50 Lioness of Masai Mara

It was June-early July, 1976 and I was on vacation in Kenya from the University of Khartoum in Sudan.  I was traveling alone as Mary; my wife had chosen to take the twins and go back to the States for our biannual home leave. The university had given us just enough money for two adults to fly. We found that the two three-year olds could fly for the price of one adult.

Traveled from Sudan, southern Sudan to Kenya on African Vegetation Map. Perry Castaneda 1986 Public Domain map.

I chose to stay in Africa and complete some field work. After a tearful goodbye at the Khartoum airport, we got on separate planes; the family going to the States and me to Juba in South Sudan.

I spent two weeks in Equatoria Province in Southern Sudan (It was part of Sudan then) where I met with my southern Sudanese students. They escorted me to their villages where we interviewed farmers.

When the field work was completed, I traveled by group taxi to Nimule on the border with Uganda.  I had intended to travel by land to Kenya via Uganda, but after crossing into Uganda and traveling a few miles I heard some frightening news.

A man on the bus informed me, “There is a failed coup attempt and Idi Amin is blaming America and the CIA. He is screaming about Americans being evil and wants to rid Uganda of them.” I confirmed this with the driver and several other passengers.

Hearing that, I realized that I would probably be detained when the Ugandan police saw my passport at the next check point. I immediately stopped the bus and got off and hitch hiked back twenty miles back to Sudan.  Any American was at risk and I did not want to be one of them.

Once I arrived in Juba, I inquired at the airport about flights to Nairobi, Kenya.  Ticket salesman, said “Yes there is a plane in the morning to Nairobi, but it stops in Entebbe, Uganda Airport for a couple of hours.”

“When is there a direct flight to Nairobi?” I asked.

“There are none, all flights have stop over’s in Entebbe”

“Would I be a risk in the airport?” I asked.

“You would be much safer there than traveling by land.  You will only be there a short time and since you will be in transit and won’t be leaving the airport.”

I did want to get to Kenya and I decided to risk it. The flight to Entebbe was uneventful and the airport was surprisingly immaculate and clean. It looked new.

“Yes, The Israelis finished building this airport last year” I heard someone say.

The plane to Nairobi was full of multicultural passengers, dozens of different nationalities who also found themselves transiting through Entebbe. In the seat next to me were some Italians and we began trying to communicate.  I knew no Italian and they spoke very little English but we found that we could get by in Spanish. 

As the Italians and I got off the plane and went through customs, we started talking about things to do together. They agreed that I could join them. As it turned out they had done very little planning with regard to an itinerary and so I told them what I had in mind and they agreed to join me in my adventure.

The first thing we did was go to the “message tree” in Nairobi, famous at that time among people who were backpacking, traveling on low budgets or who were “in” the hippy crowd.  People left notes on the trunk of the tree to connect travelers with similar interests. We found nothing of interest in the tree but took in the ambiance at this collecting point and enjoyed a few Tusker beers. Tusker lager is a rather strong but tasty beer, and it did not take long for me to become sleepy. Someone suggested a low-cost hotel and we went there to sleep.

The next day we rented a car (of course it had to be a Fiat!) and headed out to the famous Masai Mara National Park. It was a lovely day in July, and we headed south down the rift valley. A Masai man with his bright red blanket waved us down and indicated that he wanted a ride. The Italians were a bit leery about that, but I insisted, and I had him sit in the middle of the back seat. I was really curious about him and tried to make conversation, but he was not interested and just grunted. He also objected when I tried to take his photograph. Finally, one of the Italians asked me to leave him alone. After about 30 miles he indicated that he wanted to get out.

Kenya 1995 Lonely Planet Map

The roads were good, and we arrived at Masai Mara Park by mid-morning. We paid our money and drove into the park. Thousands of wildebeests (Gnus) were stampeding across a vast dusty plain of over-grazed grasses. This was their annual July migration. As they ran they seemed to do more leaping than they did running. In two bounds one of them could completely cross the two-lane road. Alongside the thunderous roar of thousands of hoofs, I could hear a persistent sound of frogs croaking. I finally realized that was not frogs at all, but the sound wildebeests make. It sounded like “croak, croak, and croak.” I looked it up in the guidebook where it talked about the wildebeest saying its own name and so the local name became “gnu”. I tried unsuccessfully to imagine how “croak” could be construed as “gnu.”

Migrating wildebeests (Gnus) stampede on the semi-annual migration. Photo by Rick Bein 1976

As the rushing hoard of thousands of gnus completely covered the landscape it seemed a little dangerous to move through the middle of them.  We were afraid to drive across their path, but we saw other vehicles doing it and we found that the gnus avoided us and ran around the car. We proceeded for several miles a midst the rampaging animals; a very spectacular experience.

The wildebeest ran around our car and continued on their journey  Photo by Rick Bein 1976

We found that the gravel road inside the park was not kind to the small Fiat tires and one of them had a puncture. We jacked up the car and had the tire off and were ready to put on the spare, when I had an eerie feeling and I glanced back into the scrubby bush beside us.

My eyes connected with those of a lioness! She had been watching from about 50 feet away. The eye contact seemed to startle her and she started loping toward us! With a quick word of warning, the four of us managed to get into the car in record speed. Amazingly, the frantic jarring of the car did not cause it to fall off the jack!

Once inside the car we checked to see if any of us had been eaten as we looked around to see where the lioness had gone. She had not come all the way to the car. We spotted her 30 feet back into the bush where she sat watching us, but then we noticed five lion cubs playing around her. She must have thought when I made eye contact with her, I had also seen the cubs and her intent was to protect the cubs. She and the cubs stayed put for another hour. So did we!

Author unknown. Photo available on www.google.com

Then the lioness and the cubs began to move parallel to the road.  After about a half hour they walked onto the road ahead of us and continued for 300 feet before disappearing into the bush on the other side of the road.

Finally, we got up the courage to get out and finish changing the tire.

The do-nut spare lasted about half an hour before it also went flat. We had no choice but to wait alongside the road until help came. A truck eventually came and took me and the original flat tire several miles to a place where it was repaired. An English family in a four-wheel drive land rover drove me back to the Fiat and the waiting Italians. It was late at night before we made it back to Nairobi. They thanked me for the adventure but declined to go on any more of my excursions.

Interesting enough, as I spent a few more days in Kenya, news came that an Air France airliner had been hijacked by some Arabs and forced it to land in Entebbe airport on the 27th of June. That was just a day or two after I had left that airport. Because the hijackers had detained the Jewish passengers while releasing the other passengers, an Israeli response resulted. Operation Entebbe was a counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on 4 July 1976.

It was a relief to be free of Uganda at that point and I decided to find another way to return to Sudan. I found there was a flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from which I could transfer to another flight back to Khartoum.

One of the more adventurous Italians decided to go with me to Khartoum. He thought he could arrange a connecting flight to Italy from there. Once in Addis Ababa we decided to spend a day exploring a bit. The next day we arrived in Khartoum, to find that his paperwork was not up to-snuff with the immigration officers. My passport and documentation showed that I was a legal resident and there was no problem, but some reason they became suspicious and arrested him and took him to jail. I felt somewhat responsible for not foreseeing any problem for him coming to Khartoum. I spoke to the police that he was just traveling in transit, but they told me to go home and they had things under control. Later I went to the police station to inquire about him and I got the same result. I never did get an answer and to this day, I still don’t know what happened to him.