Word: laikipia
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This is no photo op in a wildlife park for tourists on safari. This is Mugie Ranch, a commercial livestock operation in Kenya's Laikipia district, about six hours north of Nairobi. Some 14,000 sheep and 1,000 cattle graze here on the open grasslands, tended by 200 ranch hands. Barely a mile from the feasting lions, herders are bringing cattle and sheep into their nighttime pens, raising clouds of red dust. The herders whistle at their dogs, which are on the alert for lions--and for leopards, which go to the nearby water hole at night to feed...
...knew a farmer in Kenya once, who lived with his wife and daughter on a spread as remote as he could find, in Laikipia, up above Nanyuki, among elephants and giraffes and baboons and lions. He'd been a coal miner in England, and looked a little like a tougher, non-literary D. H. Lawrence - dark-browed, long-faced. He came to Africa, he told me vehemently, "because I hate the sight of a paved road! I can't stand it!" His black eyes flashed violently...
...deep, largely positive feelings toward it -- not as a lost continent but as one yet to be found. "If I could arrange it, I think I would live there," says Morrow. He has even pinpointed the spot: "Probably around the Great Rift Valley, northwest of Mount Kenya on the Laikipia plateau." He could do worse...
...Watching the baboons is like watching a soap opera," Strum says, "except that the baboons are much nicer people than you see on Dallas or Dynasty." A visitor walks out with Strum among the baboons at 8 a.m. in Laikipia. They are feeding on the buds of an acacia tree not far from the granite kopje where they sleep. Strum knows all the baboons. "That is C.J. and Ron," she begins. "The female is Zilla. C.J. and Ron have a conflict of emotions." Ron is new to the troop, and so is Ndofu...
...magic evening light comes across the Laikipia Plateau, and the baboons straggle in from their day's browsings among the acacia flowers. They sit and socialize on the lower rocks of their high kopje, grooming one another with a sweet absorption, playing with their babies. Like almost everyone and everything in Africa, they seem profoundly tribal. Another troop of baboons arrives, 100 yards away, and each tribe stares at the other with a nervous intensity across the lovely evening light...