Another Rhino Story

This is also a true Rhino story. In the mid 90’s I was doing exploration in Kenya. We had a joint venture with a bunch of slimeballs from Europe. Their “man on the ground” was a Kenyan guy, a city slicker with not too many bush skills. He pretended a lot though.

We set him up in a camp in the Tsavo National park (the same one where a lion ate over a hundred labourers building the Mombasa-Nairobi railway at the turn of the century). He had a couple of tents, some labourers, a cook boy, a clothes washer, etc etc. Camping is done in a colonial style in East Africa. Tents are not the lightweight, synthetic tents we use for weekends away. These are proper tarpaulin tents, with beds and furniture inside. Each one weighs twice as much as a fat person and takes at least 8 people to erect. A typical tent would probably be at least 4m by 5m in size. His brief was to investigate mineralized zones in the park, and when I came down from Nairobi, he’d show me the most promising…

He was sitting in his tent (found out later that was about all he did), waiting for me to arrive, when this rhino wandered through the camp. The rest of the camp scattered, but he didn’t realize what had happened. The next moment the rhino stuck his head into the tent. Both of them got a hell of a fright. He screamed and dived under the back wall of the tent and ran for the bushes. The rhino charged, and suddenly found himself totally covered by a safari tent. I arrived there about 40 minutes later to witness a large, cream-coloured safari tent charging all over the camp sight, breaking everything in its path. The Rhino finally managed to extricate himself, trampled the tent a few times to make sure it was dead, and sauntered off into the bush.

East African roads

The road from Mwanza to Geita runs along the Southern end of Lake Victoria. But first you had to get a ferry over the sound. There was a private ferry company that operated out of Mwanza, and the government one that operated from a small landing further south. Both ferries were unpredictable, and the chances of you getting over to the other side on the day that you planned to, were about 40%.

Sometimes the ferry just didn’t arrive, or you’d get halfway across and either the diesel would run out, or the engines would crap themselves. This of course would result in an aimless drift on Lake Vic for a few hours. Or they could just sink. Most people sat on top of their Land Rovers (those that can swim) so they could jump free if the ferry turned turtle.

Once you get to the other side (Don’t pay the ferry man by Chris de Burgh comes to mind), the real journey begins. The road from here heads west to the mining town of Geita, and ultimately on to Ruanda/Burundi. It’s the main highway westwards. In summer, the 100km (60 mile) road to Geita takes 2 to 3 hours. In the rainy season, it becomes an adventure. Ever seen the camel trophy clips? This is worse. Nine hours to two days is normal. Potholes are often 6 feet deep and filled with water (Land Rovers don’t float well) and the clay on the roads from the weathered granites makes traction almost impossible.

Did you know Land Rovers have a built in leak? Right on your right foot. Little drips. Like Chinese torture. The engineers spent a lot of time designing it – it’s been in Land Rovers since I was a kid. And it still leaks. And the bonnet (hood) is specially designed to catch muddy water in a scoop-like design. When you brake, it all runs forward, and just as it starts to fall off the front, the wind scoops it up and deposits it right on top of the square windshield with the shitty little wiper blades that never work. Another cool design feature….