In the northern district of central Tanzania along the southern end of East Africa’s great Rift Valley, Ol Doinyo Lengai, the Maasai Mountain of God, rises as a near-perfectly symmetrical, majestically formed cone from the surrounding miles of vast low-lying savannah bushlands, reaching nearly 10,000 feet at its summit. Lengai, as it is called for short, is the only volcano on Earth where carbonatite magma (low-temperature lava that is black in color, moves quickly like water, and cools into a greyish-white powder-like substance) is currently erupting, and, in the past few years, it has emerged as an up-and-coming tourist destination for extreme adventure-traveler-types from around the world. I’d like to think that this evolution is -- even if only in the tiniest of ways – in part, because of me.
Why? In June 1994, I walked to Lengai, from the nearest town, Arusha, about 100 kilometers through inhospitable, remote bushlands. I was 22 years old traveling solo across East Africa when I learned about a motley group of international explorers setting out to chart a walking safari trekking route for future clients. There I was enjoying a cup of kahawa na maziwa na sukari sana (coffee with lots of milk and sugar) at the declared halfway point between Cairo and Cape Town, The Arusha Hotel, built by the British in 1894, when I was invited by I-don’t-remember-who to join this pioneer trek. With nothing particular to do and nowhere specific to be, I said yes.
A few months earlier, I had fled a stifling, predictable-yet-respectable job working in an investment banking firm in Boston, Massachusetts. In my windowless, climate-controlled cubicle, surrounded mostly by men in suits, I feared that my shriveling spirit would disappear altogether. So, one morning in January 1994, I put on my finest red dress and matching lipstick, gathered my courage, inhaled and exhaled, and handed my big boss in the corner office overlooking South Station a hand-typed resignation letter. And then, I booked a one-way ticket to Tanzania.
Armed with a LL Bean backpack, a collapsible single-person tent, an all-weather down sleeping bag, an extensive first aid kit, and a heart overflowing with the timeless question “What am I meant to do with my life?,” I boarded my KLM flight and headed east. At the time, I had little money and even less of an idea of what I was getting myself into. The night before my flight, my mother told me that she had a dream that I would die if I left. But I believed that I would die if I stayed. So off I went, to the most far-away land I knew of, Tanzania, a country where I had spent a semester abroad a few years earlier studying “wildlife conservation and human cultural management” and the only place in Africa I knew a single number to call when I landed.
I met up with my trekking group and the three camels who would be hauling our supplies in the dusty barren Maasai village of Mkuru, which sits in the northern foothills of Mt Meru facing the Kenyan border. (Meru is the second largest mountain in Tanzania next to Kilimanjaro). Our leader was a 20-something Brit named Jan who was intent on launching a new adventure travel company. Then there was me, a tall, blonde, naïve white girl from preppy New England; two expert snake-wranglers from South Africa; one up-and-coming American documentary filmmaker from Las Vegas (he was in Tanzania to film vultures); two other men whose names and faces I can no longer remember; and one other woman, Jan’s girlfriend, an American named Cara Cargill.
From Mkuru, our group set out, steering always west, north-west. At first I was excited to walk in the company of camels. I had never before encountered beasts with such long legs and large-lipped snouts. I imagined befriending at least one of them, plodding along, side by side, sharing my stories of life as we crossed the sea of open bushlands. However, quickly I learned these “ships of the desert” are not playful or affectionate creatures, at least to the humans for whom they haul heavy loads. Camels may greet one another by blowing in each other’s faces, but they greet humans by spitting wads of regurgitated cud in our faces. And that’s not the most unpleasant thing. It’s the sounds they make when standing up, kneeling, or doing just about anything at all. Bees buzz, birds chirp, dogs bark, and elephants trumpet, but for the vocalizations of camels, there is no simple word. Cough, bellow, screech, snort, scream, groan, moan, rumble, roar…. Not one does a camel justice.
