Category: Writing

Umlani Bush Camp

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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?
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Jill and Cindi’s Excellent African Adventure

p9110453-300x225-3974186Cindi on Umlani Safari, Kruger, So.Africa                    Jill in Kampomo Village, Malawi

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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.

On Reading J.M. Coetzee’s “Slow Man”

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.

Retort to Backpacker’s View of CR in Sarasota Herald Tribune

Letter to the Editor

Sarasota Herald Tribune

By Jill Green

Re: Backpacker’s Guide to Costa Rica printed Sunday 8/16/2009

Letter to the Editor  in reply to an article “A Backpacker’s Guide to Costa Rica” in the Sun. Aug 16, 2009 edition

In her quest to find friends to party with, Anna Salinas lost sight of her original dual purpose of teaching English to Costa Ricans and learning something about the culture of this friendly Latin American country

If she wanted “the perfect untouristy spot” why did she pick the three most visited tourist destinations in the country, Monteverde Cloudforest, Manuel Antonio and Arenal Volcano? There are many other less visited attractions including miles of totally isolated beaches, mountains and rainforests.

At odds? One the one hand she’s wanting a non-touristy, see the country and culture vacation. On the other she wants to hang in the bars with her young backpacker friends. Guess which side wins. I appreciate youth, wanting to bond with peers, and party down. Maybe if she had traveled to small villages and met some of the wonderful warmhearted families, she would have experienced some of the simple pleasures and friendly culture of the country whose motto is “Pura Vida”.

True, I am biased after having lived in Costa Rica on and off for fifteen years. Yes, there are isolationist expats living locked in gated communities, thieves, and slums just as there are in the United States and every country in the world. But Costa Rica is still the gem of Central America with its working system of national health care, no army and a literacy rate higher than the U.S.

Passing Over

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My niece Lara said: “You’d better come to my wedding. It’ll probably be the last family celebration before the funerals begin.” So we did. What a heart-warming and unique experience it was, held outdoors at the annual Oregon Country Fair. There was one major glitch (don’t all weddings have one?) – a torrential downpour. It could have ruined the spirits of the sturdiest of souls, but Lara and Marc took it all in stride.

My brother Terry was the first to post photos of the event. Lara and Mark are smiling radiantly under the giant umbrella of a well canopied tree. The rest of us look pretty wet and bedraggled.  I see my sister Judi, Lara’s mom. Oh my God, how old she looks. Well she’s lost a lot of weight and let her hair go gray. Then skinny Terry with his thin wet hair matted to his head. And finally me. Oh shit why’d he leave that photo in. My hair is no longer fluffy, (Sebas says he calls me Fufi because my hair is fluffy.) and I look like a face-drooping old lady..

Then it dawns on me. We’ve finally passed over – from middle age to old age. What a scary revelation!  But none of us were smiling. And there’s the key. I look back at the smiling photos and they subtract about 10 years. I vow to never let a camera point my way again without a big shit-eating grin on my face.

Cash for Clunkers?

Reading the newspaper (yeah I know it’s not current, but it’s what I do with my coffee.) I see that congress is going to vote more money to the Cash for Clunkers program – photo of car being smashed flat. Why am I paying for consumers and dealers to buy and sell new cars (albeit gas savers) while all that good metal and other material is disposed of and/or recycled. Neither is better than fixing up the old including retooling the engine so it’s more fuel efficient. This is like tearing down a perfectly serviceable historic building and putting a new sucky one in its place (example: Old Sarasota train station), or putting nothing in its place because the big rich developer went bankrupt or ran out of money (example: Sarasota Quay).

Electrocution

Just took my first foray into electrical yard tools. A big step for me, one of the few people left that takes old clippers, loppers and machetes to be sharpened, rather than buying new. My old shoulder ache is making it harder to wield the loppers. The yard guy mows and edges, I do the rest and I’m not ready to give up that part of the gardening. Thus my new electric hedge trimmer. After goddamning the missing screws, and poor directions, getting grease on me and the couch, reading warnings, getting what safety gear I could round up – large sunglasses instead of safety glasses, rubber (?) gloves, new three-prong extension cord – I was ready to trim the hedges that had grown out of control in the last 3 months while in Costa Rica.

Plugging in the extension cord, I take note that it’s green (subtle – for use with xmas lights?) instead of alarm orange and I’d better watch out for it. I have a couple close calls with the hose under one hedge and my leg when I use the vertical motion, but I’m getting better. Wow, this is much easier than getting muscle spasms and much quicker. It’s super hot (90’s) and it’s actually thundering and threatening rain, but I just want to finish the front. The last stroke does it. I don’t even notice I’ve severed that damn cord, until I hold it up. The exposed hot wires barely missing my wrist. Saved again.  If I had to choose my electrocution I’d pick the lightning strike, it was way more dramatic and exciting.