Elephant encounter
Tanzania, June 1984
In the area around the Ngorongoro Crater we once again encountered Massai herding their cattle. Suddenly the cars left the road and Knut, the Danish driver, told me that the geologists wanted to take a look at Olduvai Gorge nearby. It was here that Richard Leaky had made his famous discoveries. Not long ago his wive had found the oldest known human footprints. I had never dreamt that I would visit this legendary place one day.
Just before we reached the gorge we stopped for a little break. The landscape was covered with short grass and strange whitish-grey stones.
“It is the bottom of a lake,” one of the geologists said. “Many millions of years ago there was a valley with a natron lake where we are now standing.”
We drove into the gorge which looked like a giant river bed but which had been shaped by erosion. At the very bottom was black lava, followed by red and white clay. The individual layers could clearly be seen in the steep walls.
There were excavations where anthropologists revealed bone fragments and stone tools with painstaking patience; forming an image of the early humans who once lived here.
(Visiting the famous Cradle of Mankind with a couple of geologists was a great opportunity. We spent several hours there, talking to the anthropologists and I took meticulous notes. They have been lost.)
We reached the crater by late afternoon. Again the climate changed. With increasing height the grass got greener and flowers blossomed in the humidity. Soon the landscape was as lush as an alpine meadow; the cattle even wore bells around their necks. As we stood at the rim of the crater and looked down, a chilly wind made us shiver.
“It is hard to believe that it can be so cold in Africa,” I said.
“We are about 800 m up from the crater bottom,” the geologist said: “It’ll be warmer down there!”
— Little wonder that we could not seem much at the bottom from up here. The size of the crater makes it look much shallower than it really is. The opposite side of the crater wall was 20km away.
At the lodge I said farewell to the group.
“Do you not want to come to Dodoma with us?” they asked: “You can catch a train to Dar from there.”
I agreed to meet them the next morning. Dodoma is right in the centre of Tanzania and it was a great opportunity to see more of the country.
I stayed in the same hostel where I had stayed before, sleeping under the same torn blankets. The restaurant was open and offered beef curry for 28 sh, but I was worried about the park fees and decided to save money. A stall nearby sold ‘goat meat’ soup. I did not see a lot of meat; instead assorted organs were floating in a large cauldron of greenish broth. One of the blokes laughed:
“Don’t look at it — eat it!” and he bought me a portion. Along with the soup we had fried intestine dipped into chilli salt. It was good.
The following morning I would find out how foolhardy it is to walk around in a national park. I was on my way to meet up with the convoy at the ‘Wildlife Lodge’, a way past the ‘Crater Lodge’ which I had frequented during my last visit. I had just walked up a little hill when I was suddenly confronted with a giant. The first thing that caught my eye was the dirty white of a tusk as a huge elephant broke through the bushes onto the road. Was this the bull elephant I had been warned about two weeks ago?
The animal turned towards me. I quickly jumped into a drainage ditch, pulled off the backpack and cowered among the grass. Gradually, I crept forward to try and get a closer look at the animal. The elephant had his back to me. It did not seem to have noticed me but it made no move away and I was wondering how long I would have to remain crouched in the ditch when I heard the droning on an engine. As bus rounded the corner ahead. I stuck my arm through the grass and waved desparately. Luckily, the driver spotted me and stopped the bus. I ran to the door, crouched over and jumped on amid a crowd of surprised passengers who gaped at me open-mouthed.
“The elephant…” I stammered, heaving for breath and turned around but the huge bull had disappeared without a trace. I marvelled at the speed with which such a big animal can vanish.
One of the guys nodded understandingly and asked why I had not overcome the dangerous bull with my hunting knife before they all dissolved into laughter.
I was lucky because the bus was full of workers heading for the lodge (“I don’t see you walking here,” I grumbled among renewed laughter), so I saved a lot of time. The lodge was further away than I thought, I would have missed my appointment had I walked all the way.
My friends had just finished breakfast. I told them my story over bread and tea then passed the time looking out of the picture windows while they went to collect their belongings and settle the bill. The windows formed the entire wall of the restaurant, giving a truly panoramic view of the crater which was shrouded with dark grey clouds. Golden beams of sunlight threw spotlights onto the floor and the shimmering natron lake beneath.
On our way out of the national park we saw a lone elephant close to the road. Was this the one I had encountered?
The fog and the clouds boiled away in the scorching sun which soon parched the arid land. The road wound through the hills and finally allowed view over a deep valley at the bottom of which Lake Manyara reflected the icy blue of the sky, mottled with the pink dots of flamingoes. Deep below us, we saw the grey and black dots of elephants and buffaloes between the trees.
The day ended with our arrival in Dodoma where the Germans invited all of us for beer and juice and piles of pancakes with maple syrup. Knut offered me a room in his house to stay.
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Denni