rhino continued rummaging through the long grass using its huge horn to dig in the soil for roots to eat. It continued heading up the hill towards a patch of scrub as Joseph radioed a broadcast that a rhino had been found. As he had mentioned earlier, there was a system here that if anyone finds anything unusual, they radio the other operators.

The rhino then started chewing away at some of the scrub before disappearing into the long grass.

We continued travelling along the road passing another herd of great gazelle. They were all female apart from one male that had an enormous and impressive set of horns. No wonder he could see so many females.

Shortly afterwards we reached the top of another hill where we could see a group of elephants wandering away from us. Here we saw another vehicle approach us. This was the first one we had seen since reaching the Mara River. It had been very quiet having the entire area to ourselves for a long time. This was very different to the way it had been this morning.

It had not started raining yet, but the dark clouds we had seen earlier had either dissipated or moved away from us. Hopefully it was going to stay clear.

Eventually we reached the gate again. I took another toilet break whilst Joseph checked in at the counter and lowered the roof of the van.

Exhausted from standing up for seven hours in the moving van, I was relieved to be back in the front seat next to him.

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