Journey Stories: On Safari in Kenya 2006 by Arthur Savage ’48

A group of hearty Princetonians including Arthur Savage ’48 and his wife, Hat, traveled to Kenya in September 2006.   Excerpts from Art’s travelogue paint the picture of their journey.

After a good night, and a lecture on the unique ecology of Laikipia, an area in central Kenya of great biodiversity, we drove through the Laikipia Plains to the Mpala Research Centre, which Princeton helps administer.   The Centre is a facility established by Princeton during the Presidency of Harold Shapiro, on a portion of the 50,000-acre parcel of land set aside for preservation by the late George Small of the Class of 1943.   The Mpala Wildlife Foundation, which George created to provide continuing funding for the Centre, also manages the property as a conservancy and cattle ranch and supports a mobile medical clinic servicing neighboring African communities.

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At Mpala we visited first the School attended by the children of those employed at the Research Center and the Conservancy and then the Mobile Clinic that Mpala operates, and finally the buildings providing the housing and the research and teaching facilities for Princeton faculty and post-doctoral students.   Over luncheon, we had an opportunity to meet and talk with a number of those living at Mpala and studying on fellowships.   We met others who had been selected to conduct courses this fall and to be given next Spring at Princeton on African Affairs.   The visit to Mpala was coordinated by our Study Leader Howard Ende, currently a Trustee of the Mpala Wildlife Foundation, and the lawyer who, as counsel to Princeton , provided the legal framework for the creation of the Centre.   Princeton University can take pride in its support for the Mpala Research Centre in Central Kenya .

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Each of the several Game Drives in the Maasai Mara had its special features and through the whole time we had as a backdrop the Annual Migration of Wildebeest, which was in process, literally hundreds of beasts slowly plodding southward a distance of 200 Kilometers through Central Kenya to reach the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania.   Wherever one stopped, the column of Wildebeest, in pairs, in single file, in columns of 10 or 20 were there in the background or foreground, or in our midst, simply heading around and by-passing the Land Rovers, disinterested in their human cargo, just vehicles they had to evade and get around so as not to impede their progress south to the Serengeti Plain.   When they arrive there every year the females, impregnated 8 months earlier in Kenya, give birth to their young and nurse them along until spring comes and the time to make the reverse migration 200 kilometers back to Kenya.   In these annual migrations, it is estimated that 100,000 Wildebeest will lose their lives, from old age and disease, from drowning in the course of fording rivers en masse, and from “Kills” by Lions and Leopards as well as Hippopotami and Crocodiles lurking in the waterbodies that the migrants have to cross over on their way to the Serengeti.

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As each day came to its end, the cocktail hour was always there, the Bar on a tree trunk, followed by a sit-down delicious dinner, served by cooks, waiters and housekeeping staff, and then to bed for the sound sleep of the weary in our fully zippered-up tents (to keep out the monkeys), and with the occasional interruption in the night of a lion’s roar and morning song of a beautiful tropical bird.

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Our return flight Nairobi to London and on to the US was uneventful but necessarily a sad end to an unbelievably wonderful, fascinating and unforgettable Safari and introduction to Africa .  

ARTHUR V. SAVAGE

Class of 1948