It's been so long since I last blogged, I can't even remember half of the things I've done this month (partly attributable to Kongayi, far more omnipotent than tequila!) I swear, in Canada I drank once a week; in Africa I have to declare a sober day once a week. Part of it is that you need a sip of Kili after the kinds of encounters you have here. The theme of the trip has been TIA (This is Africa), a catch-all used to explain and exonerate all the little mishaps that occur along the way. You never know what's coming at you. It could be armed robbers, wild animals, engine trouble, or a sudden hailstorm of monstr nuts (which happened to me while swimming in a pool in Zambia). Ouch!
In Dar Es Salaam, we stayed at a campsite which had this message painted in calligraphy on the back of every toilet stall: Camp=Safe Outside Camp=Not Safe. Which was a crock, since the next day armed robbers broke into the camp and the security guards had to use gunfire to scare them off. We weren't there at the time, as we'd gone to Zanzibar to the beach, but our cook, Henry, and driver, Lelei, had stayed behind. What I find funny is that I really wanted to know what had happened, as in details, since we were heading back to that camp, and also, it's interesting! But the whole thing got brushed under the carpet. I do remember Fana making the comment once that white people like to know all the details whereas black people want the big picture. I have been accused by Shiundu, of 'CSI'ing things too much', and my travel mates always laugh at my 'morbid curiousity'. Sandra jokes that my favorite question to ask people is 'What's the worst thing that ever happened when (fill in the blank)'. There are some crazy horror stories here in Africa, though. Also, I'm in withdrawal from not watching CSI three times a week. Anyway, the details I managed to wrangle out of the guys were that the robbers broke in and pried off a log from one of the cabins, digging a hole up into the main space. But I guess they only managed to procure a cosmetic bag before the warning gunfire ensued, so they now have muzungu items like sunscreen and aloe vera gel, for their troubles. We had masaais, tribal warriors from the bush, guarding our camps with their spears and traditional attire. But it would appear they're armed, as well.
Speaking of morbid stories, we were out in the Delta one day, stick-poling our mokoros (dug-out canoes) through reeds and hippos, and taking a walking safari, when our guide told us this funny story. He was out on a walking safari with a group including two honeymooners, when a wild animal appeared (I forget which one now...wildebeest? buffalo?). The guide told everyone to climb trees (so it wasn't a tree-climbing animal) while he staved it off. The honeymooner guy tried to heave his wife up the tree first but she wouldn't go. As the animal got closer, the guide urged them to hurry up. In a moment of desperation, the guy used his wife as a ladder to scale the tree. The guide ended up shooting the animal to rescue the woman, but at that point, the honeymoon was over and the now-feuding couple concluded their stay in separate camps. The moral of the story: Learn how to climb a tree by yourself! The guide couldn't understand why he didn't get the girl in the end, since he'd saved her life and the guy was now out of the picture!
We had our own close encounters in the Serengeti. It's weird how life works, because during one of the game drives, our jeep broke down and Shiundu and Henry spent a good two hours fiddling under the hood and calling in the troops. I'd say it was the typical manfest under there, no one being the wiser, but Shiundu's got a mechanical background so they did manage to do some piecemeal repairs. (Although at one point we did see once of the men collect some hay from the bush and return to the engine with it, MacGyver-style). You would think that would be the time wild animals would approach and circle, but...nothing! We amused ourselves playing Six Degrees of Separation (I can now link Kevon Bacon to anything) and yelling things from my Swahili phrasebook out the window: Check the radiator! Kagua katika rejeta!
However, at night, by the campfire, it was a different story. First of all, we were camped in the middle of nowhere, fully on the animals' terrain, with our tents pitched a good 30 second run from the toilets (I timed it). Given that most animals can run that distance in a third of the time, you are SOL for a running escape. We were near a kitchen compound (Henry, our cook, pitched his tent inside there), but that's about it for buildings. Shiundu advised us not to be going to the toilets for "a short call", just to pee outside the tents, but then he would shrug and say, "But you ladies like your amenities" because a couple of times we did travel to the toilets in a group. The first time this happened, I was in the toilet with Rebecca and Nienke just outside. I guess they heard someone at the campfire say "I see a lion" (actually, they said, "I see a light") because the next thing I knew, they were screaming my name and jumping in the toilet with me, me with my pants around my ankles, very confused.
