While Colin is on holiday exploring the entire circumference of Lake Victoria, and during one month ‘doing’ three countries in one go, it’s my turn to bring you latest news of life in and around Ndutu!
Thus the story starts mid-late July when I got back from leave to find an already very dry environment. Amazingly, Lake Ndutu was still there, though shrunk considerably in size from when I left for Holland… Some young grey flamingos, a few waders and occasionally two pelicans hovered in the remaining shallow water.
Over at Lake Masek, the situation was much worse: somehow the lake has never really recovered from the dry circumstances last year and the constant water collecting by water tankers to upgrade the Ndutu airstrip and doing up the main Seronera-Ngorongoro road.
Already three-quarters dry, it hasn’t helped that again the Authorities decided to pump water from Masek, now taking it from the few remaining springs along the edge of the Lake.
As the collecting area and two river lines feeding Masek are relatively small, it takes a lot of rain to fill the lake, and we can only hope that this year some good rains will help out. It certainly would be a blessing for the 20-odd hippos that are struggling for survival at the bottom end in the one wallow left there!
Of late, temperatures daily reach 33.3 in the shade, which is a bit unusual for Ndutu! Every morning a fiery red ball rises over the Ngorongoro Highlands to the East of us and the days alternate between howling winds or stifling hot, stil, mid mornings, with some relief late afternoons. Often when you step outside it is like entering a hothouse, and now we all find ourselves searching the skies for clouds and some respite! We have been lucky so far with two good rain storms…one late September of 10 mm and one early October with 18 mm. A few bushes are beginning to sprout, and here and there the grass is trying to grow. Fireball lilies have poked their bright red heads up and some acacias are turning bright green, whilst others around are still in their grey, leafless mode, as if not quite believing the rains will come.
Despite reading and hearing about the ‘East African drought’ and the dire consequences for man and beast, domestic and wild, especially in Northern Kenya, the situation around here is not too bad. Looking at our ‘lodge’ wildlife, the impala look immaculate, so do the Grant’s gazelles, the giraffes, the warthogs and the elephants….
The Ndutu area has always been a relatively “good” area for the Maasai pastoralists to be; there is the ‘lifeline’ spring at the bottom end of Lake Masek that is used daily for all the herds. And at the end of last year’s rains, there was grass left.
However, right now it looks as if a gigantic hover has moved over the land and not a blade of any kind of leaf is left between Twin Hills and Masek!
We have had a few ‘run-ins’ with Maasai, as some are not honouring our agreement of many years to remain on the SE side of the main incoming road , but given the dire circumstances, we have managed to survive reasonably well together!
Because of the human-livestock pressures at Masek, the lion pride that normally resides there has had to shift our way. The pride is temporarily “sandwiched” between the Lodge area and the Marsh pride territory. This has resulted in regular sightings of lions from the front porches of the Lodge, to the delight of especially the early rising guests! Sitting around the campfire at night we have seen the lions in the light of our torches on many occasions, which is always an exciting experience!
This culminated in one evening late August, when the night watchmen came to tell us around 21.00 hrs that lions had just chased a half-grown giraffe past room no 12, through the ditch and towards my house! There the terrified giraffe hit the corner of the roof of the house before being taken down by four Masek lions just 50 meters further!
We went to have a look and fierce eyes shone in the light of our torches, accompanied by much growling and tail flicks! We took all the guests to the corner of my house to show them too, for all a memorable experience! Needless to say throughout the night my sleep was interrupted by much bone crunching, growling and other feeding sounds!
We are so happy that the Marsh pride so far managed – against many odds – to withstand all the perils and tribulations of a long dry spell! Again there are several reports of lion-giraffe kills and it really look like that has become an acquired dry season skill! This year we know of 4 “lion-giraffe” kills, last year there were more than 6 incidents!
A young elephant died near the Big Marsh and the lions were found feeding on that too… The pride still consists of 3 adult and 2 younger females, two males and the 9 larger cubs. Hopefully they will remember what a wildebeest looks like once the rains come and the herds pour into the Ndutu area!
Leopard sightings have been very good the past two months, particularly the big male residing near the marsh and one roaming around the Long Gulley.A It is good to know that some of the many leopards in our area are getting more habituated these days!
Driving out from the here mid morning the other day, I saw a young leopard calmly walking next to the main road behind the sign bringing you into the Lodge!
Every morning, the birdbath overflows with green lovebirds, then the doves take over, alternating with the vivid yellow of a flock of up to 20-30 yellow-fronted canaries.
Many a camera click can be heard during breakfast and eggs are left cold on the plates!
This “quiet” time of the year is wonderful in many ways: the Grant’s gazelles look so beautiful in the subdued colours of yellow and sepia…they gather in large herds out on the plains. Contrary, our large ‘lodge’ impala herd prefers the woodland; one can hear the males competing for dominance, that deep, snorting sound constantly filling the air day and night and indeed the alpha males change in quick intervals, so it seems!
