Maasai Mara Dreaming, The idea of people living in peace with nature is more clear in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve than anywhere else in Africa.The Masai Mara National Reserve is one of the best wilderness areas in Africa, and the Great Wildebeest Migration is one of the natural wonders of the world. But this great park is more than just big groups and lots of wildlife.

The Wake-Up Call to the Mara

My childhood dream of the Masai Mara came from a picture I saw in a book: an acacia tree with a flat top and a giraffe on a faraway hill, both of them silhouetted against a wide sky. I felt everything when I thought about space. The picture wasn’t finished until my first trip to the Mara, when I took pictures of a giraffe and an acacia tree in the distance.

This idea of the perfect picture changed the same day I found my childhood dream. It happened on the first evening drive, when I saw young Maasai boys taking care of cattle and goats on the edge of the reserve. As I watched them, I thought about how western ideas had changed people who live close to the land.

They had been letting their cattle roam here and living with wild animals for longer than any written history of the continent. I had dreamed of the wide skies and postcard picture because of my wrong ideas about Africa.

Changing How Much You Value

With a mission to “show the real Africa” to possible tourists, the safari marketing lobby has changed how people think about appreciating the wilderness. There are no sounds or smells of the past in this real Africa.

We have a wrong idea about things because of Westernization. Before people moved into the wilderness, it smelled like wood smoke and heard people talking. Most environmentalists think that a “pure wilderness” is one that doesn’t have any people in it. We ruined the real wilderness and now we have to describe it.

There are a lot of people who think it’s wrong for people to roam openly in game reserves, but in our hearts, these tribesmen are the key to protecting the earth. We don’t know how much the earth is worth when we want people to leave.

These same people also made it possible for us to enjoy wilderness places today.

Coming back to traditional values

There is no doubt that the Masai Mara is one of the best places in Africa to see wildlife. But there is also a deeper side to it that connects the past and the present and takes us back to traditional ideals where people lived in harmony with nature.