Sunlit Safari

When I lived in London, I twice went out to East Africa, where my parents were living at the time, to safari from Nairobi through Masai country to Tanzania, passing Mt Meru, Mt Kilimanjaro and Arusha. My destination was Dodoma, in Central Tanzania, and later, Dar es Salaam, on the coast. My two visits have left me with many memories - taking tea with a Kikuyu family in their mud-and-straw hut, its ceiling blackened with soot from the interior fireplace; visiting a leper colony, where women happily pounded corn; discovering an old graveyard where German soldiers sleep (Tanzania was part of German East Africa before World War One and these unfortunates, all young, were swept away by Blackwater Fever); roadside chats with Masai; hyenas wakening me as they rummaged through garbage cans at my parents' house; and, unforgettable, a visit to Lake Manyara National Park, where the lake turned pink with flamingos before my eyes and a sleeping lion yawned at me just metres from the car and then ambled away. East Africa is a special place, and all the time I was there, I had this overwhelming sense of deja vu, a kind of race memory, a feeling that "I have been here before."

East Africa has changed in the intervening years. Economies have crumbled, corruption has taken its toll, AIDS has impacted once healthy communities. And yet, and yet. The country remains as it was, with its great Rift Valley, sunlit plateaux, resourceful vegetation, teeming animal population and infinite sense of space. I loved it. You will, too.

Top: young Masai warrior Below: candelabra tree en route; German graves, Kilimatinde; leper women, Kilimatinde; my lion at Lake Manyara; Mt Meru; Lake Manyara National Park at sunset