Stills from ciné film taken in our minibus while we were out on game spotting drives. Top right: Helen in the middle of eating her breakfast ! We often went out early, taking our breakfast with us, so as to enjoy the cooler part of the day. Bottom right: Juliet ruefully smiling having got cross about how close we got to elephants / rhinos while filming ! Right: Fiona – not wanting to take her eyes of those dangerous animals outside the minibus window !
Letter from Juliet to Grandma & Grandad 23 Oct 1976 –
As it’s half-term, on Monday we went to Nairobi Game Park. Just as we entered the park we saw a cheetah. It was a large one on its own as far as we could see and must have been sitting close to the road for as we drove close it got up, ran a little way, and sat down. We noticed there were lots of gnu or wildebeeste that were on their migration trek from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. There were also zebras, Thompsons gazelle, impala and kongoni or hartebeeste though not in such large numbers. We saw seven lions, one male that was on his own except for a dead cow ! This cow was probably one of the Maasai cows that are allowed in the park when the grazing is good. We saw six others together, two of which were large females and the others were cubs though probably a year old. They had a dead gnu that looked as if it were about 2 days old. Circling around them were two small silver-backed jackals trying to get some meat. On Wednesday we also went to the game park and took three American friends, two of which had only flown out to Kenya the day before. Again we saw seven lions, four were walking through a herd of gnu and the others were just lying down. We stopped and had a cup of tea at Hyrax rocks where we fed them. We also went to the Hippo Pools and went on the nature trail. We saw two hippo wallowing in the water and a large fat crocodile about 10 ft long we also saw a small turtle. On the way home we saw some baboons. One huge one jumped onto the front of the van and we saw two tiny ones that looked less than a week old. They were obviously experimenting with their new life and were scrambling all over a bush frequently falling off. It was very funny to watch their antics !
Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 25 Oct 1976 –
There are so many animals here at the moment because of a combination of dry weather in the Rift Valley and rain in the park area that one could easily spend many hours there. The kongoni and zebra are in the park at the moment in the course of their seasonal migration and it’s an amazing sight to see them in their thousands. Instead of walking in a group they seem to have the habit of walking in single file and we often see long strings of several hundred solemnly passing along the horizon. Of course the large amount of game brings the lions in.
Letter from Helen to Grandma & Grandad 2 Nov 1976 –
Just after we came in through the gate of Nairobi Game Park Juliet shrieked “There’s a cheetah!” and made us all jump. It was sitting down in the grass and when we stopped it ran a little way off and stopped again.
List in Juliet’s diary of ‘Animals we have seen in game parks’:
Elephant, lion, leopard, cheetah, rhino (white and black), crocodile, hippo, giraffe, civet or serval, ostrich, warthog, hunting dog, hyaena, jackal, vulture, kori bustard, crowned crane, zebra, turtle, ground squirrel, grants gazelle, hyrax, impala, baboon, wildebeeste (gnu), hartebeeste (kongoni), eland, vervet monkey, dikdik, duiker, lesser kudu, oryx, bushbuck, klipspringer, tortoise, tompsons gazelle, guinea fowl, hornbill…and lots of other birds.
When looking through our archives I found a poem written by me for school homework in 1978 about a hyrax. It’s, as might be expected of a 15 year old, rather unremarkable so I didn’t intend to include it in this blog. However, Helen then asked me whether I had a copy of the hyrax poem, because if not, she did. How, when I’d written it? Because she had also submitted it as homework at school – she confessed she’d copied it from me, although whether I knew this at the time, or indeed suggested she copied it, is lost in the mists of time. But we rather like the story, so here are the two versions of the poem:
Juliet's Kenya Days blog 