For the past two months a secret nightly visitor has laboured around the Lodge, leaving us with holes everywhere! Both our night watchman Sylvester and some guests one evening finally identified the culprit: a ‘nungu nungu’, or porcupine with 2 young in tow… what a treat to see!
Another novelty has been regular late afternoon visits of a group of banded mongoose. These delightful and highly social creatures also do a lot of digging, and they are such fun to watch. Safety in numbers, they run and stop, stand up to look and inspect their immediate surroundings.
We use the dry season to do some of our maintenance, and this year the entire main building was due a new layer of “mikoche” or palm thatch. The local communities living around Lake Eyasi collect this and it provides them with an income. At Ndutu we use it in its natural state, not the ready-made square mats or “makuti”, one normally buys from the coast. Sadly once up, the fresh yellow colour quickly changes to a duller grey, but other than that the newly thatched roof looks perfect now.
One of our old well holes needed total cleaning and digging out and a 5000 litre tank installed for more washing water, a job we had in mind for quite a while now. Towards the end of digging down, the water seeps in so fast you have to constantly pump to be able to continue working. It is a big job and we were glad it was finalized before the rains are coming.
Last year’s better than normal first rains in November, as I mentioned in an earlier Newsletter, resulted not only in a most beautiful Acacia bloom, but also an unusually large ‘production’ of acacia pods. When nature turns to sleeping mode and trees are without leaf, these pods are a most important source of protein for different resident animals in the area.
Year’s ago in the eighties, I remember a similar ‘fruit’ harvest, and I still have some photographs of a herd of elephants in the Ndutu car park, feeding several hours there, oblivious of guests photographing and watching this with great enthusiasm!
All of which brings me to the one and only animal I have a more-love-than-hate relationship with: our big, grey, bulky, strong, incorrigible, Ndutu Lodge loving elephant called DT!!
Towards the end of August and almost all of September, DT, sometimes accompanied by one or two other adult male cronies, started to visit us regularly.
Mostly he would sneak in at night, but later on would wander over any time of the day.
Spending hours, he would calmly park himself under the mature Acacia tortilis trees next and in front of the Lodge and with small sweeping movements of his trunk, lap up all these delicious pods.
At some point it actually stopped guests from leaving their room for almost an hour, as DT was standing under the tree in front of room no. 12!
DT is a wild elephant and – as all elephants – can look so deceptively quiet and relaxed and good-humoured which to give him his due: he normally is!
Needless to say his popularity ratings went up a few notches, certainly as far as the tourists were concerned!!
However, the length and the width of the Lodge covers quite a big area, and with DT constantly appearing and reappearing out of nowhere both day and night in turn forced our four night watchmen to remain around all the time, ensuring everybody remained at a safe distance!
So, in order to avoid problems we started to rake the pods near the rooms to avoid any dangerous situations, and we transported these a bit further away for the animals to eat.
If you remember, last year DT discovered that if he forced himself into the then non-elephant proof biodegradable wire cage, there could still be fruity-vegetable left-over morsels to pick up. It then cost huge amount of money rebuilding and reinforcing our rubbish cage. So far so good!
As you probably also know, all our drinking water is rain water being collected off our back roofs in collecting tanks, which in turn is then pumped in to back-up tanks.
DT being DT, it did not take much to look around for a drink, and that is where the trouble started.
One day, the situation came to a head, as eating dry, crackly pods presumably makes elephants very thirsty!!!
Our hugely large grey friend has discovered our drink water tanks (never before a problem) and now makes it his business to check these out. DT does not come and ask the Barman for a glass of water, no, he walks over to one of our collecting 3000 or 5000 litres drinking water tanks and his very successful tactic is to press the lid down in one forceful move and then in goes the trunk and out goes our precious drinking water reserves needed to see us through to the next rains!
When necessary, DT pulls the entire tank to its side. Not averse to a wee bit of destruction, this resulted one evening in flattening 4 concrete pillars and an entire wall section down in his enthusiasm to reach over to a tank inside the fence to have a drink!!
So, it has taken us another ten days to reorganise – move the entire drink water surplus of back up tanks to safer havens, closer to the permanent buildings of the Lodge.
Needless to say, we continue to love DT with our heart and souls, but all of us here are quite thankful to see him gone for awhile, the night watch men have gone from High Red Alert to Green Alert, content to point out the occasional lion’s eye at night or a wandering hyena passing by..
The acacia pods are all nibbled up and at the moment DT is no doubt happily following a female’s lead, hanging out with the boys somewhere out there in the slowly greening woodlands!
We wish him well!
Aadje,
late October, 2009
