 A Lakipia Maasai of Loisaba (above); a cheetah stands proud on a hill in the Rift Valley (right) |
The Sambura were faultlessly accommodating. They parted ranks, admitted me with a smile and refrained from visibly laughing as I performed their vertical dance with all the grace and skill of a drunken sailor. My intrusion didn’t faze them for a moment. All that afternoon they had been hurling themselves skywards - with regular mass perambulations to vary the pace – for long enough to have entered into something approaching the sort of euphoric trance seemingly called upon by African marathon runners.
Living above the equator in the Great Rift Valley and Northern Frontier areas of Kenya, where the northern desert merges into the foothills of Mt. Kenya, the Samburu are cousins of the better-known Masai warriors from the south, and though they don’t appear on quite as many postcards, book jackets, films, photographs and paintings, are no less striking. Tall, straight-backed, proud, strong and handsome, these cattle herders and hunters have a highly-regarded position in a country of thirty languages said to have the greatest diversity on the continent.
For Peter Cadot they, and the Laikipia Maasai people, are an essential component of his acclaimed Loisaba Wilderness private game ranch of 150 square kilometres a short plane hop from Nanyuki in Mt. Kenya National Park. From the decks, balconies and dining verandahs of the lodge are sweeping views dramatically down three hundred metres and out over a compelling terrain of open red oat grass plains, acacia scrub, and a two-river system supporting ove50 species of wildlife.
|
