Mbabu Muturi runs the Gauntlet with his Toyota Landcruiser ahead of the KTM Cruising Team driven by Ian Duncan, who took the third place overall in this year’s event at Baringo. / Chris Omollo
IT IS POSSIBLY THE LONGEST CONSERVATION FENCE in the world, covering a distance of 400 km, enclosing nearly 2,000 sq km, spanning hills and rivers, and costing more than Ksh630 million ($8 million) to erect over a period of 20 years.
But by the end of 2009, the Aberdare Forest and Park will be fully enclosed by a seven-foot high electric fence. Communities are protected on one side, animals and woodland on the other. It could, in all likelihood, become a blueprint for other parks in Africa.
Those of us who live in Nairobi need to be grateful. Ninety per cent of the capital’s water supply flows down off those hills, and the rivers provide 40-50 per cent of all its electricity.
Without the fence, Nairobi would be facing even greater water shortages and power cuts than we already have.
All this stems from what began as a small, hick mzungu event that sprang to life after a beer-fuelled conversation in the men’s bar of the Muthaiga Club 21 years ago.
Today, the practice of taking a 4x4, stripping it back, adding gigantic tyres, winches, souped-up engines and a suspension that could bounce an airplane is part of a serious logistical and fundraising phenomenon.
It still feels like a KC event though.
“OK! Come!” With no ceremony, no politeness, the diminutive Anton Levitan, clerk of course for the Rhino Charge summoned the driver teams over to where he stood atop a Landrover bonnet, a hangman’s noose slung as a joke in the tree next to him.
In a short drivers’ briefing, he outlined the perils and problems associated with this year’s course. Wildlife issues – not elephants but bees.
Take your evening-before antihistamine to allow time for us to rescue you if you get stung to bits.
Boring drivers who stay on tracks instead of going off road will be penalised. Condoms and morning-after pills on sale at the medical centre.
“Go get your maps,” he ends.
And with that this year’s Rhino Charge begins.
It’s midnight, seven hours after briefing and under the weak light of several head torches, a mechanic pours coolant into the radiator of Team 25’s converted Range Rover V8 in an attempt to ready it for the event, which for them starts just before dawn — in five hours’ time.
As half the group sit with GPSs, pins, and the map, plotting checkpoints and routes, the remainder watch as their mechanic curses, “This 400 shilling coolant that you buy. You think because of the price that it is going to work well… it is as thin as drinking water…” he mumbles, topping up the radiator.
Nearby, Team 18’s car, another Range Rover, sits pink and pretty and heavily sponsored as its all-girl team, Pinks in Charge, work out their route.
THE RHINO CHARGE, WHICH is an off-road rally event based on the premise of getting around a series of checkpoints in the shortest possible distance, has been held in the muddy Maasai Mara, in the vast sweeps of the Kerio Valley and the lugga land of Samburu.
The location is kept secret until a few days before the event to prevent people sneaking an advance look at the terrain.
Today, it’s the turn of the boulder-strewn rocky drylands of Baringo north, just in the foothills of the beautiful Tugen Hills.
Looks like paradise to the sweep of the eye.
It isn’t when you pop off the dirt roads and into thick thorny scrub, strewn with boulders.
Competitors are given a map the night before the start of the event, and a series of co-ordinates for the checkpoints. Their task is to plot and drive a route to all these different points without using the roads.
For added spice, two Tiger Lines – direct point-to-point routes in impossibly steep conditions — and one Gauntlet – an insane, intense short stretch — are added to the already difficult driving mix.
Cars vary, from the customised, fully kitted Landrovers to US army Unimogs that simply tear through the bush, devouring terrain.
These Unimogs were at a disadvantage this year, being too wide to run The Gauntlet — a 672-metre section between two checkpoints that consisted of huge six foot boulders tightly packed into a dry river bed, faced by sheer rock rising some 75 feet on either side.
Add to that a posse of angry bees that had already necessitated moving one checkpoint, and you had the major driving challenge of this year’s Charge.
The Gauntlet is also the favoured spot for spectators — this year, several thousand people turned up to clamber up to watch the action at close hand as the Charge vehicles bumped, ground and dropped up and over the boulders, often leaving a slick of black oil as sump after sump was mushed.
We arrived to find a traffic jam in this gully — three cars, including a Unimog, waiting as a veteran charge team tried to winch their very stuck Range Rover out of its gridlock position between three rocks.
They succeeded in flipping over a huge boulder to which they had attached their winch, before the superior engine power of the Rhino Charge rescue truck was called in to yank them up and out of their prone position.
