Recalling my first encounter with the stunning Lake Manyara in Tanzania

I first arrived in Iringa town from my comparatively rural Njombe in 1968. I was an excited young man who was on his way to begin Form One - and embark on what turned to out be a long academic journey at the then prestigious Mkwawa High School.

But that’s a story for another day.

As the bus - one of the popular Leyland buses run by the-then East African Railways and Harbours - began scaling the panoramic Iringa escarpment, I saw a huge eye-catching billboard strategically mounted on the lower side of the escarpment. It had this dramatic drawing of a very fast-moving car hitting a black-suited man who was then sent flying in the air. The words below it read ‘Drive Carefully! We can’t Afford to Lose our Customers: Iringa Super Dry Cleaners.’

Naturally enough, I was intrigued. What had a dry cleaner got to do with road safety? It was only a year or so later that I came to construe its relevance: that suited men are major customers of dry cleaners. So, killing them is bad business for them!

This highly-imaginative ad has remained embedded in my mind.

The other memorable poster was the one I saw at the gate of Lake Manyara National Park in 1991.

As I entered the park with a group of European Travel Writers, I came across this strategically positioned notice on the lush green tropical roadside.

It read, ‘Let no one say. And say to your shame that everything was beautiful here until you came.’ It goes without saying that it was a message urging visitors not to vandalise and destroy the park’s beautiful natural habitat.

And, truly, on touring the park I was stunned by its rich and spectacular natural endowment. Actually, in the 1920s, the area was used for game hunting as a sport.

In 1957, it was turned into a game reserve - and, in 1960, it was given a national park status. It now covers 325 square kilometres and its alkaline lake, the 7th largest in the country by surface area, covers, when full, 470 square kilometres.

To the South East of the lake is a scattering of extinct volcanoes which rise in a splendid isolation from the open plains of the Maasai steppes. To the west, the lake is hemmed-in by the 600-metre golden-brown rift escarpment alluded to its name - ‘enemanyara’ being the spiky protective hedge grown around a Maasai boma.

Manyara’s dramatic setting was once extolled by writer Ernest Hemingway as “the loveliest I have seen in Africa...” And by a documentarian Colin Willock as “the most luxuriant place in the whole of the East African Rift Valley.”

The lake itself accounts for two-thirds of the park’s surface when full. But, shrinks to near invisibility in the periods of drought. A steady feed of underground springs ensures it never empties entirely.

We came across the famous tree-climbing lions which frequently ascend the acacia canopy, probably to escape from biting insects. The acacia woodland is also the favoured habitat of Manyara’s elephants.

We also observed primate interactions of hundred-or-so strong baboon troops which were lounging nonchalantly along the roadside while shyer blue monkeys hid in the foliage. The grassy flood plain was host to large herds of buffalo, wildebeest, zebra and giraffe.

The celebrated hippo pool was not only inhabited by hippos. It was also attracting waterbirds such as herons, storks, kingfisher and the iconic fish eagle.

Antelopes abounded, and also klipspringers lurking in the cliffs, as well as the tiny Kirk’s dik-dik with its twitchy nose. In a nutshell: there are about 400 species if bird life in the park.

Indeed, it will be a great shame if one was to tamper with this beautiful Paradise-on-Earth!

And let no one say - and say to one’s shame - that everything was beautiful there... Until ‘you’ came!

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The author is a veteran journalist and communication expert base in Arusha