I could feel a fresh breeze in my face so we turned around and headed off into the scrub. I was the only Mzungu (European) in the group with Maiko and Lekoko, both Maasai, and Geti, a Mwaarusha. We had had a long day distributing food and I was hoping to find the track that would lead us safely back to the tarmac road. Somehow, in my mind I had an idea that it would all be quite straightforward and simple. I was looking forward to being back with Lisa, anticipating telling her of the day’s events and all the people we had met.
I began to get annoyed when I couldn’t find the track nor could I recognise the korongos (gorges) we were crossing. The sun had lost its strength by now and was heading for the horizon and I knew it would be a whole new world out there in the dark. Despite my anxiety Maiko was cheerful and had already worked out how we could spend the night in the back of the pickup. Maasai are quite used to sharing a bed with their own age set but I was thinking that I’d rather drive all night!
I took out my new GPS and looked up the tracks that I had stored . It was blank, not a single track. I then realised that I must have deleted the whole memory when I thought I was deleting a single track. Now I was not only anxious but really annoyed, partly for the inconvenience but also for the loss of the log of a long and strenuous track that had disappeared into the ether. I decided never to rely on modern technology.
I decided to follow the advice of those ‘what-to-do-when you’re-lost’ books and ‘traverse the terrain’ hoping to cross a track, any track would do. When we arrived at the top of a hill that I thought I knew, I found I was in fact looking across a huge gorge straight at the very hill I should have been on. Now I was dismayed and disorientated and the sun was minutes away from the horizon.
Someone saw a herd of cattle behind us so we turned hoping to get some local advice but we came again to the edge of an enormous gorge. Everyone got out and wandered down to the bottom to see if there was any way across. I sat in the Landrover and tried to ring Lisa but there was no signal. We obviously weren’t going to be getting back in good time. My hopes of a light supper and an evening with my wife were fading and I was more than a little irritated. I asked God for ‘just a track,’ thinking that our problems would be solved once we were on the right path as all tracks eventually lead to the main road.
I picked my way rather bolshily amongst black volcanic boulders, anticipating a struggle to cross the gorge but as we crested the opposite bank I was surprised at how easy it had been. I presumed God might want thanking for that, but we were still a long way from home so said nothing.
The herd of cows turned out to be a flock of goats and sheep and were standing outside a boma being milked. I anticipated coming across a simple lad with a scraggy herd, madly driving them home before dark but instead we were greeted by a short weather beaten man whose wives and small children slowly emerged from their huts shy and smiling. The older boys greeted me in Swahili but the women only spoke Maa. He said he would show us a track that was not far from the boma and we gave him some of the remaining food we had to distribute. The women laughed in delight that food had come to them all the way out there, free and in the dark! I was glad that we could help them and relieved that we had found some reliable advice. I noted the man’s name in my GPS tracklog, so that I could visit him again (hopefully).
His sons ran ahead in the headlights, barely discernable in the dark and I tried to follow all the gesticulated instructions. However we arrived at a small gorge that was impassable with huge boulders strewn inconveniently all over the place. The man and his sons then rushed about in the dark finding another way across. Maiko commented on how bright the boys were, how they had understood the problem and immediately worked out another solution. I sat quietly repenting of my assumptions and thanked God for the track and that we were now ‘on our way.’
We wound our way upwards in the dark, weaving this way and then that. The track was so unclear that I wondered how they had made it in the first place. What a contrast between Roman and African ways – one militaristic and straightforward, the other social and circuitous.
I was trying to plot where we were in my mind as we were in total darkness now. When we came to a fork in the track the popular vote was to go right. However, after a while I stopped and turned off all the lights. It looked like we were heading around the back of the only visible landmark which was the looming mass of Lepurko mountain straight ahead of us. So we retraced our tracks and headed off to the left. It was an old track that was very overgrown with Acacia scrub and took us away from the mountain. This fact worried me as by my reckoning we should have been amongst tall acacias on flat ground and skirting around the mountain.
Maiko kept reassuring us that he was born in a boma just over the hill and knew the area well. So we drove on. We could see torch lights shining on the dark mountainside behind us and wondered if we were being ‘advised’ or were they cattle herders just going home late? There definitely should have been a hunter’s camp on a ridge to our left at some point. When we stopped again and switched off the lights we couldn’t hear any sound and the only torches were from a boma a long way off. We were miles from anywhere and totally lost.
‘Barabara’ is an odd sounding word. It is Swahili for road and when the ‘barabara’ suddenly dived into another gorge and didn’t come out I was convinced that we should turn back and take the right fork. We retraced our tracks again and all I could hear was people muttering about the ‘barabara;’ with a barabara here and a barabara there, old Makofia lost his way, aiyee, aiyee, oh I think I’m going mad! I shook my head to concentrate on the faint tracks in the light ahead of me.
This time the track took us winding round and up and down until it finally came onto a bit that I thought I recognised. Hopes were up until it then went up hill sharply and divided into two, which totally exasperated me. We took the left hand one and followed it round a large tree and there in the headlights was a neat little footpath. We had driven straight into the hunter’s camp and had arrived in ‘reception!’ There was a stunned silence as everyone recalibrated their mental map of where we were.
Several men came out of the darkness with powerful torches bearing spears and interviewed us. Yes they had been shining a torch at us earlier on knowing we were heading up a blind ‘barabara’. Happily they recognised me and gave us instructions for the right road and we were on our way again. We were all tired and I was frustrated so when we took another wrong turn there was a tense debate. It was implied that I hadn’t understood the man’s Swahili instructions. ‘But,’ I said, ‘two lefts don’t make a right. We went wrong on the first track and took a left and then we should have taken a right turn to get back onto the original track. Now we have taken another left so we are doubly wrong.’ There was a moment’s silence and then they were amazed at how stupid the young man had been in telling us to go left. I smiled at the deft avoidance of loss of face. This time we were on the right barabara and I recognised it.
There was phone signal and the distant glow of civilisation over the horizon. I told Lisa that we would be a little late as we had got lost but now we were on our way. She said she might be up when I got back. Well thank you, I thought to myself, you have no idea where we have been…but then I don’t think anyone else had either, except maybe a few bemused locals who had been watching our headlights erratically traversing the bush for the past few hours.
