Jambo

This time we land at an even more remote & smaller airstrip, Siana. Here waiting for our arrival are several Maasai tribesmen. They call to us in Swahili “Jambo, Jambo” Hello, Hello, Karibu - Welcome. Hi there says one with the whitest teeth & the darkest skin, so smooth you automatically wanted to reach out & touch it. (Easy tiger). My name is .. wait for it .. Jimmy he says. Bit of a let down. We also have Alfred, Dominic & Mikel. Not met a Duane or Shane yet thank Goodness. Despite the western names they all wear the traditional and very colorful Maasai dress called shuka. This is not a tourist thing it is the way they live. Our bags are loaded on to a land cruiser and we are taken on a drive to the camp. It is all nearly off road, mud track, most of it has been washed away. There has been an unusual amount of rain here for this time of year. Strangely the Mara is very green. We rock back & forth over cavernous ruts, clinging on for dear life as Jimmy battles through. I am fearing an overturned vehicle and becoming a lions dinner before the adventure has hardly begun. Little did I know then there was more to come later in the week, but by that time I was so blasé, it was not scary at all. We are accompanied by Barbe & Stan from Colorado, they were to be our companions during our stay in Kenya and we rubbed along just fine.

Jimmy soon spots a herd of giraffe & elephant so off we go headlong into the bush. We get extremely close. The male elephant is absolutely huge. I do not remember them being so big in the Kruger. There are some cute baby ones as well.
I see a Goshawk and a Grey Fiscal Shrike, I see so many birds that I cannot keep up with them or identify some.
Porini camp is a private reserve in a conservancy area it is run by and in conjunction with the Maasai. I am writing this on the deck of our tent and I can see a zebra out of the corner of my eye. (Just thought I would let you know).