March 2007 © Janet Davis
We entered 
boxed lunches while sitting on a curb in the
parking lot. After all, we had a game
drive ahead of us before reaching our lodge in the middle of the park and
Micato did not want us going hungry.
Serengeti comes from siringet, the Maasai word for “endless plains”, and while vast grassy plains cover about one-third of the park, the rest is woodland, riverine forest, rocky hills and rivers. The rich soil of the plains was laid down 3 to 4 million years ago, the product of volcanic ash blowing from the nearby crater highlands.
The first inhabitants of the Serengeti were ancient
hunter-gatherers. More recently, Maasai
pastoralists tended their herds there, tracking the rains and the fresh grasses
in the same way that the wildebeest and other hoofed animals do today in their 
annual migration. That migration route defines the Serengeti
Ecosystem which is much larger than the official park area, more than 10,000
square miles. It includes
In essence, the great Serengeti
migration follows the rains. The months of February-March feature the
synchronized calving season in the southern short grass plains, when 90 percent
of the female wildebeest give birth over a 3-4 week period while grazing on the
nutritious grasses growing in the volcanic soil there. When the rains finish in May, the plains
quickly dry out and more than 1.5 million wildebeest march west and eventually
north into the Maasai Mara, moving in long, meandering columns or in herds of
thousands. The river crossings are
legendary, with masses of the animals leaping from cliffs, some to their
deaths. They arrive at the long grasses
of their 
winter grazing grounds between June and July
and move slowly clockwise until November, when they circle back through the
Ngorongoro area to the southern plains.
Along with the wildebeests, the migration includes Thomson’s gazelles, plains zebras, elands and sometimes elephants, ostriches and other wildlife. Ecologically, there is a grazing balance struck between these ungulates, with plains zebras eating the tops of the grasses, wildebeests with their blunt muzzles consuming the mid-sections, and gazelles finishing off the bases. Zebras have a better sense of sight and hearing than the wildebeest, so their cries often provide an early warning against predators.
Wildebeests (Connochaetes taurinus) are known as white-bearded gnus in
As we left the picnic area and began our drive into the park, we saw common
Maasai ostriches and a migratory European stork enjoying its winter home. And we came upon a colony of marabou storks
preening and drying their wings.
Scavengers, they are often found near garbage dumps or an animal kill
and will eat almost any animal, from grasshoppers to the hollowed-out carcass
of an elephant. In fact, their bald
heads are said to have evolved to let them dig into a freshly killed animal
without getting their feathers bloodied.
Writes Mathiessen in The
Tree Where Man Was Born: “The marabou, with its raw skull and pallid
legs, is more ill-favored still: it
takes to the air with a hollow wing thrash, like a blowing shroud, and a horrid
hollow clacking of the great bill that can punch through tough hide and lay open
carcasses that resist the hooks of the hunched vultures.” Adult marabous can reach almost five feet in
height with a wingspan of up to 10 feet.
It’s fascinating that the fine underfeathers of these large, ungainly
birds adorned stylish ladies’ hats in 19th century
Driving further into the park, we
came upon large herds of plains zebras (Equus
quagga burchelli) with their young.
Zebras are
There is little romance in zebra courtship. When a stallion wants a new filly, he must abduct her from her father’s herd. At the age of 1 – 2 years, a female zebra begins ovulating; in her monthly estrus, she adopts the time-honored adolescent stance of sticking out her tail, stretching her neck and chewing with her mouth open. (Does this sound familiar?) Stallions mill around her herd and compete for her favor by fighting with each other and her father. The stallion that finally inseminates her becomes her partner for life – along with several other kidnapped females. If she’s the first filly in a harem, she is the dominant mare with other mares and fillies subservient to her. Bachelor herds organize according to age.
If all this sounds a little
Darwinian, that’s probably because it is.
In essence, the gene pool becomes strengthened through the dominance of
a fearless alpha male. After all, if a
feckless filly went off with the 
stallion with the best-looking stripes, who
knows what evolutionary mayhem might occur?
And strange as it seems, those stripes are another evolutionary
strategy. Though they appear highly
visible to us, to a color-blind lion or hyena they are very confusing, given
that zebras walk in large herds through long-bladed grasses. So, safety in numbers and in stripes.
A zebra foal is born weighing about 70 pounds and is typically standing within fifteen minutes and nursing and running within an hour. This fast development rate is a necessity when there are predators watching the birthing and the herd must keep moving to feed on long grass. Unlike its mother, a zebra foal has a fuzzy, brown-and-white coat.
Many of the zebras had paired off and were exhibiting a trait called mutual head-resting. Largely an anti-predation stance, it allows them to rest their large heads on each other’s back, flicking flies away while gazing in opposite directions for predators. It is not part of courtship and usually involves females within a harem, siblings, or a mother and foal. (For more on the plains zebra, read this Wikipedia page.)
