Flying Doctors and the Migration of the Wildebeest
Now:
From the window of the Cessna Caravan, I can see the red soil of East Africa bleeding. Cracks in the Great Rift Valley run like veins across the barren land, crumbling under the weight of one of the worst droughts in decades. Small circular settlements lie below, thatch huts surrounded by rings of scrub, isolated from tracks or roads. The plane is rattling with turbulence, wings shaking, rollercoaster dips. A lake appears, reflecting the sun, and even from 7000ft I can see orbs on its riverbanks, the bulk of hippos. We bank left, and descend suddenly onto bracken, dirt runway. There will be time to admire hippos and crocs later. It’s time for the Flying Doctors to get to work.
Earlier:
They looked like long, dented tin cigar holders. When the first one rolled by, standing in the hallways of Kenyatta General Hospital in Nairobi, I thought it might be food prepared from the kitchen. It couldn’t be…. could it? The second confirmed it, and the third, with the unmistakable shape of feet discernible just inside the lid, cast any doubt. Dead bodies, wheeled along between patients, visitors, and a TV crew. The hospital smelled like a moral stain, an overcrowded urban nightmare, a rose made of rusty blades. Upstairs, I had just been introduced to Lopotunye, a 14-year old boy who had survived a tribal massacre, walking 10km with a bullet wound to the shoulder, and his jaw blown off by an AK-47. His parents were not so lucky. The Flying Doctors had rescued him, saved his life. This was a routine follow up, a personal visit in a clinical system. I shook the boy’s hand, looked into his eyes, and felt his courage, his confusion, his sadness, his hope. This is Africa, and his future is Africa’s future.
Later:
The alarm goes off at 5am, time to get up for a sunrise safari in Masai Mara National Park. From my luxury four-poster bed, inside my five star opulent tent, I can see a dull flashlight of morning sun over the savannah, and make out dozens of grazing wildebeest, sprinkled like poppy seeds on the top of a toasted bagel. The animals have survived a tense night amidst their predators, and will now continue their great migration south to the Serengeti, across the border into Tanzania. For a brief part of their journey, I’ll follow them, secure in the back of a Land Rover, clutching a delicate Pimms cocktail, stuffed on some of the best food I’ve tasted anywhere in the world. I’m living the safari cliche in the wildest possible style imaginable: a butler, a chef, an infinity swimming pool overflowing into the veld, metres away from huge buffalo, a string of elephants in the distance. This is Africa too, the Africa of dreams.
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