The first day we set out about noon from Mkuru and walked until sunset, which, along the equator, occurs at about 6:00 pm sharp every day all year round. For 30 to 40 magnificent minutes after that round ball of fire descends below the horizon there remains a brilliant and vast yellow-, orange, and red-shaded glow. Basking in this fading light we unloaded the camels, pitched our tents, built a small fire over which to boil water, and enjoyed a granola bar, or two, for dinner.
The next seven days were largely the same except for an ever-evolving landscape around us. Jan would wake us up at 3:00 am each morning. We would drink instant coffee, eat a few bites of oatmeal, and set off long before sunrise. Generally, the group would start off walking together or in pairs, and eventually, everyone, moving at his or her own pace, would spread out over several miles. Naturally a brisk walker, by mid-day, when the equatorial sun had reached its zenith, baking everything beneath its powerful gaze into blistering, dried out meat, I would find myself alone, as if in the middle of a desert-ocean, with the horizon looming 360-degrees around. Looking behind, I might be able to see in the faraway distance, the glimmering, ghost-like outline of a human, or two, and possibly that of a camel, but otherwise it was just me.
The camels were the slowest among us, perhaps innately aware of their needs and limitations in a way that we humans were not. The first day I made the mistake of leaving my water bottle in my pack carried on one of the camels and nearly fainted from dehydration. Another day I left my sunscreen on a camel’s back and scolded myself with every new blister I felt bubble up on the back of my bare legs.
As the days went on, the threats we faced (besides those created by our own stupidity…sunburns, sunstroke, dehydration) changed only slightly. Where the grass cover was low and the shrubs stiff and thorny, we stayed focused on the ground directly beneath and around our feet to avoid stepping on the perfectly camouflaged, venomous, highly deadly puff adder. Where the grasses were high, we continuously scanned the landscape, listening carefully for the low-pitched grunt of the lion or the whooping cackle of the hyena. The truth is, for the entire eight-day journey, I never completely relaxed, my senses always on high alert, ready for predators and dangers of all kinds. In my mind, I ran countless “what if” scenarios, and in not one was my survival ever a remote option. Out there walking across the African tundra, my mind found the space and time to review all that had happened during my 22 years on earth and image all that I desired to happen during the years to come if I was lucky enough to survive.
In the end, I made it, and without much issue. In a stroke of luck, the cheap leather pseudo-hiking boots I had purchased from a J-Crew catalog at home because I thought they looked cute, didn’t fall apart, completely, until we reached Lengai, the great Maasai Mountain of God. The documentary film guy from Vegas was not so lucky. He had chosen to wear fancy super-air-cushioned Nike sneakers instead of boots, and, unfortunately for him, by day three his feet were raw and covered in blisters. The sounds he made each evening in camp as he lowered his bloody feet into trays of iodine disinfectant made me wish for a camel symphony. I had never before, and never since, heard such agony. The camels were already too overloaded with supplies to bear the weight of a grown man, so the filmmaker had no choice but to walk on.
Eventually, as we moved towards the Great Rift escarpment, the Mountain of God appeared in the distance. With Lengai as our beacon, we trudged forward -- passing through vast herds of wildebeest, zebra, and gazelles; meandering by families of giraffe and ostrich; ever on the lookout for ornery buffalo; and hoping to catch a glimpse of the rare (and quite shy) gerenuk, lesser kudu, and oryx. It was during these extraordinary moments that things became clear to me. I was able to separate from myself in a way I never had before and observe myself think. And what I noticed was that when I wasn’t daydreaming about drinking clean water or feasting on fresh fruits, I found myself thinking about words. While I carried my camera and took photographs to capture moments, what I knew as that only the perfectly chosen and artfully arranged assortment of precious words could ever begin to capture the enormity, the intensity, the beauty of what I was experiences. Only which words, I wondered obsessively, and in what order?