Next, it was the triumvirate of Sandra, Jules and Karen who went to the toilets. The rest of us were sitting around the campfire, when all of a sudden we saw Sandra booting it back towards the campfire, hurtling at top speed and talking so fast and warbled we couldn't make out a word she was saying. I was a little nervous seeing her hurtle into camp like that, because isn't the thing chasing her also going to hurtle into camp right on her heels? Sandra is usually unphasable. Implaccable. She has a wry sense of humour and says things like 'Three, Two, One. Day is Over' when the sun sets. One day someone told me I had the thickest Canadian accent they'd ever heard and I was asking the group what I say that's 'Canadian'. Sandra piped in with: "You say the word 'wow' and the thing is not even amazing." (I think it's because no one gives a damn about the lilac-breasted rollers on the game drives, except for me.) All this to say that Sandra is completely equilibriated at all times, so to see her in a panic is something.
As it happened, on their way to the ablution block, the girls saw this nebulous shape which they took to be rocks, and when Sandra lifted her torch to see more clearly, it illuminated the eyes of a buffalo, so that she was staring straight into its eyes. Buffalo are so unpredictable. Hunters fear them the most because if they are injured or irritable, they can stampede every bone in your body flat like a paper doll. These buffalos were a bachelor herd, ousted from the pack and we watched their migration the following morning.
The following night, we were all around the campfire telling stories again, and singing songs. Shiundu kept trying to freak us out by pretending there was some wild animal, spiking up in a panic, and saying "Let's go, guys!" (Which does work, by the way. Time and again!) Eventually, everyone went to bed and only Shiundu and I remained. Being that Shiundu's job is pretty much 24-7, he has mastered the art of catnapping and was snoring away at the campfire. That said, if you just tap him, he wakes up on a dime, ready for the next catastrophe. I woke him up so he could go to bed, and asked if I should douse the fire with water from the jerry can (images of Northern Ontario forest fires resulting from untended campfires, and the fire at Felix United still warm in my brain). He mumbled, "No, just let it burn" but I wasn't sure if that was nonsense-talk or not, given that Shiundu also has also on occasion sleep-mumbled things like "The red chickens are eating your malaria tablets". (Which was not in fact the case). I was thinking: 'What's worse, to have the camp catch on fire again, or to risk that a wild animal comes along in the ten seconds between dousing the fire and going to the tents?' I was kind of leaning towards dousing the fire (having experienced a camp-on-fire but not an animal-close-at-hand), but woke Shiundu up again just in case, at which point he really woke up, and we started to chat again. We heard a lion roar off in the bush, reminding me of the hippo's threat display roar I'd heard when camping in the Okavanga Delta. It sounded close-by, and Shiundu said, "Yeah, we need to be back in the tents before that lion arrives at the camp" (the reason being that lions see tents as objects and don't associate them with prey/humans, whereas humans who are exposed are viewed as threats/prey.) We were about to get going, but still had our backs to the bush. Some six sense made me turn around at that moment, and I saw the lion, strolling nonchalently towards us. My eyes went wide and I gripped Shiundu's arm, hiss-whispering, "The lion's here. Now!" Shiundu didn't believe me.
Here's a little backstory on that. On these game drives, I am never the first one to spot an animal. Never.
Shiundu of course has laser vision and can spot these animals from the moon. Somtimes I have the binoculars and can still only see a wisp of a line that could possibly be a rhino horn. Karen is a huge animal afficionado and multi-tasks between spotting animals, reading the guidebook and finishing her Dan Brown novel. Jules is even more implaccable than Sandra (being full-on German and not Swiss-German), and says things in this even-keeled voice like, "Seeing a leopard doesn't change my life." One day, she said in this same nonplussed tone, to a bee circling her soda, "Oh fuck off. It's diet. There's no sugar for you." Or, "Who wants the rest of this KitKat Bar? I'm over it." She's over spotting the animals as well and admits full on that she can't see them. Sandra spots things that aren't there, but at least she gives completely specific directions: "See that branch protruding on the right from the third curly tree, follow it down. Now go to the shadow by the yellow flower. Right in that shade hollow is the snake." We have all ascertained that there is no snake, but at least we know where we're looking. Rebecca has an incredible zoom camera and can whip from finishing a novel to honing in on the animal with her zoom lens and showing it to all of us on the display. And Nienke is just as bad as Shiundu: "It's there! I see it! Beside the green tree!" Then, there's the direction thing, where people are screaming, "I see it! It's at two-thirty! Two-thirty!" Two thirty? Is the animal at the two or the six? Also, Jules and I discovered that twelve o'clock is not in fact the direction you are facing on a game drive, but the direction the jeep is facing.
