The tour group left Nairobi about seven-thirty on a sunny Saturday morning. The guide and driver was a Kenyan who called himself “Captain” Williams and had christened his open-air flatbed truck the “ Ark. ” Captain Williams' claim to fame, it seemed, was that decades before he had been the guide for none other than Lucy Baines Johnson, youngest daughter of LBJ.

In the group ferried along the pencil-thin roads of Kenya by the redoubtable Captain Williams were two young British men, traveling separately; a couple from Australia; a mid-twenties American oil field worker from Saudi Arabia who was treating his younger brother to the trip of a lifetime; a Canadian couple in their late twenties; and an American couple a few years older than the other travelers.

Although the day-long journey from Nairobi to Samburu was on roads best described as lane-and-a-half blacktop, the talkative Captain drove in a manner best described as erratic or worse: recklessly dangerous. Showing little concern for oncoming vehicles, the Captain whipped the big truck around, in, and out of whatever traffic presented itself along the way to the Northern Territory , the region of Kenya where Jomo Kenyatta was exiled for leading the Mau Mau uprisings of the 1950s.

Along the way the travelers passed several coffee farms, a huge pineapple field, and many waving children. They traveled through rolling hills dotted with small banana plantations, stopped briefly at the colorful marketplace in Karatina, and eventually climbed out of the hills and onto a plateau. By midday , Mt. Kenya loomed up to the right and they stopped for a picnic lunch in a small campground with a good view of the impressive 17,000 feet high landmark.

After lunch they went on to the equator where a handful of native craftsmen sold wooden animals and other touristy items out of a group of small kiosks at the side of the road. In mid-afternoon there was a stop at the Marina Hotel and Bar in Nanyuku for cool drinks and a brief rest before picking up two cases of Tusker Lager, a local brew, for consumption around the evening campfire .

A few hours after Nanyuku, the group reached Isiolo, gateway to the Samburu wild animal preserve and the Northern Territory . Here the group picked up a few last camping necessities from a small supermarket near the center of town. To the riders, Isiolo did not seem a typical Kenyan town, appearing to be as much an Arab place as an African one. The presence of many turbaned men with their saddled camels only added to this impression.

There was an odd atmosphere to Isiolo, as well, as if it were a town without law – an out of the way backwater trading center, hinting at unspoken criminality and danger. Two of the men on the tour discussed buying large knives from a young street hawker just as the truck pulled out of town for Samburu but their less paranoid companions talked them out of the purchase.

Over bumpy, dusty dirt roads the travelers finally reached Samburu with enough light left to make a late, short game run before going on to the campsite. The overwhelming and immediate impression of the preserve was that of a land under great stress from the drought that had plagued Kenya for nearly seven years.

Far worse than the Amboseli and Tsavo West preserves in southeast Kenya , the land of Samburu was dry, brown, and parched – the loose, cracked soil swept up and away by swirling wind and dust devil. The animals reflected their harsh environment. They were gray and brown and jittery, their bodies emaciated, ribs sticking out flagrantly in overt testimony to the dire circumstances in which they labored simply to stay alive.

The group arrived at their tented camp above a small stream around six p.m. and settled in after the long day of traveling. Two Masai guards, far afield there in the north, appeared in a jeep and helped the Captain prepare supper. On the horizon, to the northeast, as the tired tourists ate their evening meal, lightning flashes illuminated huge cumulus clouds rising massively into the dark sky at a far and safe distance beyond Samburu.

By the time the night had turned deeply dark, most of the campers had retired to the half-dozen permanent tents to rest up for the next day's photo runs through the bushy, dry terrain of the preserve. Outside the camp, as the travelers slept, life went on for the animals of Samburu, although at a considerably reduced pace.

The cry of insect and bird echoed in the night at staccato intervals mixed with an occasional growl of big cat or cry of baboon. Below the camp, the sound of a late feeding crocodile splashing in a small creek went unnoticed. All was quiet and safe. It was a pleasant night on the northern plain – at least for a couple of hours.

Then suddenly, near midnight, the camp was shocked out of its slumber by a different sound – the cry of one of their own. It was one of the young Brits who was standing in the middle of the camp yelling that he had been robbed at spear point.

In moments everyone turned out and the captain came hustling up with the Masai guards. The Aussie couple and the American oil field worker breathlessly told of being robbed, too. The captain sent the Masai guards off in search of the thieves and insisted that the Aussie and the American go with him in the truck to report the incident to local authorities.

Taking the two men with him, the captain cranked up his truck and in what seemed like mere seconds the three of them roared out of camp on the rutted road that led from the campsite through the brush and trees up a winding hill leading to a narrow strip of paved road that ran from the preserve back to the city of Isiolo.

Just like that, in a matter of only a few minutes, the campers had learned that they had been robbed, most likely by local tribesmen, and were now, those who remained in camp anyway, soon to be completely alone, on foot as it were in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, in Samburu, a most isolated reserve.

The stunned group stood around a quick makeshift fire listening to the grinding and belching of the big truck whose lights bounced wildly across the desert-like scrub beside the road. They watched the lights go straight out from the site then slowly turn in a clockwise semi-circle until they made a sharp right that paralleled the encampment. In what seemed like less than a heartbeat, the truck had disappeared into the Kenyan night.