The next two cars slipped through in good time — the huge tyred Landrover simply crawling up and over the rocks like a rubber-wheeled spider, while the orange, Adam magazine-sponsored newcomer team managed to bounce, winch and sand-ladder their car through the jagged terrain with the sort of proficiency seen by more seasoned Rhino Chargers, to rousing cheers of the crowd.
Booze is banned at checkpoints except of course the Gauntlet, where the greatest crowds gather. At this point — around 11.30am — the spectators, who include a motley bunch of skinny, jean wearing, beer-can waving young African women — sit just feet away from the cars crawling through the gap.
More seasoned Indian families with collapsible chairs and cool-boxes watch from farther up the slopes under the shade of the few sparse trees.
A smattering of white faces dot the crowd — debunking the myth that this is still a KC-only event. On the audience side, at least.
By 4pm, nearly five beer-drinking hours later, the mood of the crowd at the Gauntlet had changed. Taunting replaces cheering, especially when the all-white crews start their struggle through the narrow gap.
The abuse spreads to the crowd-controlling KK security guards and soon bottles start to fly, bouncing off the bonnets of the already beleaguered cars.
Meanwhile, a steady stream of the most aggressive spectators, as well as those no longer able to stand, are dragged and carried the 300 metres out of the rock-filled gully and back in the general direction of their cars.
“Why travel 350km out to Mogosowok, to sleep in a tent, drink beer, insult Kaburus, eat dust, when you can do all of that quite easily in Nairobi?” asks a nearby and upset young photographer.
Fortunately not all behaviour seen at Rhino Charge is of this nature. Interspersed are examples of shining behaviour, the best of which is annually honoured with the Spirit of the Charge award.
This year it went to Peter Kinyua, whose Unimog was unceremoniously hit by another that lost traction near the top of a hill, rolling six times as it tumbled downward, flinging its driver out headfirst onto the rocky hillside before bashing into Kinyua’s vehicle below.
The chances of two of these hulking territory-swallowers being in the same place at the same time in an event where there are no roads, and therefore few common routes, was tiny.
But it happened.
Peter used his wrenched-off bonnet lid as a stretcher for the unconscious head-injured driver of the rolled Unimog, who was placed into the Lady Lori rescue helicopter and airlifted to hospital in Nairobi.
Kinyua waited two and a half hours at the bottom of that hill for his bonnet hood to be returned to him once its stretcher duties were over, and it made its medivac way back from Nairobi.
It is an event that, by its lack of rules and ruggedness, means injuries happen. One prepared Landrover drove by with the team’s names and blood groups painted on the outside of the vehicle.
Just quite how you would know, however, who was Johnny, Freddy or Dee, to administer the O+ or B- blood wasn’t known.
As the vehicles roared across the land, its waif-like inhabitants, also often swaying from copious beer swilling, nipped into camps and hovered around checkpoints grabbing the ubiquitous plastic water bottles.
This is a place where collecting honey and keeping bees is a major cottage industry — the advent of tens of thousands of receptacles was clearly a huge bonus.
The Charge aims to bury and burn the mounds of rubbish generated by the advent of 65 six-crewed competitor 4WDs and nearly 1,000 spectator vehicles that spend Madaraka Day tearing through bush and along scrubby tracks.
“We ensure we leave no footprint behind,” said Levitan.
“Any camp found to have left litter will never ever again be allowed to enter the Rhino Charge. Ever,” he added for a bit of extra emphasis. You know he’s serious.
THEY EVEN COMMISSION AN independent environmental impact assessment to ensure the land is left intact, but surely an event in which trees get torn up as cars scramble through the thick bush, trampling the local flora, and no doubt some of its fauna, inevitably leaves a series of large fat tyre prints in its wake.
It is somewhat ironic that this Charge, which is about protection of the environment and conservation of wildlife, does cause a fair amount of damage in its undertaking.
Still there is no underestimating its fundraising prowess.
As was pointed out by the prize-giving guest of honour, ex-pres Daniel arap Moi, “If people here really want to make money, they should raise rhinos, not goats,” he joked as he announced that the Ksh2.9 million ($37,000) raised through gate and camping fees was to go to the communities on which this year’s event was held.
The biggest prize was the whopping Ksh67 million ($859,000) raised for the fence — or in this case new projects, now that its 20-year circuit around the Aberdares is complete.
Baringo councillors present suggested a change of direction: Could they have the funds to help resuscitate Kamnarok, the second largest crocodile-hosting lake in the world (after Lake Chad apparently) — which is 30km northwest of Kabarnet and drying up through silt choking and erosion?
It’s perhaps not quite the purpose that the organisers had in mind. And it was certainly not one that Kabarnet’s most famous returned resident seemed interested in supporting. He was notably silent. Maybe it’s just not his thing – fencing in reptiles.
