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Women Who Run with the RhinosBy Shannon Barr |
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Africa, cradle of humanity, may be the perfect place to visit with your mother, provided your relationship can handle the uninterrupted display of fecundity and mortality. My mother is pretty hip for a woman of her generation, but in my thirty years we have never discussed sex or death at any length or with any measure of comfort. So it was an unexpected benefit for me to stand beside her and witness the ferocious mating of a pair of lions, the stupefying erection of an elephant. I squinted at my mother in the searing equatorial sunshine and thought, okay, now we have seen this together. Now I know she knows I know. We went to Kenya on a two-week safari in early March, just as spring was beginning to crack open the frozen cocoon of Manhattan, releasing in me a new season's store of restless optimism and big, amorphous plans. The group had been rallied by my aunt Jane and consisted of twelve women - mostly members of her Greenwich, Connecticut posse, over 50, affluent, well-traveled, longtime friends. My mother, who fits all of these categories, was the ambassador from Chicago. And my three cousins and I, all past our quarter-century mark, were quite happy to be referred to as "the little girls" throughout the trip. Assembled, we were not unlike a pack of she-lions: cliquish, ravenous, hormonally volatile and dangerous when provoked. We dubbed ourselves "The Pride of the Yankees." Ours was the only all-female safari that our guides, Charlie and Mouse McConnell, could recall. If they were amused at the idea, then the spectacle we made when they met us at the Nairobi airport must have only fanned that flame. We were decked out in nearly identical safari uniforms: crisp khakis, wide-brimmed hats and multi-pocket vests stuffed like advent calendars with tissues, binoculars, cameras, sunscreen and economy-size bottles of Purell. Grinning and already snapping pictures of each other, we literally spilled over with enthusiasm for the adventure ahead. Our eagerness, our readiness to be completely swept away, was all girl. "You won't come back the same," several friends had threatened, as if to a New Yorker the prospect of shedding lethargy and cynicism were a grave sacrifice. But in my typically exhausted, work-addled state, I was more than ready to molt. It concerned me only mildly that I was traveling over 7,000 miles with eleven chattering women for the dubious privilege of sharing a tent with my mother. The safari was her gift to me; it was also the first trip I had ever taken alone with her. Accepting it felt a bit like the discovery that the biggest present under the Christmas tree has your name on it. You want badly to tear it open and dive in, but you can't help feeling self-conscious, watched by many pairs of eyes. You wonder if you deserve it, if you can possibly have it in you to be grateful enough. You are not sure you want to be that beholden. Welcoming us into the wild was a giraffe straight out of central casting. He appeared in the golden half-light just before dusk as we arrived at Shaba Game Reserve, the first of our two campsites. "Cue the giraffe," we could practically hear the stage manager whisper, and suddenly there he was, reticulated costume glistening and enormous long-lashed brown eyes blinking kindly. "I know. I'm gorgeous. You'll get over it," he seemed to say. But, of course, we never did. Shaba was a sea of sage green and gold, illuminated with splashes of bright lime and lush emerald. A liberal sprinkling of flat-topped acacia trees lent the appearance of a vast outdoor cafe, or of an oversized bonsai garden viewed from the top of a hill. Cartoonish silhouettes of mountains surrounded the plain like an ornamental bowl, molded with a witty hand from garnet red clay. Fresh, feral scents of wild herb, gardenia, lemon grass and musk greeted us everywhere, shifting with every curve in the barely discernible "road." And light poured across it all in golden stripes, picking out thorny trees and knobby little hillocks for illusory stardom, before moving on to spotlight the ostrich or gazelle wandering into the frame for her moment of glory. We had thought we knew what to expect with this whole safari thing. We practiced our imitations of Meryl Streep's "I had a faaahrm in Ahfrica..." and instead sounded like that weathered New England crone from the Pepperidge Farm television commercials. Our first night in camp, we sipped wine and munched toasted cashews by the fire, wondering aloud when Robert Redford would wander out of the bush to shampoo our hair. But very soon in that big warm bowl of teeming earth, the anticipated fantasy melted into a better, richer reality. Celluloid images dissolved, superfluous and inadequate. Our own days were quite seductive enough. Three times a day we set off into the waiting paradise, tires crunching through the brambly grass and rocks, chewing up improbable hillsides and riverbanks. As if by law, the day's first animal sighting would be a gentle, wake-me-up sort of creature - perhaps an