A Journey Beyond in South Africa: Wisdom Comes When You Aren’t Looking

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Disappointingly, my last thought as I prepared for death wasn’t spiritual or reflective or even original: instead, as the huge bull elephant charged our open van, I could only come up with a tired, if apt, truism: “Be careful what you wish for.” The past two days, since my group of travel agents landed in Johannesburg to commence a two-week tour as guests of the most luxurious properties throughout South Africa -- a tough job, but someone has to do it -- had passed in a blur of fine meals and hotel inspections. Now, having transferred to our first Safari Lodge in the Madikwe Reserve, we were ready for action. Unfortunately, the animals were as sluggish as we were due to the unseasonably cold weather in January, and our first few game drives had yielded nothing more than some droopy zebras, antelopes, giraffes and wildebeests – interesting for novices, but we were spoiled by past adventures. We did see two rhinocerii, usually an exciting sighting, but even these great beasts seemed so bored by the rain and cold that they could hardly bear to move. So somehow our drives felt more like a tour through a really clever zoo than a true safari. I yearned for something that would bring back my fond memories of a previous journey, when every minute spent in the bush had felt like a peak experience.

We’d given up for the morning and decided to go back to the lodge to suffer through another lavish breakfast, when we turned a corner and suddenly a herd of elephants with several babies in tow appeared in the middle of the thornbush thicket, no more than 30 feet away from us and blocking the one lane dirt road through the park. The first rush for our cameras was immediately replaced by genuine terror as the giant matriarch in front roared a warning, flapped her ears back and forth, and started to gallop toward us with surprising speed. Who knew that a ton and a half of mad elephant cow could outrun Lance Armstrong? She stopped her charge 15 feet away, where several of her huger friends joined her, but continued to show her serious displeasure with dipped head, flapping ears, roars, and more subtle signs that we could tell our guides found more than vaguely threatening.

Those of us who had been on safari before knew that the behemoth could easily tip the open-air van over on top of us if she chose to, and make mincemeat of us in one of many ways if she so chose. The rest of us froze solid, cameras useless, as our game spotter and safari guide began to clap and yell. This held the elephant off briefly, but by no means convinced her that she should abandon the duel. She charged twice more, each time getting closer, and the guides had just enough time to debate about how serious the elephant was and whether backing the vehicle up would only incite her to chase faster or leave us alone. At one point they chose the back-up option, putting some space between us and relieving us greatly, until we realized we’d lodged over a huge bramble bush, now positioned perfectly to fix us in place until the elephant decided whether it wanted sitting ducks for dinner.

At this point, the guide slowly pulled his rifle from its case, an incredibly rare experience to witness on safari. Contrary to common misconception (and despite this blog entry) true danger is rarely experienced on safari, and the few incidents of tourists’ injury in Africa are almost always caused by their complete idiocy and failure to believe and follow simple instructions: No, you are not in a zoo, this really is Africa, you cannot walk around at night by the Cape Buffalo to commune with them all by yourself. Furthermore, the guides at these insanely good lodges are so skilled, so attuned to every nuance of animal behavior – in fact, they can distinguish particular animals in a herd and can describe when each of them last ate, mated, or was dismissed from the group – that they routinely get guests within feet of huge predators without alarming the predators or human (gulp) potential prey. So the guns are just a just-in-case, an absolute last resort. Though sharp-shooters all, re-trained every year to throw themselves in front of a leaping lion while shooting it between the eyes, all of them would rather die than have to do so, and know they’d lose their licenses if they ever failed so miserably as to have to shoot an animal rather than avoid the situation. Suffice it to say, these guides are trained to negotiate, not start a war.