For several minutes after the guards and the men and the truck had vanished into the black night, the camp was silent, each person allowing the sudden events to sink in. No one made even a gesture towards venturing beyond the established area of the tents. For the campers those first few moments after the truck disappeared left them with a feeling of being painfully alone, tiny in the vast dark African landscape, completely vulnerable.

The older American man immediately started trying to organize the camp. The robbers might come back, he reasoned, and who knew where they had come from or gone to. The first thing to do was find anything that could be used as a weapon. A short search of the area produced little of help: a broken shovel handle and the short end of an old, rusted hoe. Not much, but maybe better than nothing.

All the lamps in camp were then collected to provide some much needed light and pieces of dead wood were found nearby to build a large fire. A box of British “biscuits” and a large pot of tea provided comfort to the travelers as well as providing them with a certain sense of normalcy and the reassuring notion that every day amenities were being tended to.

Over the next few dark hours, with no one able to get more than a quick cat nap for rest, they checked the camp perimeter regularly every quarter of an hour. Despite their concern and frequent reconnoitering, the slow moving time passed uneventfully – until around four in the morning. The camp had been silent for some time, as most had drifted into a torpid state between sleep and waking when, suddenly, lights appeared in the brush beyond camp. Everyone leapt up.

“See those lights?” someone asked breathlessly. “Over there. See them?”

“I see them,” the older American said, grabbing up the partial shovel and wielding it like a metal-edged bat.

The nervous travelers formed into a loose circle at the head of camp, waiting for whomever was behind those lights. And the lights kept coming closer, jogging up and down like big, scary fireflies. The group edged closer together. The lights kept coming. But then another light appeared. Further out, to the right of camp, up on a distant rise.

“They're coming back,” another person cried out. “Look. It's the truck. It's the captain.”

“Yeah,” the older American said, lowering the shovel. “Oh, yeah.”

“It's the guards,” his wife said, as the bobbing lights were revealed to be the lanterns carried by the long-missing Masai security team.

“They saw the captain's light,” the older American said. “They were hiding out in the bush waiting for him to get back.”

Captain Williams' return was a loud and showy event, one met with considerable joy and relief. The Aussie and young American were greeted as long lost prodigals and the three policemen they brought along with them as conquering heroes. Tea was reheated and biscuits offered and accepted by the returning men and their cadre of well-armed officers.

The captain spoke briefly to the Masai guards and then they and the police made a brief search of the area, though it was still too dark for them to find any lost items or to stray more than a few yards away from the camp. Nonetheless, the presence of the police and the safe return of the two men from the group was enough to calm everyone and they repaired to their tents in order to get a little rest before the morning's first game drive, which the captain insisted would go on regardless of what had happened.

Before the morning drive could get underway, however, around seven-thirty, a squad of Kenyan soldiers rumbled up to camp in a dusty Land Rover. They were carrying .303 British Enfield rifles and at once set about investigating the robbery with detached efficiency. Somewhere down by the small creek that ran below the camp, the soldiers found pieces of clothing and the Aussie girl's glasses, fortunately unbroken, by a clump of bushes beyond the creek.

After completing their work, the soldiers explained that the thieves were most likely from a local tribe known for preying upon vulnerable tourists. The soldiers said that the camp had been robbed several times in succession over the past few months.

The difference in this case was the beer. The tribesmen had discovered the stash where it had been left cooling down by the small creek and they had drunk every last bottle. The result was that they had been emboldened to make a direct robbery rather than the more surreptitious raid that usually took place while unsuspecting tourists were out on a game drive.

“Yes, well,” the captain responded to a few pointed questions, “they usually cut holes in the back of the tents and take what they want that way. I fear this time they became overly brave by drinking the beer you left outside camp. Come along now, it's time for the morning drive.”

Shaking their heads, the tour group followed the Captain to his truck. The Masai guards waved as the travelers climbed aboard the big flatbed for another spectacular game drive in Kenya 's far north country.

In minutes the robbery was forgotten as the group, their spirits buoyed by the sight of so many exotic animals, thin though they may have been from the drought, allowed itself to be won over by the abundance of life that still remained in Samburu.

Mid-morning, after the game drive, they packed up their belongings – those who still had them that was – and piled back into the captain's big truck for the trip to Lake Nakuru, the next stop on the tour. On the way out, they again passed through Isiolo and this time when the boys hawked their long knives, some of the men, including the older American, immediately snatched them up.

For the remainder of the tour the knives were never far from the men, including the three days and nights they spent camped beside a small stream in the vast grasslands of the Masai Mara. In fact, they held onto their knives all the way back to Nairobi , the older American even going so far as to take his back to the states, carefully stowed inside his checked baggage.

Despite his wife's admonitions that the knife was purchased too late to do any good and that it would no doubt just become rusted and dull, the man refused to part with it. He wasn't planning to get rid of it any time soon, either, he told her. That knife wasn't going anywhere, it was going to stay with him forever. He didn't plan on being caught off guard again like they had at Samburu ever again. No, not ever again.