otherworldly little gerenuk, with its impossibly slender long neck and startled spread of ears, or a few bronze-backed impala grazing in the early morning light. They seemed to understand their role in the safari drama: they were the leggy chorus girls, the glorious but anonymous voices needed to fill out the score and set off the stars. The "Big Five" - elephant, lion, cheetah, rhino and leopard - transform the game drive into a competitive team sport, a game of our-lions-were-better-than-yours. Our three vehicles would depart camp together, then slyly split off, and the game was on. We could be generous with one another, of course - a good sighting was always shared by radio. But there was nothing quite like the sweet satisfaction of getting there first. We quickly developed an air of safari blasé. Our African spotters would sit on the back of the Land Cruiser's roof and point out any animal they spied with their practiced eyes. "What? Where?!" We would spin in anticipation. "Oh… a topi." We lived for the murmur of "Simba," the sight of a lion never losing its potency. But we were perpetually upping the ante - having once achieved lion, we strove for lion cub. After cheetah, naturally, came cheetah kill. Never have a bunch of softhearted women grown so bloodthirsty so fast. We craved the thrill of the hunt, but, fickle dames, we mourned the sight of a lame zebra, who would surely be someone's dinner before long. And for comic relief, we always welcomed a few boisterous baboons, a mangy hyena or a pack of warthogs scurrying along with their wiry tails in the air, like miniature cable cars. Our first elephant looked as ancient as a dinosaur and as beautiful as anything I have ever seen: funny, ugly, sweet and scary all at once. One might expect to be prepared for such a sight; any schoolchild knows what an elephant looks like. But staring at that elephant, I suddenly understood the meaning of "sur-real" - as in something so real, so immediately true that it exists outside of reality and makes a mockery of it. Even his color was grayer-than-gray, a paint color mixed by Ralph Lauren, called "Elephant" and sold for $65 a gallon. The golden rule of safari, I suppose, is that if neither you nor the animal is nervous, you can probably get a little closer. We approached that elephant in increments of ten feet or so, as he steadily shoveled trunkfuls of sub-Saharan salad into his great maw. Aware but disinterested, he moved only occasionally, never allowing us to get under his baggy skin. Then suddenly he lurched, flared his ears and did a quick two-step in the direction of our vehicle that sent us diving through the open roof into the canvas upholstery below. "He's simply warning us not to get too cheeky," observed the unflappable Charlie, lighting his third unfiltered cigarette of the morning. Our camp deliciously married the rustic and the luxe, like an impermeable oiled mackintosh lined with three-ply cashmere. Every day at four, we sipped piping hot, strong Kenyan tea in the bone-bleaching sun and declared it "a bit of all right." Miraculous meals emerged from the most spartan of outdoor kitchens: freshly baked quiches and fruit tarts, fiery curries, paper thin ostrich "prosciutto." Occasionally we picnicked on our morning game drive, stopping by a muddy river to devour egg sandwiches on buttery grilled bread and sip mango juice with champagne. After a few days of culinary bedazzlement, my mother rolled up her sleeves and led the charge back to the cooking area, where she and the ladies took an inventory. They memorized the configuration of huge simmering cauldrons and heavy metal boxes buried in ash and embers, as if they had every intention of recreating the messy magic on their gleaming granite countertops at home. At night we retreated to our two-woman tents and tucked ourselves into sturdy camp beds, wrapped in an efficient package of soft pressed sheets and no-nonsense warm blankets. In exchange for our heavenly rest, we endured a flying circus of insects, a carpet of tiny jumping frogs and the mild indignity of a tented john, lit by a flashlight held between the teeth. In that fathomless velvet darkness, the distance separating us from our outhouses might have been miles instead of yards. So it was without too much surprise that I awakened one night to the sound of my ever-elegant mother squatting and urinating on the ground just outside my netted window. Could I blame her for sticking close to home? Not with the voices of the lions taunting us well into the night. Their roar was an unforgettable rumbling whine, which Charlie swore came from at least three miles away. "If they were any closer," he soothed, "Believe me, you'd feel your sternum shake." We nodded as if this were comforting, and I marveled at how quickly the mind and body adjust to new realities. How readily a reconfigured world, in which the wine is perfectly chilled and the passion fruit is plentiful - but occasionally one has to grab a quick pee on the ground - starts to seem like a world with the right priorities. The next night, my mother went to sleep with a plastic bucket at her bedside. I have rarely seen her