The Maasai Mountain of God is situated due south of a 1,000-square mile soda lake called Natron. As we approached, the lake appeared outlined and overlaid by a pink sheen of varying saturations. Eventually, the color revealed itself to be a colony of hundreds of thousands of flamingos nesting on the shores, laying eggs in the muddy salt flats. The darker red color that emanated from the center of the shallow lake came from the unique bacteria that proliferate only in Natron’s super salty waters. Next to Lengai, Natron appears as an oasis in a desert, a source of water, and an abundance of life where, at least on the surface, there appears to be none. However, it is, in fact, the most inhospitable of lands. Its saline waters can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit and, like ammonia, quicky burns unadapted skin and eyes. One species of fish has evolved to thrive in Natron’s briny waters: the Natron Tilapia, a small fish about the length of your hand. And then there are the flamingos who thrive on Natron’s algae and bacteria. For them, the hostile environment of Natron offers protection from predators and makes for the perfect nesting and breeding ground. Today Lake Natron is considered the largest and most important breeding ground for flamingos in the world.
Flamingos at Lake Natron.
Our original plan was that once we arrived at Lengai and Natron we would camp out for a few days and explore the area. But that didn’t happen. Shortly after we arrived, Jan received word on his VHF hand-held radio that a flatbed four-wheel-drive truck was coming to get us and bring us back to Arusha. There was a nearby threat that Jan’s support crew in Arusha didn’t want to tell us about until we had been safely evacuated.
The threat, we later learned, was refugees. In neighboring Rwanda, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RFP), led by Paul Kagame (a man who served as the country’s vice president between 1994 and 2000 when he became Rwanda’s sixth president and still reigns today, 21 years later) had taken control of the country and brought an end to the 100-day genocide which had left approximately a million souls dead. Refugees were pouring into Tanzania, fleeing for lives, making their way farther east and in numbers greater than anyone anticipated. Jan’s support team in Arusha decided that it was best our little adventure-travel group avoid a face-to-face confrontation.
So, we left.
***
I have not stepped foot on or around Lengai or Natron since that day in late June 1994; however, I have flown over the area, at least a dozen times, on short aerial hopper flights in small Cessna turboprop airplanes. As the founder and director of an international charity that supports impoverished youth and marginalized women across Tanzania and of Unite Tours Service Safaris, I have taken countless safari clients, donors, friends, and guests from Arusha out to the Serengeti National Park for safari and back again. The route takes us directly over Lengai, and from the sky above, I have gazed down inside the volcano’s still active northern crater and marveled at the sight of the flowing dark black lava pits and the rapidly forming weathered carbonatite ash cones.
An aerial view of the summit of Ol Doinyo Lengai, The Maasai Mountain of God.
I will return to Lengai and Natron in 2022 when I am 50 years old. Instead of walking there from Arusha, I will fly to a nearby earthen airstrip, which was constructed in 2016. Like the handful of other travelers who find their way to this far-flung corner of Earth, I will stay at the only lodging available, the Lake Natron Camp, an eco-tourism venture designed, in part, to provide jobs for many of the local Maasai and to educate the international community about the critical need for land and wildlife conservation in the area. From there, I will attempt the steep, precarious, five-hour-up, five-hour-down climb of Lengai, which is hailed as “the most dramatic hike in East Africa,” at least Lake Natron Camp’s marketing team. Once safely down, settled, and rested, I will walk a few miles along one of the many well-forged Maasai cattle paths from Lengai to the Rift for a refreshing swim under a waterfall that flows from a single fissure in the escarpment wall. All the while I will search for the Desert Rose, the single flower that has adapted to this other-worldly environment. And, if I’m lucky, I will, once again, separate from self long enough to discernibly observe life, nature, and thought.
Photo Credits: Rafiki Projects; From Africa With Love; Volcano Discovery; Tom Selke. Flamingos by Helene Wallaert and Remy Simon.
Sources:
Lake Natron Camp.
World Wildlife Fund.
Britannica.com.
Wikipedia, The Arusha Hotel.
Wikipedia, Paul Kagame.