Costa Jill

The weather has changed. The wind whistles and chills as I add another layer of clothes. How could it be so cold, at least a 50 degree drop, when it was in the 90’s yesterday? We bundle up in the open topless lorry, (I’d wondered why there were blankets on all the seats) to stalk the wild. Frost biting our noses and fingers, I almost wish to be back inside when Moses points out a big herd of elephants. A bull turns at us ears full bore to check for danger. Knowing the smell and shape of the lorry, he continues eating unperturbed. I forget my chill in the joy of watching them undisturbed in their daily routines. A calf suckles from behind mama’s legs, moves to the side for a better hold. Another snuffles the ground for roots dusting away the dirt with his feet, then casually crosses one foot over the other and chews. A big cow pushes over a tree to reach the more tender leaves and bark.

Moses receives a call of a large male lion sighting from another guide. We chase off road through the heavy bush following his directions. How can he possibly know where to go when the terrain is monochromatic and identical everywhere? “Mind. Mind.” warns Moses as we crunch over small trees, huge thorn bushes scratching at our sides. “Look ahead,” he points. It takes a moment for our eyes to adjust and pick out through his camouflage.

“Oh my God!” The great maned lion sits calmly in all his splendor, looking quite bored, while we, like buzzing gnats, click shutters, ooh and aah around him. He appears so tame, beautiful, approachable. I just want to cuddle up to him, stroke his head, gather between his huge gentle-looking paws calmly crossed in front of him. Barely glancing our way, he closes his eyes, rests head on paws and falls asleep.

Another call, another wild ride to a massive gang of water buffalo. A calf nurses from behind by alternately taking a pull then head-butting the udder for more flow. Watching the calf Moses notices a bird pecking an open wound on its back, “That’s a parasitic bird feeding on the flesh. As the wound grows larger a bigger predator will smell the blood and bring the animal down for an evening meal.” It’s survival of the fittest in action.

Moses, our driver, is an excellent guide, a locally trained and professionally educated trekker. He alternates between firm seriousness (the rifle is on the dashboard within arms’ reach) and a rollicking sense of humour. He knows when to linger, where to put the lorry for best viewing, and when to move on to the next sighting, keeping in constant contact with other guides. His brother Hendrick is our spotter, sitting above it all on the left front hood. He has eyes like a hawk even in the dark.

Hendrick spots some giraffe heads above the trees and we stop to observe these unusual creatures. Moses relays interesting facts about the animals we see and their relationships. “See the tick birds skittering up and down the giraffes’ necks? They’re not parasitic like the ones on the water buffalo. These are symbiotic – they get dinner while removing the tick parasites from the larger animal.” He distinguishes between the sexes. “Both have horns, but the males are bald and the females have tufts of hair.” While watching them carefully check around before slowly splaying their legs to drink at the water hole he explains, “the lion is the only predator who poses a serious threat to the giraffe, especially in this compromised position. But if upright one well-placed kick can crack a lion’s skull.”

Even though exotic animal behavior is fascinating, the people we shared bush camp with were equally entertaining – couples from the UK – two couples on honeymoons, one getting engaged, and set of safari addicts. Tune in next time for the human element on safari.

Umlani Bush Camp

Cindi and I arrive in Johannesburg Sept. 7, 2009, after a 16-hour flight and almost 24 hours from the first airport to the last. I cry, “We’ve lost a day!”

“We’ve got one more to lose, don’t get impatient,” Cindi replies. We’re itching to get to our safari site, but must spend one more night in Joburg, as the locals call it, and take our last flight to the edge of Kruger National Park where we’ll stalk the “Big Five” – lion, leopard, elephant, water buffalo and rhinoceros – only shooting photographs.

We land at the quaint Hoedsprit airport that doubles as a military base, drive through the entrance to the park, and enter Umlani Bush Camp of, a classic African safari camp located in the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve, which is part of the greater Kruger park. Almost hidden in the bush, our primitive rondavels (thatched huts) huddle together on one side of the watering hole, a popular hangout for the wild animals.

Giles, a handsome fit white South African, greets us. Very friendly and helpful, he’s managed Umlani for a decade. His dedication to saving the African wildlife and environment has won the camp the Eco-lodge of the Year award. Though there’s no electricity, it isn’t a primitive experience by a long shot.

Tembi, our statuesque greeter is dressed in her working clothes – a long colorful sarong and tall turban – the beautifully etched features of her brown face smiling in welcome. She shows us our rondavel, a round reed-thatched enclosure, and gives instructions. “Do not wander off the paths, and at night do not leave your room. The camp is unfenced except for elephant guards. At dusk we will drape mosquito nets over the bed and light paraffin lamps.” Sounds a little scary and buggy.

There are roll down shades, and only half walls of bamboo. But the beds are plush and comfortable with beautiful animal batiks hanging above them. Hot water in the shower is heated by a wood burning stove, the same that the chef uses for meals. “Your hot water will take about 15 minutes to arrive,” she warns us. “And when you are settled we will serve you drinks and snacks on the deck overlooking the watering hole.”

We wander over to the bar for a cool drink and take a seat on the deck. “Oh my God, look!” yells Cindi.

“A herd of impala. There must be a dozen.”

“And those long-faced pigs trotting in. Must be warthogs.”

“It’s a regular zoo in front of us,” I laugh, “And we haven’t even left the camp.”