Knowing all this, I felt the sudden onset of a most-unladylike hot flash as I watched our guide slip the rifle from its case, all the while continuing to shout at the ear-flapping elephant and trying to dislodge us from the bramble bush. My erstwhile friend to my right was eyeing the space under the seat in front of us, clearly big enough to hide just one person when the elephant charged and rolled the Range Rover over (she later told me was her plan). Incredibly, our tracker, Watson, (yes, really) who had not had time to move back from his perch sticking out two feet forward of the truck, and who would therefore be the first to be gored, was the calmest of us all, alternately quietly counseling the guide to stop the car’s retreat, and shouting aggressively at the elephant. It seemed that time froze in a ridiculous tableau: coal-black Watson placidly staring into the face of doom; our pink-white giant khaki’d guide with a hand on the rifle, but not yet raised; four women with death grips on the Ranger’s rollover bars – and as the elephant lowered its head, flapped its ears, and trumpeted the deafening roar that might be the last sound I heard on Earth, all I could think was a guilty Jewish grandmother cliché: “Be careful what you wish for!”

Apparently, my pitiable thought transmitted itself in that instant to the old elephant, who decided that any Land Rover carrying me could not possibly be a threat to its herd, for it suddenly stopped flapping, gave a final stare and a disgusted snort, and turned away along with its bodyguards. It made a great show of eating the nearest 8-foot tree in three gulps, as if that had been its intention all along, giving us time to go forward slowly off our stupid bush, do a respectful Y-turn, and go back the way we came to find a different route back to camp. Champagne started flowing early that day, along with the inevitable exchange of stories with the other guests about who had seen what on our drives. Our safari had begun.

I don’t understand Einstein’s theory of relativity, or Steven Hawking’s explanation of string theory, but here in Africa I begin to believe in my bones that there must be parallel universes, that time is not fixed, but moves at different speeds depending on where you are in space and what you are doing. I know that back home in America my business is humming, my clients are stewing, my family members await my return, and all the while move around in their crazy circles like the monkeys flying from tree to tree. It’s incredibly hard to juxtapose that against the majestic timelessness of the jungle reserves of South Africa, where elephants take down trees that are older than me and munch casually on the roots, just because they want breakfast; where termites take decades to build giant hills of dirt, grain by grain at a time; where as far as the eye can see there are no telephone lines or paved roads or houses to make one believe that anything has changed in a millennia.

Here on a game drive in a vast nature reserve, it’s easy to feel that people are just transients on property that is rightfully occupied by other creatures. The animals here don’t move off or on the rough dirt roads just because we have the audacity to drive on them. They are not focused on us, or on the road, but only on finding food, water, dominance, sex, play, shade. Why did the elephant cross the road? Perhaps just to get to the other side. How lovely. How purposeless and purposeful. It becomes clear after comparing game drives in a few different areas that the animals’ behavior toward people depends only and entirely on how they have been treated by people. In the parks where we have been smart enough to just leave the animals alone to behave naturally, without interference, a group of lions, elephants or cape buffaloes will pretty much ignore our Land Rover full of gawking tourists with clicking cameras and contented sighs just a few short feet away. But in parks where poachers or overeager guides have taught the animals that the sound of cars is often associated with the threat of guns or other danger to their normal behavior, the animals may charge the vehicles, become agitated, run away. The aggressive elephant we met the other day, we learned, was part of a herd imported from Zimbabwe, where people and guns often go together. By contrast, the indigenous elephants at our new camp seem more like large friendly cows – interested enough to look up and notice us, but finding no reason to stop whatever they were already inclined to do.

The chance to watch truly prehistoric-looking animals like rhinocerii and giraffe move freely around is a humbling experience, one that naturally makes me and my daily life’s problems feel insignificant. As with travel in general, the time/space slowdown that I experience on this safari is a spiritual and growthful experience for me. I resolve anew to contribute to causes that support the earth for our children’s children, so the immense variety in our own species is preserved over the dangerous homogeneity of the McDonald’s generation. I resolve to become more politically active. I resolve to encourage my clients to expand their travel horizons and show their children places and cultures that will change or at least make them consider their worldviews. I resolve to go home and live more fully, more gratefully, praying that there will always be an Africa here to make us better people.