19 Apr Tracking Wildebeest
For an entire week of travel in Africa, we had heard nothing other than how the wildebeest migration wasn’t happening. Rains had come to the south, grasses were dry in the north, and prescribed burns in Tanzania were said to be dissuading these famed antelope from their usual fall march from the southern Serengeti north into Kenya’s Masai Mara. These were some of the explanations at any rate, all quite reasonable but personally distressing because this wildlife wonder was one of the two main reasons for my expedition. I squirmed in my seat as our plane approached Serengeti National Park, peering down for some indication as to whether the rumors were true. Relief overcame me as rows of trotting wildebeest engulfed our safari vehicle on our way from the airport to camp.
The next morning, we saw a cloud of dust in the distance, a sign our guide recognized as a coveted river crossing. She suggested we fasten our seatbelts, then sped across grasslands, over rocks, and through dusty ravines until we screeched to a halt alongside a frenzied herd. Individual wildebeest melted into a mass as a continuous line pushed, plunged, paddled and pulled their way from one bank to the other, before milling calmly on the other side as if catching their breath while waiting for the rest.
The radio crackled and news of another crossing sent us speeding back along the river. We arrived just as a crocodile burst from the water, closing its jaws around a young wildebeest wedged by strong currents between two large boulders. A writhing battle between scales and teeth versus fur and hooves ensued, a seemingly unnoticed sideshow amid the sea of pounding hooves. Perhaps freed by the struggle, the young wildebeest suddenly burst from both reptile and rock, stumbling into the stream of wildebeest as the crocodile sank out of view.
Lines of wildebeest continued to pour across the landscape for another day or two, and then it seemed as if a giant plug were pulled and drained them from the land. A few stragglers, groups of four or five, remained tucked indiscreetly among zebra stripes, but mostly the wildebeest were gone. I took this as a good sign, a reassurance that we would reunite in Kenya after we’d all migrated northward. Instead, we arrived in the Masai Mara a few days later to renewed reports that the wildebeest weren’t complying with migratory expectations.
We’d pre-arranged a bush flight to see the migration from air. I boarded with reticence, convinced I would stare down at empty grasslands devoid of wildebeest and miss a lion kill or some similarly dramatic wildlife event on the ground. We flew along the river where I entertained myself spotting hippo boulders and crocodile logs in the waters below. From the air I saw land rovers lining the best-known wildebeest crossing site, but there was no tell-tale cloud. There were no hooves rippling water, no herds drumming dust in the grasslands beyond.
As we approached the national border, I gawked at the stark line separating the countries, brown grass on the Kenyan side and a landscape charred black on the Tanzanian side. Perhaps the rumors were true that the Tanzanian prescribed burns were intended to keep the wildebeest in country. Perhaps the animals were dissuaded by scorched lands. Then I saw it – a trickle of brown seeping across the border road, a line of wildebeest pressing past Tanzania’s food-bare burnt lands.
The herd shifted in form like a giant amoeba as it fanned across Kenya’s ungrazed grasslands. Individual wildebeest took refuge from the mid-day sun in the shade of isolated acacias, each tree providing a momentary respite while the herd overall marched onward. By the time our plane landed and we transferred to our open-sided safari truck, the roads were clogged with wildebeest. They raced by our side, grazed beyond the edges of the dirt road, sat in our path, and stared at us curiously as we inched through their mass. The timing was a bit off, but instincts prevailed. The wildebeest arrived.
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