After a rest in the heat of the day – it’s so hot I have to strip off my clothes and dunk my head under the cold shower – we prepare for our first bush ride with Moses, our driver/guide, a charming, locally trained native. More instructions, “No feet or arms out of the lorry. Your leg might look tasty enough to chomp on. Stay seated at all times. Whisper, and mind what I say.”

The bush terrain is very dry and leafless – all the better to see wildlife – in all shades of brown, gray, olive. We drive through mostly grass mixed with stunted sticky trees and huge conical termite mounds. Before we leave the camp proper we see another herd of impala materialize out of their camouflage with sinuous curved horns and dark slashed M’s on their buttocks. “That M stands for McDonalds,” one of our Brit lorry mates laughs out loud, “fast food for the leopards.”

The parade continues: kudus – larger than the impala with heavier intricately twisting horns, elephants in the dry riverbed – mothers with babies strolling and eating, giraffes loping gracefully, their long necks undulating up and down to help them get air into their lungs.

Moses speaks into his walkie-talkie and announces, “There’s a huge herd of buffalo not far off. We’ll see plenty of giraffes later.” And off we go, stopping for a quick look at the immobile hippo almost submerged in his own watering hole. I groan, “We’re going too fast.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to see everything.”

Off in the distance a huge troop of water buffalo, large stocky animals with formidable fat horns across their foreheads blacken the horizon. “Be very still here. Any movement could set them off. They give no warning – just charge. Not like most of the other animals.”

How else can I start my African safari but with a list. Let me add more. A rare black rhino lumbers along dropping big chunks of dried mud that he has wallowed in, a dazzle of zebras, a jackal, grey drykers, and a multitude of colorful birds.

The intense red sun sets and night falls immediately. We hear crashing, shaking, howling and growling in the dark of the African bush all the more intense for our blindness. Then comes the coup of the evening – a stealthy solitary leopard picked out by Moses’ spotlight, shining yellow eyes to match the spots on her graceful body as she stalks her prey.

By the end of the run we have already seen the “Big Five” and shot them point blank with our cameras. This has been one of the most exciting days of my life. What will happen tomorrow?

Cindi on Umlani Safari, Kruger, So.Africa                    Jill in Kampomo Village, Malawi

In the fall of 2008, my dear friend Cindi and I were planning a trip to Europe together. I had not been there since my childhood when I had lived in France, and both of us wanted to travel in Italy, too.

But the trip was not to be. Cindi received life-threatening news. I remember the debilitating fear upon learning the news that she had breast cancer. I pledged to help and be with her any way I could through her surgery and its aftermath, not knowing then that the ordeal would include three surgeries, radiation, anti-cancer drugs, warring doctors, varying opinions, and finally a clean bill of health and remission.

Her relief was complete and for the first time in months she began to look to a future she had given up on. “Remember that trip we were planning?”

“Yup, seems like eons ago,” I wondered what she was getting at.

“Well, are you still interested?”

“Of course! You know my Sagittarian travel impulses. Do you think you’re up to it?”

“I’m not only up to it, I’d like to make a few changes.”

“Like what?” I raised my eyebrows.

“How about Africa instead?”

“Africa?!” I was stunned.

“This whole cancer ordeal has changed my life. I realize how short it is. I need an adventure to blast the past right out of me.”

“Wow! I’m in.”

Cindi plans the whole thing while I’m in Costa Rica. Through her connection with a non-profit group called Water for People, http://www.waterforpeople.org she finds a week country tour of Malawi, a landlocked impoverished place in southeast Africa, that will monitor and report on progress of installing bore holes (wells) and eco-sanitation (latrines) in out-lying villages and urban areas. Although this should be experience enough, it will probably be sad and emotionally draining. She sends me an email, “How about a safari first? Let’s start with some excitement.”

“All right! Never thought I’d do such a thing, but why not.” And thus our African adventure begins.

The Slow Man, Paul Rayment, fits the title before during and after his bicycle accident that is the precursor to losing his leg. Coetzee says,

“The blow catches him from the right, sharp and surprising and painful, like a bolt of electricity, lifting him up off the bicycle. Relax! he tells himself as he flies through the air (flies through the air with the greatest of ease!), and indeed he can feel his limbs go obediently slack. Like a cat he tells himself: roll, then spring to your feet, ready for what comes next. The unusual word limber or limbre is on the horizon too.”

Paul embraces isolation from innovation in his life. Risk makes him irritated, stressed, withdrawn. He’s just as dismal and heavy as the plodding furniture in his outdated apartment. He’s nothing but a boring character who can’t even be saved from his torporous life by his fat old lady deus ex machina, fiction writer Elizabeth Costello from a previous novel.

His caretaker’s wily intelligent son Drago says, “Do you hate things if they are new?” The aging solitary archivist photographer never gets around to anything new when, “this’ll do.” Effort to learn and excel in something is a waste of time and money. Even the shock of slicing off his leg does nothing to stop his slide into anonymity.

Coetzee’s strange rambling perverse mind harnessed in words, and the coming demise of my daughter’s brave and loving mother-in-law, who is my age, makes me belabor a recurring theme – life, death, eternity, and throat-choking, heart-pounding fear that ‘it’s never over’.

How can the whole human world in all its many incarnations of god, in all its convoluted evolutions of mind, want eternity, when the rest of the nonhuman world comes to its end naturally? The survival instinct functions to continue the seed of life, insuring success through the urge of pleasure. The corporal body is allowed to die, be eaten, decomposed back into the earth to give that seed a better chance. That’s enough eternity. No intimations of immortality gumming up the works. A clean die.

Watch for some comic relief next time.