Learn Tribal Ways In Serengeti

The remote northern section of the Serengeti National Park is one of the last places on the planet where you can sense the incredible scale and solitude of Africa at its wildest. It is here, on the boundary of the park, that the kuria tribe are struggling to keep their traditions intact.

- Mark Eveleigh

“Nobody from my clan would ever kill or harm a zebra,”

Serengeti guide Amos Marwa explained. “They are protected spirit animals. But if a farmer from my clan finds a piece of zebra skin lying near a kill, he will often take it and bury it in his field as protection from hailstones.”

The zebra we were looking at had skin that was unlike any of the hundreds in the herd around him. Instead of the usual vivid black stripes, this astounding creature was shaded with faint gold. If zebras were sacred animals to Amos’s clan, then the albino zebra I was framing in my camera’s viewfinder was almost a deity. Albinism in zebras is extremely rare, and until recently, naturalists were not even aware that such animals were able to interact within the massive wild herds that roam this part of Tanzania. The shots I captured were among the very first of a blonde zebra taking part in the great Serengeti migration.

For generations, Marwa’s tribe, the Kuria, has shared its homelands with one of the greatest wildlife populations on our planet, yet the tribe has remained almost as unknown as its sacred golden zebra. We had spent the last week exploring the national park with Marwa’s fellow Kuria tribesman William Chacha.

The Serengeti was named after a local word meaning ‘endless plains’, and even today, the national park encompasses 14,750 square kilometres (about a quarter the size of Sri Lanka). While the central Serengeti has become world-famous as a safari destination, the far north remains one of the greatest wildlife secrets on the planet. This area, where the celebrated Mara River runs into Tanzania, is also the traditional homeland of the Kuria tribe.