Safari Shenanigans
Lions and (no) tigers and (no) bears - oh my!
“It’s so unlike the modern world here.”
It was early August, and I could hear the woman over the din of the coffee shop.
“The people here are so much more grateful for the small comforts in life.”
She was clearly a tourist, clearly fresh off a trip to the Kenyan bush, bandana and dust still stuck to her hair.
“Don’t you just feel a much deeper connection to the land here?”
She kept emphasizing this last word: Here. Presumably, this Here was not our current location, a chic eatery nestled in a garden, nor even Nairobi, that metropolitan city overrun with foreign cars and five-star hotels. No, her Here was a land of eternal deprivation and endless gratitude, freed from the conveniences of indoor plumbing and cell-phone bills, liberated to do nothing but till the soil and dance to drumbeats. That Here is an imagined place – certainly not Kenya, not the actual country – but this tourist might have thought she glimpsed it among corrugated-tin towns on her route to a safari.
This was a woman who had come to visit Africa – not a specific country but the concept. Within colonial European and American contexts, Africa has long been valued for little more than its exports: people, animals, minerals, diamonds, oil, whatever else could be stolen, repackaged, and sold off at a handsome premium. Today, for many tourists, Africa represents the exotic other and one that can, conveniently, be experienced from the safe confines of a safari Jeep on high suspenders. (All at the bargain price of $2500 per day – tips excluded!)
So, early on, after overhearing this woman, I decided that I would not be like those other mzungus who come to Kenya, like voyeurs on safari. I would learn Swahili. I would eat ugali and chapati and drink Kenyan chai mixed. I would read the works of Ngugi wa Thiongo and Binyavanga Wainaina and learn the music of Burna Boy. I would not go on safari.
So for months, I spurned the places that have made Kenya famous: the unbroken savannahs of the Maasai Mara, the elephants of Amboseli walking in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, the stark geologies of Hell’s Gate. I’d explain to native Nairobians that, no, I hadn’t actually gone on safari. Yet, instead of recognizing the valor of my conviction, Kenyan after Kenyan derided my foolhardy stubbornness: “That sounds stupid. It’s so close, only a few hours away, and a weekend trip costs less than $100. Do you have a real reason that you don’t want to go to see the lions and elephants?”
Well, of course, I did. I was just too self-righteous and pretentious to admit it. But in early October, when my dear friends, Kaitlyn and Dahlia, crossed the Atlantic and the equator to visit me, I had the perfect excuse to abandon my ill-advised credos.
The visit from Dahlia and Kaitlyn easily emerged as one of my favorite weeks. A decade ago, as awkward pre-teens shivering in an auditorium in Saint Louis, Missouri, I doubt that any of us expected to see lions and baby elephants, feed giraffes, barter with local merchants over Kenyan goods, or celebrate a birthday in a suburb of Nairobi. And, yet, we did all that and more! An absolutely wonderful experience that allowed me to see Nairobi and Kenya with fresh eyes… and led to the discovery that there are groups of “Golden Bachelor” impalas, divorced from their previous wives, single, and in search of their next harem.
A two-day safari in the Maasai Mara with Dahlia and Kaitlyn set off a cascade of trips – a weekend in Amboseli, treks through the Great Rift Valley, rock-climbing in Hell’s Gate. Each time, the delight of the first wildlife sighting (always zebras) strikes like a novelty. The allure of a giraffe, so gangly in build and so regal in movement, or an elephant, draped in skin that hangs like a robe, remains as strong as ever. And, yes, encountering a lion sends a jolt of awe and adrenaline through the bloodstream, although I find that the sheer size of a cape buffalo inspires the same reaction.
As a result of these trips, I’ve referenced the Lion King more times in the past month than Shakespeare did when he wrote Hamlet. First, it was explaining the meaning of characters’ names to Kaitlyn and Dahlia, who graciously indulged my stumbling Swahili. Simba translates to Lion, Rafiki to Friend, Pumbaa to Stupid. Then, upon seeing wildebeests migrating in Amboseli, I asked in concern: “Isn’t this how Mufasa died?” Finally, most recently, exploring Hell’s Gate and climbing opposite the rock that inspired Pride Rock, I continually badgered my guide with references, although I demonstrated enough restraint to not belt out “Circle of Life.”
Throughout East Africa, these animal populations are critical to their history, economy, and sense of national pride. The gorillas in Rwanda and the elephants in Kenya are critical resources threatened by both climate change and human conflicts, and sustainable eco-tourism can help to promote their care and conservation, as well as support local populations. In Rwanda, for instance, a quarter of all revenues from Volcano National Park are directly used to build infrastructure for surrounding villages.
In Kenya, initiatives like reforestation and water conservation projects have been topics of national discourse and grassroots actions for nearly half-a-century. Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai (the first Black African woman awarded) founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to advance women’s rights through the planting of trees. In the decades since, more than 51 million trees have been planted, and more than 30,000 women have been trained in forestry, food processing, bee-keeping, and other trades that help them earn income while preserving their lands and resources.
In every corner of the globe, there is a deep symbiosis between an environment and its people. Like many city-dwellers, I forget that social fabrics are founded and formed in response to the realities of topography. All human history – the conflicts and the triumphs – has been shaped by cultural relationships to land, and this pattern will only continue as climate change transforms socio-cultural orders. I’ve realized that there is no correct or guaranteed way to engage with a new country, but there certainly is a wrong way, which includes ignoring entire geographic regions and the people that call them home.
And, as Mufusa tells a young Simba, “"Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance… You need to understand that balance and respect all the creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope."
So, in the future, I hope to be humble enough to surrender sanctimony and simply go on the safari.