So, anyway, when I spotted that lion, Shiundu quite clearly thought I was hallucinating, but when he turned around, the look on his face was one of sheer surprise. I don't think in my life thus far, I've ever seen someone with such an articulated look of surprise. This wasn't just any lion either. It was a huge Alpha-male type lion with a huge mane. When we turned around, it paused for a second, made eye contact and then jogged off into the bush. Jogged, I say! As Shiundu says, "When I turned around, first I saw the big mane, and then the big balls!" I will never, ever forget that moment. I recently read an article where a family was staying at one of these open campsites and each member of the family were showering, consecutively, under a tree. The Dad was the last one to shower, and the family heard a scream. By the time the family raced over, the lion had slashed his throat with his claw and mauled him. Moral of the story: Don't shower in the Serengeti! (As Shiundu would say: This is where the wet wipes come into play.)
Another story I read was about a refugee family crossing the Krueger into South Africa. They climbed a tree to escape a lion, but lions can climb trees. The lion nabbed the boy closest to the ground and ate him. Seeing how effortless that was (lions don't like to expend a lot of energy), he nabbed the second boy the next day. One by one, he got them all except for the last one, who rangers eventually rescued but not before he'd seen his entire family mauled and eaten.
But back to the story. Once the lion disappeared, we quickly got up and hightailed it to the kitchen compound, it being the closest building. Lions are social cats so you know the rest of the pride is hanging out somewhere nearby. I removed the boulders jamming the door closed, but what I hadn't realized was that Henry, our cook, had booby-trapped the door seven ways to Sunday with all kinds of string, against the hyenas! It was like being in a bad horror movie. That's when the true panic set in. I wasn't sure if I could make it to the tent faster or open the door faster, and Henry and Frances didn't even get out of their tent! Henry wants nothing to do with the Serengeti wildlife. Luckily Shiundu understands Henry's system and managed to get in the other door, but that was the longest ten minutes of my life. We stayed in the kitchen shaking, listening to the lion roar in the distance. He sounded mad, let me tell you. It was probably just his normal roar, but to me it sounded like Chewbaca caught in a trap. I was quite prepared to stay in the kitchen overnight (Henry and Frances still never emerged from their tent, not even to hear our story! Henry told me the next day, "I was lying on my back, looking up at the ceiling.") but Shiundu convinced me to go back to the tent eventually. Poor Rebecca, glimpsing the whole thing from her tent flap, spent the rest of the night 'holding her short call' until she deemed it safe to pee outside the tent at dawn.
One more quick story, and maybe the reason Henry doesn't get out of the tent. One trip, the cook had stayed behind while the clients went out on a game drive. This chef had previously worked at a Five Star Hotel and so was unaccustomed to life-on-the-road. A herd of wild elephants honed in on the camp, and the cook was terrified. I think he hid himself in the kitchen compound initially, but when that didn't seem safe enough to him, he sprinted over to the long drop, and upon seeing the size of the elephants' hooves, and imagining them trampling him, plugged his nose and jumped into the long drop. Very 'Slum-Dog-Millionaire'. The Trip Leader and clients found him there, hollering from a cushion of excrement but unharmed by elephants! That ended his Overlanding Career. He probably went back to Five Star after that.
Though I haven't mentioned anything about Mr.Cheese-on-Toast and the pink tam, I think it might be anticlimactic after the lion-sighting story, so I'll save it for the next blog. By the way, we measured from the lion's footprints to the campfire where we were sitting the next day, and it was 2 metres! Damn! Damn! That is one image I don't need any camera to record.
Jenn
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