Green Hills of Africa is Hemingway's non-fiction account of a month spent on safari in East Africa. In his foreword, he writes:

“Unlike many novels, none of the characters or incidents in this book is imaginary. [...] The writer has attempted to write an absolutely true book to see whether the shape of a country and the pattern of a month’s action can, if truly presented, compete with a work of the imagination.”

Now, this is a blog, not a book; my safari lasted a week, not a month; and I am surely no Hemingway. But on the other hand, Hemingway was armed with a .505 Gibbs and a 6.5 Mannlicher, whereas I came with a Canon with a zoom lens.

You'll find more photos here than in Green Hills of Africa, is all I'm saying.

Anyway: The Woman had spent the preceding few weeks working alongside The Doctor in Uganda's Mulago National Referral Hospital. The tale of their time in Mulago is not mine to tell, but if you want the flavour of it, have a look at this photo essay by Randy Olson.

Let's just say that The Woman and The Doctor were very much looking forward to a vacation when the three of us reunited in Nairobi.

The Doctor and The Woman, with the Great Rift Valley behind them.

The morning after our reunion, we were picked up by George, who would be our guide for the week. Here he is, standing in front of the Mystery Machine.

The Mystery Machine is a Toyota HiAce of uncertain vintage. It has full-time four-wheel drive, as you can see from the door, and we were grateful for that on many occasions. It also has a governor that limits its speed to 80 km/h. (This seems to be the standard for commercial vehicles in Kenya.) I dubbed it the Mystery Machine because, as with its namesake, its passengers climb inside without knowing exactly where they're going or what they'll see.

As for George: his father is Kikuyu - Kenya's largest ethnic group - and therefore so is he. However, his mother is Maasai, and so his friends call him "George Maasai" or sometimes "Maasai Maasai". He speaks Kikuyu, Swahili and English, and he seems to be on a first-name basis with half of the population of Kenya. He is a good driver, an adept guide, and excellent company.

We spent much of the next week inside the Mystery Machine, with George either driving us from one reserve to the next or bouncing along park trails. When not within the boundaries of the camps where we ate and slept, we were never apart from him, for obvious reasons:

Speaking of our camps...