by: Dominik Kamonde Kitonyi
1967 As I drove the Land Rover through Uganda on the way to Kidepo National Park, I felt a jolt behind me. The trailer tyre hurtled past me and into the grass. I stopped to check the damage. The wheel had sheered off at the axle. I don’t remember any safari with as many disasters as that first big trip with my good friend Kiko (The late Peter Davey was called Kiko because of the pipe he smoked).
I had started working for Kiko on September 13, 1953, when he joined Commander Berry on the Kianzabe coffee estate near Thika. I worked for Kiko when he was single and then for his family after he married. I married my wife Loise Ntheke in 1954 after our parents agreed on the marriage and the bride price. I brought her parents a down payment of two goats with the promise of more later and they allowed us to marry. My wife and I had a daughter. Then Kiko and his wife had a baby boy. My second child died, but both Kiko and I had more children. Our children grew up together.
In 1967 Kiko decided to leave the coffee plantation. We all moved to Watamu where Kiko set up a safari business called Bateleur Safaris. We did a few hunting trips before our epic first safari with clients from overseas.
The clients wanted a photographic safari through Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Kiko decided the trip should start in Kidepo National Park in Uganda. He assigned me to drive the Land Rover and a trailer ,while Kiko drove a Jeep Wagoneer. I had two men in the Land Rover with me – Nzioki, a fellow Kamba, and Kinuno, from Embu. Kiko sent us ahead and we drove to Malaba on the Uganda border and slept there. The next day we waited for Kiko at the border. Kiko arrived and we crossed over into Uganda. Kiko said he’d drive ahead. We passed through Mbale. Kiko’s car broke down and he took it to a garage, but we didn’t see him and kept driving all the way to Moloto town. We couldn’t find Kiko anywhere. We went to the lodge to ask, but they hadn’t seen Kiko. The three of us slept in the Land Rover. We woke up in the morning and drove to the petrol station. I parked the Land Rover and trailer next to road and we stayed there all day looking down the road. We had no money to make the return trip to Kenya without Kiko. We decided that the next day we would drive back towards Kenya until the petrol ran out. But about 5 p.m. we saw Kiko driving up the road. He said his gearbox had broken. We slept one more night at Moloto, waking up at 3 a.m. for a quick breakfast so we could hurry to Kidepo and arrive ahead of the incoming clients.
As I drove through Karamoja I was shocked to see the Karamojang people with no clothes. Kiko had driven ahead. Suddenly the trailer’s wheel fell off and the tyre rolled past us. I had a close look and saw we couldn’t fix it as the metal had sheered off. I persuaded the other two men to stay with the trailer. They feared being left in the bush with the Karamojang. But we had no choice. I unhitched the trailer and drove off in the Land Rover to catch up with Kiko. I drove 76 miles before I finally caught up with Kiko in the park. I saw lots of animals. When I pulled up next to Kiko, he asked in amazement, “Where’s the trailer?” The trailer had all the tents.
I told him what had happened. “I came to ask what we should do?” Kiko rented a vehicle from the game lodge to go back and get the tents from the trailer along with the two men. Kiko said our clients had been delayed and wouldn’t arrive until the next day, so we had time to go back and get the tents from the trailer. Kiko would drive back with the rented truck. He took me to our camping spot and left me to begin setting up the camp. I had the mattresses and food in the Land Rover. I slashed the grass to clear the campsite. I also made a fire for so I could have some chaiwith my bread. I unloaded the mattresses and food as I waited for the water to boil. Suddenly a whirling wind hit the camp and spread the fire into the grass. I sprinted for the Land Rover to move it away from the fire. At first it refused to start. Finally I got it started. I drove furiously to where Kiko was at the lodge, not having yet headed back down the road for the tents. I shouted that the camp was on fire and drove back to the camp to rescue the mattresses. I beat on them, but they kept burning. Kiko came in the lorry with some men from the lodge, who helped put out the fire.
“What happened?” Kiko asked. I had no strength to answer. I just lay flat on the ground. Kiko kept trying to talk to me, but I couldn’t answer for half an hour. Finally I told him what had happened.
The lorry went off and finally came back with Nzioki and Kinuni and the tents from the trailer. We set up camp properly. The guests arrived the next day at noon. We had to give them half burned, smoky mattresses to sleep on. We stayed three or four days photographing animals. Without the trailer we had no space for all our luggage, so we gave our sodas and beers to the lodge free of charge, and headed for Kenya. We slept at Moloto on the way. We left the trailer to be cared for by the Park HQ. Kiko went on to Soy to stay at the Lodge there with the guests. He sent us on to Nairobi to get another trailer from John McLoy before we headed to the Mara. We left at 3 a. m. At first I was told the trailer would be at Naivasha. We arrived at Naivasha about 7 p.m. but couldn’t find the trailer. I called McLoy, who said the trailer was at the factory in Nairobi. We didn’t want to sleep in Naivasha so we drove on to Nairobi. We had driven 502 miles that one day. The next morning McLoy gave us the trailer. We went to the store to buy food and filled the trailer up and headed for the Mara to meet up with Kiko and the guests.
I stopped in Narok to fill the Land Rover with petrol. The station had the old type of pump where you could see petrol pumping through a glass tube. Suddenly the glass tube was empty. The petrol had finished before our tank was full. The petrol station man shrugged. There was no more petrol in Narok and no more was expected until the next day. We had no choice but to set out for Mara, hoping we’d have enough petrol. Past the wheat fields, the road got very muddy. We met some white people in a VW van who’d run out of petrol. I knew we didn’t have much petrol ourselves, but we siphoned out two gallons from the Land Rover to help the VW get to Narok. We encountered more rain and more mud. We spent the night with some Administration Police askaris.
The next day the rain had stopped. We ploughed on through the mud and managed to reach Talek Gate just as we ran out of petrol. I saw a white man from a safari company and asked him for petrol. He called me a foolish man for running out of petrol. He had to carry his guests on their game drive before he could come back and help. About 11:30 a.m. the man came back and told me to follow him on foot the two miles to his camp. His car was not full, but he drove off, leaving me to follow. I worried about lions but we needed petrol. At the camp, the man sold me a few gallons of petrol, but charged me 6/- per gallon instead of the normal 3/- a gallon. I had to carry the petrol back to the gate, walking through the lion-infested bush with grass higher than my head. At the gate I poured the petrol into the tank and left the men and the trailer and drove on to Keekorok to fill up the Land Rover. I arrived back to the gate just as Kiko and the guests arrived. He went on into the park with the guests to see animals and spend one night in a lodge. He sent us to set up camp near Talek. We pitched the tents and slept.
The next day we prepared a curry lunch for Kiko and the guests. But it began to pour with rain. We had no canvas to cover the food and water drenched the fires. We worked hard to relight the fires and cook the food. When Kiko arrived with the guests, the food was ready. The guests enjoyed the meal and wanted to know how we’d done it in the rain.
We spent four days in the Mara before crossing the Sand River and heading into the Serengeti, then to Ngorongoro. Our safari continued on to Lake Manyara. We had no problems in Tanzania. We camped at Mto wa Mbu for two day, before heading north to Amboseli. I was very happy to be back in Kenya. We camped three days at Amboseli. Our safari ended. Kiko took the clients to Nairobi, and sent us home. At Namanga it had rained heavily, and we struggled through the mud. We went to a farm in Yatta to clean and dry the tents ready for another safari. Kiko and I made many other safaris. Other trailers broke down. Floods covered one campsite. But I’ll never our first big safari together and all the problems we faced – and conquered.
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