Safari Days

It’s strange how you remember the days you spend traveling so vividly, when the days seem like months. Back home in normal life, the days slip by and we can't remember anything. Can anybody remember what they were doing in early December of 1995? I can because they were my safari days in Kenya.

I had just gotten back from seeing the mountain gorillas in Uganda where I had met two cool South African guys who were thinking about doing a self arranged safari in the Serengeti plains of Kenya. Sounding like a good idea, I agreed to meet up with them at Mama Roach's in Nairobi, Kenya. Now, Mama Roach's is an institution in itself. It's a flophouse-campsite where all the travelers on the cheap stay in Nairobi. Mama is an old Polish woman who for some unknown reason setup camp here. Everybody from overlanders to mercenaries to aid volunteers to the most hard-core travelers around hung out there, making story time pretty cool. But it wasn't the safest place to be; theft from over the walls and inside the walls was common enough to warrant the resident Israelis, fresh out of the army, to organize a nightly armed watch. I drew the 10pm-11pm timeslot. It was here we hooked up with two girls to share costs on the safari, an American previously working in a chimpanzee reserve in Tanzania and a South African coming from Zaire (alone).

Now, organizing your own safari isn't such a cut and dried thing. All the guidebooks recommend not leaving your hotel room. Nairobi can be a tough place. Nicknamed Nairobbery, it's the site of many violent attacks on locals and especially tourists. The Israelis only traveled in armed packs, with the girls in the middle. If thieves were caught by the locals, an impromptu mob would often given them the "necklace." The "necklace" consisted of having an old tire placed around your body so you couldn't move your arms and then having kerosene poured all over you. Once ignited, the person couldn't put himself out and rolled around on the tire until death relieved him. Not so nice. But it was a weekly occurrence in the local newspaper.

We spent the next few days arranging things, with great help from Salim. Salim was a Sikh and fixer—he could get things done. Strange enough, the Indians ran all the businesses in East Africa and were the only capable people around. From his desk, he helped us get fake Kenya resident ID cards (to avoid paying the daily $30 park entry fee), answered many key questions and arranged a car rental. I had an old Peace Corps ID of someone who was 15 years older than me but it was okay because, ironically, to most Africans, all white people look alike. The car was an old Suzuki Samurai, presumably stolen, and in mediocre shape but it would do. A little grocery shopping and I drove back to Mama Roach's to crash.

Now driving in Kenya is pretty crazy. First off, it was the first time I have every driven on the left hand side of the road. But, more importantly, cars drive aggressive, fast, and ignore all the rules. I am a firm believer of the "when in Rome" philosophy so I did my best to race around in a frenzy. On the open roads it was a lot easier. The only problem was what to do with the police. If we would stop at their roadblocks, surely they would pounce on us for money or worse. So we blew by all policemen; even when chased, we never stopped.

Driving inside the game parks yourself is really great. Basically, the Serengeti is a grassy plain with little hills and lots of roads from tour company vehicles. The rules for finding animals were simple: look for other cars parked because they are probably looking at something. Also, when a bunch of deer-like animals are all pointed in one direction, they were looking at something that wanted to eat them, like lions or jackals. Our basic philosophy was to get unreasonably close to all animals in the vehicle. As childish as it sounds, it’s really great to chase these animals. Having a heard of elephants or giraffes run from you is really fun. We only got in trouble once when approaching a lone bull elephant who reared and charged. If we weren't going down hill at the time in the crappy Suzuki, he would have caught and stomped on us.

Another fabulous thing about the safari is camping in the open. You get to hear all the animals and they come to visit you in the night. We shared some dinner with some local cattle herding tribesmen so they would watch our campsite for lions and elephants. To be in a little tent and go to sleep with the sounds of the Africa around you is an experience I wouldn't trade for the world.

But sometimes we would forget where we were and venture out a little too far and run back, eternally checking for lions and such. The idea that some animal could kill you both inspires a fascination and terror, something very primal. We just aren't used to checking our backs for animals who want to eat us these days. When I worked in the fisheries in Alaska, at which time Kodiac bears were a daily real threat, it was always strange to come back South and still find myself checking for bears (in the back of the Dairy Queen?).

Sometimes we would venture around little towns to supplement our food supplies. Often finding a meal would play out like this: We would drive around until we found a sign for a restaurant. The first question we would ask is "Do you have food?" About half the restaurants didn't have food. Once we would find a place with food, we would sit down and get a menu and order up tons of great sounding stuff but the waiter would nearly always say "Oh, spaghetti, no have." After three or four times of this "no have" business, one of us would head into the kitchen and realize they only had one thing. Usually this was a big mound of pasty starch with greasy meat broth. But they are always nice enough to give you a menu.

The Suzuki was on its last leg and after the battery went, we had to eternally push start it. Once, we had to push start it in a mud pool and everybody ended up getting drenched in mud, so we decided to have a full on mud fight. After we looked African from the mud, we piled in the (rented) Suzuki and headed off with thoughts of all the dreaded diseases we could have caught in that mud (biliarzia, river blindness, intestinal worms, giardia, scabies, etc.)

Heading between different reserves, we came upon a town where every male was carrying a club. Made from a special tree, it was about a foot long and slender and had a bulb at the end. It looked like a skinny cock with one ball, and it could crack any head open. Now, there was no way I was going to be the only man in the village without a club (can you imagine the embarrassment?). So I walked up to the fist man and gave him $0.50 and carried that thing all around Africa. Teddy Roosevelt was right, carrying a big stick has many advantages, especially at late night bus stops.

One of the best parts of traveling is being exposed to other people's experiences. After a few days of watching (and chasing) animals, we spent one afternoon discussing New World Order. It was the first time I had ever been exposed to the ideas of Norm Chomsky and things really made sense. We decided what the world needed was an independent press, funded by taxpayer dollars, who didn't bow to corporate interests and was free of information filters. Idealistically, we thought that citizens truly informed wouldn't make the same political choices they do now as they are herded by cultural media forces. Cynics can argue otherwise but it makes the most sense of anything I have ever heard.

In a park that was too dangerous to spend the night in, we let time slip away from us. Before we knew it, it began to get dark. So we took off in the little Suzuki. We reached an army post after dark and I had left my headlights on (effectively blinding them) so we were greeted by a patrol of machine guns and artillery leveled at us. Having figured out that we were just dumb tourists, they dropped their guns. Later, we invited the officers in our rented room for some food we had made. As we were sharing enough food for 5 people between the ten of us, I randomly asked if the leader had ever killed a lion and got a positive response. As a rite of passage, the entire tribe went out hunting and would surround a lion in a brush patch and then converge on him with only wooden spears. The lion had run our man's way and he poked him good enough not to get eaten. It is a big deal to kill a lion in the tribe and he said the local chicks really dug him because of it.

The next day we headed home, tired of chasing animals and seeing weird looking deer-like things. But it was a great trip with lots of memories. Traveling and falling in love are the best things I have found in life. I wish all of life could be as vivid.