Just few kilometres from the lodge is Menengei crater, this crater is legendary. In the 19th century it was the scene for a violent filled battle between warring Maasai clans. The Laikipia rebels, who wouldn't recognise the authority of the laibon, the Maasai elder, and had also committed the severe crime of land culturing, were defeated by their southern neighbours, the Ilpurko Maasai.
The legend tells that the Ilaikipiak Morans were thrown over the crater's rim, and that the fumaroles rising from the bed's gaps are the souls of the defeated that seek their way to heaven. This is the rationale for one version of the place's name, according to which it is named after the Maa word "Menenga", meaning "the dead". |