African Civet - Kenya

The Maasai Mara National Game Reserve consists of 1,510 square kilometers of pristine lands from the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem. It borders with the Serengeti National Park in neighboring Tanzania. Together these two parks offer over 17,000 square kilometers of refuge for African wildlife.

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Civettictis civetta - The African civet is in the Feliformia order, the order containing cats. The civet belongs to the Viverridae  family, the most primitive of the Feliformia. Civets are found between both coasts of Central Africa. It has small stumpy forelimbs and disproportionate hind quarters, a posture bringing the head to a lower level than the back. The black facial striping gives the animal the appearance of a raccoon. When assuming a defensive position, the civet doubles in size by fluffing out its fur and erecting its dorsal crest. 

Impala - Kenya

Aepyceros melampus - Male impalas are slightly larger than the females, but are easily recognized by their horns; females lack horns. Impalas range throughout the savannahs of Eastern Africa, from South Africa to Kenya. Impalas form three distinctive groups: the female herds, the bachelor herds, and the harems formed by dominate males during the mating season. Females stay with their herds and males leave to join with bachelor herds once they are weaned, usually after six months.

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Kenya derives its name from Mount Kenya, an extinct volcano. It is the tallest mountain in Kenya and the second tallest in Africa. Mount Kenya’s last eruption occurred 3 million years ago. The Kamba, the local Bantu people inhabiting the area near Mount Kenya, refer to the mountain as Kiinyaa. Johann Ludwig Krapf, a German explorer, used the local term in naming the mountain when he saw it in 1849. Krapf mistakenly assumed Mount Kenya as being the elusive source for the Nile River.

Cities in Africa

Kinshasa was founded as Léopoldville in 1881, by Henry Stanley, a Welsh journalist and explorer. It was named in honor of King Leopold II of Belgian. In 1923, Léopoldville, replaced Boma as the colony’s capital. When the Congo declared its independence in 1960, Léopoldville became the capital. The city was renamed as Kinshasa in 1966, as a means of replacing colonial names with original or African titles.

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Founded in 1899, the city of Nairobi began as a rail junction for the Uganda Railway as a means of connecting the interior of Uganda and Kenya with the port city of Mombasa. In 1905, Nairobi replaced Mombasa as the capital of the British colony. The town became an important agricultural site for growing coffee, tea, and sisal, spurring further development in making Nairobi a financial and industrial center for Africa.

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Algiers began as Ikosim, a small seaport serving Phoenician commerce. After the Punic Wars, the town fell under Roman control and flourished as Icosium, a thriving commercial city in Mauretania Caesariensis, the Roman province covering the Northern Algerian coast.  The modern city of Algiers began to take shape in 944 through the efforts of Bologhine ibn Ziri, the founder of the Berber Zirid–Sanhaja dynasty.

Lucy and Turkana Boy

The fossilized bones of an Australopithecus afarensis was discovered near the village of Hadar, Ethiopia in 1974. The specimen, named Lucy, was about 3.2 million years old. Almost 40 percent of the skeleton was recovered, top image. Lucy was an adult female, stood 1.1 meters, and weighed 29 kilos. In appearance, she resembled a chimpanzee, but her pelvis and leg bones functioned in the same manner as those of modern humans and provided strong evidence of Lucy standing and walking in an upright position. In 1984, a total of 108 bones of an early Homo erectus skeleton was uncovered near Kenya’s Lake Turkana, bottom image. The skeleton was of an adolescent boy and dated to being 1.5 million years old. He stood at 163 centimeters and weighed 68 kilos. Turkana Boy lived during the early Pleistocene, an epoch when anatomically modern humans evolved.