"Teacher, the baboon stole our bread!"

As we practiced the African art of waiting in the back office of Hell's Gate National Park, we felt like school children waiting in the principal's office after tattling on a bully. "Teacher, the baboon stole our bread!" We weren't sure if our tattling was merited, but like children who lacked skillful means, we didn't know what else to do. We waited and waited that afternoon, as clouds rolled in taming the ferocious sun and park rangers told us baboon tales.

The park rangers claimed that baboons target white skinned people; that they fear blacks; and that they fear in particular black skinned people wearing national park uniforms. The rangers, who were both amused by and empathetic to our plight, assured us that the baboons only want our food; they do not want to hurt us. They may show us their sharp teeth, inflame their red butts, rip our bags from our hands, tear open our tents, and poo on our non-edibles. Scaring us and maligning our belongings are simply means to consoling their deep pitiful hunger, so the rangers said. We mused over these tales feeling a smidge incredulous that the big baboon was really hungry and not simply mean and too lazy to find his own food.

Hell's Gate National Park is an awesome reserve full of beasts, all of whom appear to be feasting virtually nonstop. How dry, dusty canyon lands with red walls and pillars of columnar basalt sustain such great herds of eaters mystifies the untrained observer. Regardless, the park authorities permit visitors to cycle through the park unescorted, witnessing giraffes, buffaloes, zebras, gazelles, ostriches, warthogs, and bushbuck feeding across the savanna.

On the morning of our baboon encounter, we had cycled three kilometers into the park and up a sandy road to Naiburta Camp on a cliff overlooking the savanna. We selected the perfect campsite, set up our tent, and settled into the shade to eat and wait out the high sun hours.

We had eaten our fill and settled into the lazy heat when the thief, a large, lumbering baboon, appeared at our campsite. Cindy scampered into the sun, gathered rocks, and began hurling them at the beast, leaving Greg alone with the food. The baboon nary broke stride for the rocks, instead becoming ever larger and running directly towards Greg, or more precisely the food. The charging baboon puffed up his hair, flashed his gigantic canines and juicy pink gums, growled, maximized the muscles of his barrel chest, and Greg reacted by banging furiously on a pot. Without hesitation, the baboon ran right past Greg, plucked our bread from our belongings, and strutted over to a tree ten meters away where he plopped onto his red swollen behind and gorged himself, eyeing us smugly all the while.

With hot fear in our veins, we grabbed our remaining food and loose belongings, left the tent, and peddled back to the entrance where we tattled on the bad baboon. Ultimately, three armed rangers informed us that the punishment for stealing our bread would be "elimination." The rangers wrapped in shawls to disguise their national park uniforms, drove us in a nonregulation vehicle (the baboons recognize the park vehicles, too, the rangers said), and brought us with our bikes back to the campsite. When we arrived at the campsite, a safari tour, including four African guides, had set up camp and the baboon was nowhere in sight. The park rangers encouraged us to befriend the guides and continue our stay, which we did.

In the low sun of the late afternoon, we biked past giraffes, buffalo, warthogs, and gazelles out to a gorge at the north end of the park. We declined an English speaking park guide and instead ended up with a self-appointed non-English speaking Masai guide. Our old, jovial, happy-go-lucky, skinny as a rail guide led us limberly through a maze of rock walls, steaming hot springs, and florescent green moss. Down we hopped, with old skinny bones gesticulating the way, tasting bitter salts and splashing through hot waterfalls. We finished the tour and biked in the gloaming back to camp.

In a corner of our new African friends' campsite, we huddled around our stove. The park rangers had told us that the baboons go to sleep around 5 or 6PM, so we need not worry about them until morning. In the morning, the rangers would come back to check on us.

The bad baboon, however, stayed up late that night prowling the cliff side above the campsite well past 6PM. He eyed us haughtily from afar until he saw our sling-shot wielding African friend and sulked off into the darkness.

Before retiring to our tent, we secured our food and belongings in the safari van. Upon closing her eyes, Cindy was out like a light and slept like a rock.

Greg, on the other hand, riveted by his duty to protect his slumbering wife, spent the night consumed by baboon thoughts. He plotted about what he would do upon seeing a large canine or claw come through the tent. As he worked in his mind through the contingencies of a baboon attack, he held his wife with one arm and a large wooden stake with the other. He imagined beating the baboon with the wooden stake and handing Cindy his belt so she could simultaneously whip the beast. He worried that the smell of food lingered on our clothes and sleeping mats on which we had used the stove. He pondered the rangers' contradictory claims that the baboons would not hurt us, but that they are very dangerous. He envisioned the baboon chasing us from our tent and plotted how we could most quickly exit. He feared the worst: what if the baboon returned with one of his big male buddies and they attacked us together from both sides? Above all, Greg was certain that the baboon would be back at sunrise; he could not risk sleeping through sunrise since we must not be in the tent when the baboon arrived. Dreams of baboon canines filled the small spaces where Greg drifted out of plotting.

At last morning glow diluted the blackness and the day verged on sunrise. Greg shot upright, ready to get out of the tent and find the baboon. Cindy awoke deeply drowsy, beseeched Greg to stay in the tent, and slow like molasses began to get dressed.

In those long pre-dawn moments, the noises began: clearly the baboon was awake. This spurred us both out of the tent and over to our African neighbors' campsite. Waiting for the baboon to decimate our tent, we watched the colorful sunrise through the marbled clouds. Once the sun rose and the day became bright yellow, we saw the baboon in the distance. Shortly thereafter, an armed ranger arrived.

"The baboon will be eliminated," he assured us.

That morning we packed up camp and biked the Buffalo Circuit, a 14 kilometer loop, mostly uphill through rocks and soft sand, utterly unsuitable for biking. At times, we both walked a single bike up the road, as Cindy's strength sufficed only to overcome gravity's backward pull on the bike and pack and keep the bike upright. For Cindy, any forward movement came with excruciating effort. With one person pushing the bike from behind and the other balancing the bike in front, the task became manageable. In this manner, we leap-frogged the bikes up the most severe parts of the mountain.

The reward for our efforts was bliss: panoramas of pastoral Masai villages; the glassy shining Lake Naivasha; Mount Logonot's jagged crater silhouette; light playing on savanna and red columnar basalt; fields of grazing mammals; the feeling of exhaustion through exertion; breezing down the mountain; and biking out of the park to eat a meal far away from the big bad baboon.