V. Safari

Ah the life of a dung beetle! Wandering about, toodling this way and that, bumbling hither and thither with a ball of precious excrement to break trail in front of you, and to ward off any pesky neighbors who might otherwise sidetrack you with their idle gossip about the high and low points of the mating season drama. Along you go, loping easily across the serengeti, pausing prudently at the roadside as gawking tourists pass by in their khaki, multi-pocketed vests and wide-brimmed sunhats, and stopping occasionally to admire the path of dungless ground in your wake. The day is long, and as the sun sinks in the evening sky you realize you have reached your destination. Finding an ideal patch of ground on which to nestle your weary limbs you park your fecal dwelling in the perfect location, and nestle in beneath it for the night. But the next morning the dung heats up with the sun. Hotter, and hotter, and hotter, until you suddenly explode and offspring pours out of your corpse. Thus ends the life of every female dung beetle who succeeds in procreating: abdominal explosion under a stifling ball of dung, according to our guide, Steve.

Steve took six of us to the Serengeti for a three day, 2 night safari, which we got at a discount price because we opted to do our own cooking, obviating the need for a chef. We ate pasta that had spilled on the dirty ground, pulled unidentifiable insects out of our pina coladas (to which they were very attracted for some reason), and blackened out hands with kerosene soot, but I think it was worth every penny we saved. Besides, the leftover pasta probably distracted some of the hyenas, which frequently roam through campsites in the Serengeti, from the tents where we were sleeping. At least that's what I told myself when I heard rustling and shuffling in the middle of the night.

Steve's tribe was from the Serengeti region, and before he was a tour guide he was a park ranger for 18 years. He got out of the profession after one too many bouts with AK-47 wielding poachers left two of his colleagues dead, and him lucky to be alive. Among the other impressive things about Steve was the scar on his forehead from the machete wound he received when robbers broke into his house. Steve is an industrious guy with a good job. Back in his village he set up a projector and a satellite dish so that his family could charge the public to watch football matches, and they live off the profit. Someone clearly thought that his house would, therefore, be loaded with cash, and so they broke in and attacked him. He laughed heartily throughout all of the stories mentioned above, with a big-hearted, deep-bellied, African man laugh, on the first day we met him, explaining to us that in Africa you must laugh when you should cry, and you often cry when you should laugh.

Steve told us many things that made us laugh on the safari, but he also knew when to be quiet and let us enjoy the scenery. Giraffes came strolling lazily up to the vehicle, and we popped the top up in order to get a better look at their mild, gentle eyes and thick, dark lashes. The tall gangly animals were generally fairly lethargic, but when we did see one running it was a sight to behold. If someone had told me that I was actually watching a slow-motion recording of a giraffe on the go I might have believed them. The limbs of the giraffe move so slowly that the animal does not look fast at all, but in reality it can go something like 30 mph.

We saw some very bold monkeys (who came right up and tried to steal our food), many bare-bottomed baboons (which Steve told us was a symptom of the baboons tendency toward indecision: apparently the animal sits on its behind talking and never gets around to doing anything), and a ton of gazelle (one male to about 40 females: he's the stud until his activities make him tired and another male beats him in a fight). We saw zebras nuzzling, one's muzzle on the other's rump, and we saw ostriches looking like strange, huge balls of whatever God had left on the 7th day (at least that was Steve's theory). We stopped at a hippo hole and watched the lazy water pigs blow spray in the air and grunt. There were crocs in the water too, and we were a bit hesitant to get as close to the water as Steve did. We saw lazy hyenas in the sun, surprisingly cute and small warthogs (Pumba must have been rather a freak of his species because none of the warthogs we saw could fight a hyena), we saw meerkats (Timon was actually a pretty good likeness) and so we went in search of the elusive simba (lion in Swahili).

We got close to a couple of cheetahs who were out for a stroll. Scores of safari vehicles came flocking, their drivers radioing others with the news. I wished I could see one take off across the plain, but no such luck. We saw a leopard high in a tree, or should I say we saw the silhouette of some bum on a branch that Steve assured us was indeed a leopard.

