A secret lake lies in a crater within site of Kilimanjaro’s towering snow-clad mountain, only we can’t see Africa’s tallest mountain because of the thick clouds.
Formed by explosive eruptions thousands of years ago, the crater-lake is fed by underground streams from the mighty mountain.
Its turquoise blue-green waters stand in stark contrast to the dry and dusty land where fat baobabs and thorny trees tough it out under a merciless sun.
Dust trails the cars driving out from Voyager Ziwani on the edge of Tsavo West national park to the secret crater-lake, driving past red-earth anthills, the shambas of the Taveta people and the turning to the hill where Grogan built his castle in 1930.
Nobody would guess what lies in the mound amidst this non-descript terrain until one reaches the rim and a burst of blue sparkles in the volcano’s crater. So secret is it that one could easily drive past it.
Even today few people visit it but historical records show that during the First World War, the allied forces marched around the northern edge in their advance on Taveta to battle it out with the Kaiser’s force.
Scrambling down the narrow path to reach the shores of the pretty pond that’s 4.5 square kilometres and 94 metres deep with the invisible line separating Kenya and Tanzania, we meet two women climbing up with fish bought from the local fishermen.
The women, are from the shores of Lake Victoria almost 800-kilometres away. On my first visit to the lake eight years ago, nobody dared swim in it for a teenage British girl, Amy Nicholls had been killed by a crocodile.
Her body was found on the Tanzanian side and brought to Nairobi for a post-mortem where it was revealed that the culprit was a croc. A local diving team spotted one a few years ago and a pair of tusks lying on the lake bed.
On closer look, the tusks were plastic used in a film shot on location. Little boys swim by a collapsed bridge which some enterprising person wanted to build to connect Kenya and Tanzania – secretly l think it would have spoiled the beauty of the stunning lake besides affecting the natural biodiversity.
Sitting on the shore of the lake, I weigh the odds of bumping into a croc. More unlikely than being hit by a car in Nairobi and none of the local guys have seen one in many, many years.
Floating on the water surrounded by the steep walls of the volcano and its forest of euphorbia and fig trees and a blue sky above, life’s a dream. A lone African fish eagle soars above to complete the idyllic picture.
Diving a few feet underwater shows the sun’s rays filter through clear water. But like everybody in the group questions, where did the crocodile come from when there is no surface river flowing into it.
Picture by ©Gurinder Sehmi
A little investigation solves the mystery. The Challa croc-culprit is no other than Grogan, one of Kenya’s most vivid colonial characters who besides building his enormous castle on the nearby hill, pioneered large-scale farming and irrigation in Taveta.
He in his wisdom, then brought some rare dwarf crocodiles as pets and had them shipped from Madagascar in the 1930s and put into Lake Challa, which lay in his 9,650-square-mile estate.
The crocs were thought to have become extinct in the lake some years ago, many killed by the local fishermen in the 1990s when the toothy reptile continually ruined their fishing nets. Maybe it was just the lone one lurking in 2002.
Article by Rupi Mangat, rupi.mangat@yahoo.com Reproduced Courtesy of Nation Newspapers. All rights Nation Media Group Ltd. As appeared on Saturday Magazine, 20th November 2010
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