Soon we saw the ancient granite
outcrops jutting out of the Serengeti’s flat, grassy plains. Called inselbergs or kopjes – a Dutch/Afrikaans word 
pronounced “copies” and meaning “small heads”
– they offer shade and shelter to many of the wild animals in the park. “On
the plain,” writes Mathiessen, “the
bone of Africa emerges in magnificent outcrops or kopjes, known to geologists
as inselbergs, rising like stone gardens as the land around them settles, and
topped sometimes by huge perched blocks, shaped by the wearing away of
ages. The kopjes serve as water
catchments, and in the clefts, where aeolian soil has mixed with eroded rock,
tree seeds take root that are unable to survive the alternate soaking and dessication
on the savanna, so that from afar the outcrops rise like islands on the grass
horizon.”
We drove around the Gol Kopjes,
hoping to see a lion or cheetah climbing down and heading out onto the plain to
get dinner. Obviously, it was a little
too early because the lions were sound asleep on the smooth rock surface and
the cheetah was snoozing in behind some shrubs and trees.
We arrived at the Serengeti Sopa
Lodge and were welcomed by the staff with damp towels for our faces and
refreshing glasses of 
passion-fruit juice. Our room was lovely, the most luxurious so
far, with a king-sized bed, deep tub and stunning balcony view of the
Serengeti. (We later found out that not
all our gang enjoyed this level of accommodation which was the result of a
hotel glitch, so we endured lots of friendly griping.)
On Saturday, March 3rd,
we headed out for our morning game drive with Safari Director Philip along as
We passed giraffes nibbling at
acacias, a huge saddle-billed stork perched atop a tree, hippos bathing in the
We whiled away a few moments on
our morning drive by asking Philip about Tanzania’s colonial history. In his own affable way, he gave us the
25-words-or-less version of the “scramble for Africa”, the massive 
19th century land grab by European
nations intent on dividing up the entire African continent amongst
themselves. In essence, said Philip,
countries like Angola and Mozambique that had been colonized by Portugal, and
Belgian colonies such as Rwanda, Burundi and Congo, fared far worse in their
post-colonial prospects than did Tanzania (Tanganyika), originally a German
colony but handed to Britain after WW I.
Once the British departed after independence,
As always, we were impressed with Philip’s ability to illuminate us on any topic, from the Maasai culture, to animal life, to wildflower identification, to African history. Coupled with a great sense of humor and his calm handling of all safari details (and complications), we considered ourselves lucky to have him lead our trip.
On our way to the Serengeti
Visitor Centre, Frederick pointed out the dark profile of a leopard asleep on a
branch high in an acacia. And a little further, we saw our first topi standing
on the road in front of us. At the
Centre, we toured the exhibits in the building and read about the relationship
between the Frankfurt Zoological Society and the Serengeti, including the role
of the film-making Grzimeks whose memorial we had seen at Ngorongoro. Some of the group elected to take an
interesting nature walk around the grounds before returning past the Seronera
River to the lodge for lunch. The river
is one of several that criss-cross the
After lunch, we rested, walked
the lodge grounds (more agama lizards) and swam in the pool before heading out
on our late-afternoon game drive. As we
drove east across the plains, I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of these vast
grasslands that stretch all the way to the horizon, rippling like golden-green
waves under a massive blue sky. It’s a
landscape almost impossible 
to capture on film, even in a wide-angle
shot. But I tried.
Our final surprise destination was a picnic area where sundowner cocktails were served as we enjoyed the golden light of our last afternoon in the Serengeti. After a glass of wine, it seemed like the perfect time to try out my few words of Swahili on the guides and drivers, so I worked up my courage and walked over to where they were standing. They were amused as I started singing a popular African song:
Malaika, nakupenda malaika.
Malaika, nakupenda malaika.
Ningekuoa mali we,
Ningekuoa dada,
Nashindwa na mali sina we,
Ningekuoa Malaika.
I sang two more verses, and the guys were laughing and stomping their feet by the time I’d finished. “Where did you learn that?”, one asked. I told them I’d first heard it as a teenager when I’d seen South African singer Miriam Makeba perform it in concert with Harry Belafonte. (“Malaika” means “my angel”, and the song is the lament of a young man who doesn’t have enough money to marry his girlfriend.) Having looked up the lyrics on the internet and memorized the verses phonetically, my trip gave me the chance to bring it to life. “Mama Safari”, cried the guys, jokingly alluding to Makeba’s exalted status as “Mama Africa”. (Listen to the Belafonte/Makeba duet.)
As we drove back to the lodge for dinner, we were treated to the sight of a full moon rising over the Serengeti.
Early Sunday morning, we checked
out and headed to the nearby Seronera Air Strip for the three short-hop flights
to Arusha,
Lengai is a stratovolcano, a
steep, conical type of volcano with viscous magma that flows easily, unlike
flatter shield volcanoes such as