Forests of Masai Mara, Kenya

The Masai Mara National Game Reserve is situated 270 kilometers west of Kenya's Nairobi, a distance you can  cover by either jeep or plane. The Masai, a Nomadic pastoral tribe indigenous to East Africa, have inhabited the plains of southwestern Kenya and northern Tanzania since 1500 A.D During the colonial period, thousand of Masai, people were pushed off their ancestral lands for the expansion of cities and railways, and resorted to extreme poaching (in collusion with white hunters) as a means of earning  their daily bread.

  This is one journey i shall never forget. For one, we passed through some of the most beautiful countryside i have ever seen-rolling pastures,woody valleys, sweeping plateaus, every bot of land so delightfully green it wasn't just a feast for the eyes, it was a banquet, a 12-course meal, amply seasoned with zebras, gazelles, baboons, and even a pair of giraffes and ostriches thrown in for pudding (which we were rather lucky to see, according to one mean . considering we hadn't even reached the actual game reserve yet) . you see, zebras and gazelles roam around s freely in Kenyan countryside as cows  and goats do in pakistan. It was most fascinating. We saw our share of Kenyan cows and goats too (which are rather different looking from our kind), shepherded by skinny-legged red-swathed kids who,d wave at us rather violently with the toothiest of grins each time we passed. these were Masai children, One mean told us, recognizable by their distinct red clothing, and we saw many of them on the way. The Masai were only a single sheet of hand-woven woolen red cloth wrapped like an ehraam around their bodies;be it rain or storm, sun or snow, they wear nothing  else. We fascinatedly  stared at their bare arms and legs teasing the wind as if it were high summer. And traveling through that wide, beautiful country, through is bustling towns and villages, it farms, it wildernesses, past the unmistakably African acacia trees,the laughing, shiny-faced people- for beyond race, beyond the shade of our skins and the mould of our features, we were all just children of one man and one woman. they were neither black, nor white, nor red, nor yellow - they were simply, human.
  And so were we.                                   to be continued............other post.
                                                                    nature Kenya