The Secret Sculptures of Nandi Hills

High on the hills of Nandi stand a part of a once grand forest that covered the escarpment. With time, the forest disappeared bit by bit, replaced by green swathes of tea and coffee farms. Further on its foothills is the sugarcane belt.

We’re at the foot of the Nandi escarpment, driving through Chemase along the Chemelil-Miwani Road, searching for what we’ve been told by tour guide Moses Taurus, is a mini Hell’s Kitchen — similar to the one near Malindi, by a village called Marafa.

He’s not with us, so we rely on instructions. It’s very easy to get lost while driving through a maze of muddy tracks, surrounded by tall green sugarcane.

After numerous stops to ask for directions, and on reaching a tiny trading centre at the village of Chepkemei, we’re told the turning “is just there”. A teacher, who is also the patron of the local wildlife club in the village school, sends his two sons to direct us to the eroded glaciers of sand.

There’s no way we could have found the turning on our own — it’s overgrown with bush, pointing to the fact that very few, if anyone, drives there.

“You leave the car now,” say our new guides, Benad Rotich and Chirchir Kitoo, both from the village primary school. “We walk.”

It looks really deserted, with only the sound of the breeze and the birds. “Is it far to walk?” l ask.

“No, there,” reply the boys in broken English.

“Where?” l scan for the site.

The boys point in the direction of a narrow path overgrown with vegetation. We begin walking. Suddenly, just like a flick of a new page, a depression in the ground reveals the mini Hell’s Kitchen.

I’d forgotten that even the real Hell’s Kitchen in Marafa is barely discernible at ground level because it’s a sunken sand cathedral with towering columns and pillars, naturally carved by the winds of time.

In all fairness, Nandi’s Hell’s Kitchen — if l may borrow the name from the original one — is much smaller than the one near the coast.

From a distance, even the sand columns hardly look impressive until we’re actually in the depression. The pillars are tall but not gigantic, unlike the Marafa ones, but they are nevertheless stunning.

The boys lead us through an eroded maze, the walls of glistening sand particles edged by a blue clear sky.

Beautiful pebbles cover the ground like a patterned carpet. The rest is green with the sugar cane farms and the hills.

Nobody seems to know much about the secret sand land. “Sometimes, we see lorries which come to take sand,” say the boys.

“I think this could be soil erosion over many years,” Philip Kirui of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya ponders.

It’s ironic that we’re standing in a stunning sandscape of towering columns and pillars — but one created by erosion.

Erosion occurs when the soil has nothing to hold on to, no rock and no roots from grasses and old ancient trees.

Periodic clearing of the land to replant crops makes it easier for the wind and the water to scrape off layers of land, each strata revealing a period in time for scientists and researchers to read.

Today, soil erosion is one of the most serious environmental problems, leading to loss of land for agriculture, pasture for animals and a sponge to soak up rain water as the soil becomes less porous.

Even the Dalai Lama, the great Buddhist spiritual leader, has this to say about soil erosion. “The threat of nuclear weapons and man’s ability to destroy the environment are really alarming.

And yet there are other almost imperceptible changes — I am thinking of the exhaustion of our natural resources, and especially of soil erosion — and these are perhaps more dangerous still, because once we begin to feel their repercussions, it will be too late.” (Pg 144: The Dalai Lama’s Little Book of Inner Peace: 2002, Element Books, London).

In the case of the mini Hell’s Kitchen, hidden in the green maze of sugar fields, there’s little that can be done to rehabilitate it. It’s a local “natural wonder”. It’s better to be conserved than wasted away to sand harvesters.

One of the most famous examples of an eroded landscape is the stunning Grand Canyon in the USA, carved by the Colorado River, with walls running 4,000 to 6,000 feet at its deepest, 15 miles at its widest and 277 miles long.

Though our local eroded valley is miniscule in comparison, it’s something for the tourism officials to look into.

rupi.mangat@yahoo.com