The Walk

It started in jest. I turned to Phillip – who I might give the nickname of Beluga due to his adept social skills with all of us, he has become a good friend to us all– during one of our game drives and mentioned I thought I was becoming more familiar with the area. Roads were looking less and less alike and I was correctly approximating where we were with greater ease.

I said to Phillip: “By the end of the summer, I think you might be able to drop me off in the middle of Lewa and I might be able to find my way back.”

Phillip answers: “Ok! But we don’t need to wait for the end of the summer.”

I was half joking. Phillip wasn’t.

Yesterday, I was put to the test. This is how it went…

All last week we discussed the plan for The Walk. Phillip and Eagle decided they would choose a spot within Lewa that they knew I wasn’t familiar with and I was going to have to find my way back to headquarters (HQ), specifically to the tents now called home. It became a test of sorts, my ability to understand the natural world around here, navigate appropriately, and I’m guessing check my adaptability, and well…my hootzpah!

I wasn’t going to be left alone though as walking bait through the African savannah. Eagle was going to follow me about 10 meters behind armed with his G3 in case anything should happen. The goal of the trek was to be a 5 or 6 hour journey covering a bird’s flight of 7 or 8 km, but across an uneven train of closer to 17 or 18 km. I asked about food and water; I negotiated to be allowed a small bottle of water and army biscuits. And so it was set, and I swallowed my gasps and asked when this would happen. It felt as if each day last week The Walk was scheduled, but something always came up – from a mission to save stolen goats from one of the rangers to our vehicle being serviced and then backed into a post for dent removal and door maintenance! Planning The Walk didn’t fare well for my sleep as each night I would have trouble closing my eyes in anticipation of the next day’s adventure.

It also didn’t happen last week as we, the whole Crew, left on Thurs for a 5 day trek and trip to Kenya’s eastern oceanic coast, in part for a touch rugby tournament. It is amazing how the worlds a person can create for themselves in one realm can appear in unexpected parts of the world – it seems that it is with ease that a person can seek out displays of individuality to the extent that they find their way in somehow. We were fortunate that upon arrival to Diani beach, Mombassa, three of us were able to form a team with three others from the UK seeking the same escapade. It turns out that another team had fully registered but was trapped in Ethiopia with no means of arriving in time for the weekend tournament. We were lucky to replace the team and play 7 games, between tides on an incredibly inviting white sandy beach repeatedly kissed by the Indian Ocean.


We didn’t make it to the finals, but forgave ourselves and used the extra time to learn to body surf and hone our negotiating skills for kikoy and other African trinket purchasing.

Following the hour ride to the Mombassa bus station, the 10:30pm to 6am overnight bus to Nairobi, the 10am to 4pm matatu (aka large taxi) ride back to Lewa, I received a text message from Phillip informing me that Eagle was to pick me up the following day on Wed at 6:30am to begin our day. Still not knowing if it was The Walk day, I texted back saying no problem and asked if we were walking or rhino hunting. I didn’t hear back, and fell nervously asleep under the assumption that it was to be a usual rhino reconnaissance day.

I was wrong.

Eagle picked me up at 6:30am, and we set out down the Lewa roads in a northeastern direction. We stopped on a semi-unfamiliar road to me, and Eagle got out of the vehicle. That’s when I noticed the G3 wedged between the seat and the door. I asked Phillip about this, only because I knew that Eagle didn’t like carrying the weapon in the field in general. Phillip responds by saying: “its for The Walk”. I said: “right now?” – thinking I wasn’t exactly fully recovered from the Mombassa weekend experience. Leaving my camera, animal books, and anything weighty in the vehicle, I knew I had no choice, and just accepted my fate for the next 5 hours.

Eagle was determined to disorient me and began The Walk leading me down a river, and up a hill, climbing 1600ft, still in a northeastern direction away from Lewa HQ. Feeling like we were ascending Mount Kenya, I quickly texted Kate to let her know The Walk was on, and having joked the prior week about it, I knew she was aware of how to distribute my things if something were to happen! She gets my laptop! Heading away from Lewa HQ for at least a 3 or 4 km as the crow flies is what confused me a little – the rangers were successful in that aspect. Good thing the African jungle isn’t anything like the tall thick boreal forests of Labrador, and looking beyond the hills scattered across the Lewa landscape, it was relatively easy to pick out the general direction back to Lewa HQ– my compass and map also helped!

Eagle and I ended up walking more side by side than 10m apart due to the presence of nearby elephants and buffalo. On a side note - its still hard to anthropomorphize buffalo in any sort of delightful manner, even the babies resemble angry barbaric ambassadors of the animal kingdom. Greeting a few rhino monitors and armed rangers along the way, Eagle and I trekked, wandered, trampled, hiked, and marched the way to Lewa HQ. Walking in a calm silence listening and looking for signs of danger, we encountered giraffes, fresh buffalo, elephant, and rhino scat, hyena tracks, and old bones from animal carcasses cleaned out by vultures and other scavengers, detritivores, and decomposers.

Relatively uneventful, The Walk became more of a mental exercise with an added physical dimension of trekking a long distance through a landscape I am happy to become very acquainted with. It took Eagle and I just over 5 hours to arrive back at the tents, upon which I took one look at my bed and lay down for a nap of the kind of sleep I could only day dream about the week prior.