And finally we saw Simba himself, the king of the jungle, with a female who was apparently not too impressed with him. He was putting the moves on, but she'd have none of it, and as we watched for a good 45 minutes, waiting to see if the growling and nipping would lead to anything, she held her ground and retained a good old-fashioned sense of self-respect, holding onto her chastity for yet another mating season much to our chagrin. Call us voyeuristic, but we would have been pretty excited to see the miracle of reproduction in it's earliest stages (A.K.A. lion porn).

So with these wonders of nature behind us, we descended into the Ngorongoro crater, home of the Maasai, and the closest thing I've seen to a modern day Garden of Eden. It opened up before us like an oasis in the desert, a grassy expanse inside a long-expired volcano with water and wildlife everywhere. Flamingos bathing, lions, wildebeest, gazelle, and even a few rhinos. Steve warned us not to take pictures from the truck because the Maasai, relying on money received from tourists for their photographs, would throw rocks and break the windshield. We believed him, and set off down the death-defying course of switchbacks that led down to the base of the crater. It was a cloudy day, so Eden didn't quite have the same sparkle that it might have, but that was ok with me. We watched some lounging lions, trying to provoke them to some kind of action (other than jumping through the open hatch on the top of the vehicle). We got some good photos of herons and cranes that would dwarf the great blue heron of New England.

When we finally spotted one of the five rhinos alive in the crater we were very excited, but soon a problem arose. The beast was beached on it's belly, like one of the eleven month-olds at the baby orphanage, and it would not stand up to entertain its gawking guests. Try as we might, we could not provoke the thing. Steve made all kinds of very impressive hyena and wild dog noises, but to no avail. The rhino simply did not care about us, and there was nothing we could do to win its attention. "Let's try something else," said Steve, and he whipped out a tape that we had managed to keep out of the tape deck throughout the safari. It was his own tape, and he is a huge fan of Shania Twain, Gloria Estefan, and Celine Dion (awfully sensetive taste for a man with a machete wound on his forehead). In seconds the dripping drama of Enrique Eglesias' selflessly romantic offer "I can be your hero baby" was blasting through our sound system as loud as the Ngorongoro has ever heard such a melody. "I can kiss away the tears" and with that the Rhino, clearly moved by Enrique's raw emotional profession of love, stood to face us with it's tiny, but sensetive eyes, rising like a wounded but triumphant soldier from his resting place on the field of battle. For the rest of my days I will associate Enrique, and that song in particular, with the leathery grace of this Rhino, who blessed us with a glance of his ponderous, massive body just when all hope was lost.

So, once that dramatic episode was over, we headed up to the campsite, thrilled with our findings, but disappointed that not a single elephant had crossed our path.

We spent the evening, the last with our good friends Alex and Fiona (newlyweds from the U.S.A. and australia respectively), reminiscing about the two brief weeks we'd spent in Buswelu, and speculating about the rest of our time in Africa. Evening turned into night, and after a restful sleep we rose to watch the sunrise over the Ngorongoro. A beautiful sight to be sure, but not as satisfying as the much sought after Elephant would have been. We had all but given up hope when, 15 minutes before Alex and Fiona's scheduled departure, as we were eating breakfast, we saw a crowd gathering at the edge of the campsite.

There in the leaves of the thick vegetation was the largest of land animals peacefully munching on whatever plant it fancied, then slowly, oh so heavily wandering off to find another. We followed it around the periphery of the campsite, watching its giant tusks sweep through the brush and its dextrous trunk pluck at the branches. It was further from me than the elephant I met on the streets of Pondicherry, India, but it was entirely untamed, and somehow this made the experience all the more exhilerating. This was a wild elephant who had stumbled upon our campsite, and it could at any point decide to trample each one of us, squashing the late sleepers where they lay in their tents. But it did no such thing. It only bumbled gently along like an old man, bored with its status so high on the food chain, and perfectly secure in the presence of human beings, knowing, I suppose, that we would all make a dash for cover at the slightest hasty motion of its massive head.

The elephant was a wonderful gift, and we savoured it almost too long until Steve broke the ice with his urgent plea for Alex and Fiona to come immediately, as the bus was leaving. I now understand why every tourist in Tanzania feels compelled to go on safari at least once. There is no place (no place I've been) like the Serengeti for an upclose encounter with God's wildest creatures, after which you still find yourself safe in a giant, gas-guzzling land rover, with all your limbs intact. I am very grateful for the experience.