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delay their departure for a day to go on a guided tour. The trip was set for the next
day, with an early departure, and a picnic lunch to be supplied. Our guide was
the sort of person that inhabits ‘Happy Valley’ and ‘White Mischief’, a big, slow-
speaking man who looked as though, if need be, he could wrestle a gorilla, and
besides the girls, Chris and two junior engineers decided to come along.
We boarded the inevitable VW mini-van before the sun arose and roared off
to the west, although it was actually more appropriately ‘sedately drove’, for Kenya
had major infrastructure problems. The roads were in appalling shape, full of pot-
holes, far too narrow for the country’s main arterial road, and clogged with elderly
trucks. Unfortunately, as our guide explained, the railways were even worse, a
handicap for a port that was the gateway not only to Kenya, but the best way to
deliver goods from the east to Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, and both Congos. The
transportation problem was one that plagued the development of the whole of
East and Central Africa, for if the westward arteries were poor, the arterial ‘roads’
from the Congolese coast were little more than compact mud trails. So although
on the map the distance from Mombasa to Tsavo is modest, in effect it was a
very onerous way to travel. Even as I write, some sixty years later, the Mombasa
to Nairobi (and beyond) rail link is overburdened, antique, understaffed and
over-politicised, and still a topic for discussion in ‘The Economist’. The reason
for the lethargic pace of unloading cargo in East Africa’s ports, as I understood
it, was simply that there was no point in unloading ships with rapidity, the poor
infrastructure including a lamentable shortage of secure warehouse space.

But our driver knew what he was about, and we arrived at a Lodge for wetting
our whistles and planning our route (fauna doesn’t just wait about for the tourists;
one has to know whether and where they were drinking, feeding or resting up,
the latter apparently being lions’ favourite occupation). We then set off into the
bush, which, to me, was surprisingly bush-free (why should I be surprised? We
were there in the midst of the dry season!). This meant that all was brown, dusty
and dry. In fact, the first animals that we saw were baboons, but they were so
difficult to see, despite being only yards away, that our man had to point them
out to us. Fortunately, the animals seemed not in the least perturbed by our
presence, but at least this meant that I obtained some pictures that, on my own, I
could not have taken. Other animals that we saw, at least to my knowledge, were
antelopes, a totally comatose lioness, and an elephant. The latter we simply came
across as we drove slowly through the bush. He, of course, saw us first, and when
we circumspectly stopped some distance from him, he didn’t look too happy
(inasmuch as I knew how an elephant expressed happiness) and we watched and
photographed. Our guide said that he wanted to keep to a distance from which he
could see the creature’s tail, as it would indicate when or if he wanted to charge.
Apparently, the behaviour of a bull elephant is highly unpredictable when he is
in musth, which can be seen, if one is close enough (or, more correctly, too close)
by virtue of a visible thick discharge from his head, behind the eyes, and which

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