happier. Our clothes were washed every day by the same stewards who heated water and hauled it up into the trees for our open-air shower tents. The clean laundry was laid out to dry in the sun, and every fragrant piece was pressed with an old-fashioned iron - all except our undergarments, which a powerful taboo prohibited the men from touching. These they discreetly instructed us to wash in our personal canvas basins, with powdered soap and scrub brushes they provided. The men seemed sheepish and apologetic for withholding this one chore. I felt spoiled to have them doing my laundry at all, though I knew that their wages and our tips made them phenomenally well paid by their country's standards. The luxury of this trip, and particularly of their constant service, delighted and embarrassed me. I could not get over the guilty joy of fresh coffee in a silver urn, delivered to my tent just before dawn every morning with digestive biscuits or warm buttered toast. My mother was equally delighted and considerably less guilt-ridden. It occurred to me only later that she, along with most of my travel companions, had spent over thirty years making other people's breakfast and doing their laundry, underpants included. Every evening after our last game drive, we would shuck our dusty clothes, rediscover the sensuous thrill of the outdoor shower and dress for dinner. My mother's suitcase, only marginally bigger than mine, produced a steady, colorful stream of fresh linen shirts, chic palazzo pants, trim jeans and fabulous, funky jewelry. All the ladies looked forward to the fireside cocktail hour, and not just for the libations. They couldn't wait to see what my mother would wear, shouting their disbelief and enthusiastic approval as soon as she came into view. "How does she do it?" they would ask me, as if I were the mother and she the dazzling daughter. Proud of her innate style, annoyed by her delighted "Who, me?" response, I felt hopelessly dowdy in my shapeless sweaters and Gap khakis, ever the topi to her lioness. On any continent, my mother knows how to make an entrance, and Kenya puts her in spectacular company. The air fairly buzzes with the ghosts of flamboyant grandes dames, from the pioneering aviatrix Beryl Markham to Joy Adamson, tempestuous lion tamer of "Born Free" fame. "Larger than life," such characters are often called, when in fact they are blazing reminders of just how big life can be, for those who make it so. How can one help but follow their lead? One evening on a sojourn at a sumptuous Colonial manor house, I jumped onto the back of a frisky Thoroughbred and trotted off into the hills with the born-in-the-saddle McConnells and my horse-savvy Greenwich cousins. In the bush, I had become Joy Adamson; here, I reasoned, I would simply channel Beryl Markham. This was my last thought on the exhilarating ride before I somersaulted over the horse's head and onto the hard, red dirt road. Trying to recover in the manner of a grande dame, I rode at a shaky walk back to the house and retired to my clawfooted bath with a battered volume of Hemingway and a few inches of Scotch. I slept deeply that night - sore, content and only slightly humbled, grateful for the fact that my mother, unlike poor Beryl's, was there to tuck me into my mosquito-netted bed. Of all the great lady specters we encountered, my favorite was an American beauty who fell in love with Africa, an English aristocrat and a giraffe, in roughly that order. Together, Betty Anderson and Jock Leslie-Melville forged the perfect union of Kenya's cultivated and wild sides. They took a gorgeous pile of a house ten miles outside Nairobi and transformed it into a breeding ground for the endangered Rothschild giraffe. Saving this rare subspecies from extinction became the Leslie-Melvilles' lifelong project. Voluminous press coverage, a series of books and a movie chronicled the process. Giraffe Manor - now part wildlife sanctuary, part country hotel - is an almost absurdly picturesque romance come to life. The giraffes roam freely on the lawns surrounding the house and poke their heads in the windows, long purple tongues in search of a handout. Inside, the walls are covered with glorious photographs, providing ample evidence that Betty and Jock were not only heroic, but also had the nerve to be much better looking than their Hollywood counterparts. Rick and Briony Anderson, heirs and proprietors of Giraffe Manor, proved to be the indoor adjuncts of Charlie and Mouse, entertaining us in the manner to which we had grown rather alarmingly accustomed. All four were the perfect party hosts: brimming with wit, grace and enthusiasm, yet somehow nonchalant about their history and surroundings. They led us through their country as if it were a museum, delighted that we shared their passion for the Renoirs and Picassos on the walls, deeply knowledgeable about them, but with none of the art curator's smug, starchy manner. "Charlie," Mouse might say into her radio, "we've found a lovely lioness sunbathing, just over that ridge." They navigated in shorthand, by the subtlest of landmarks: that ridge, those trees, that little hill by the river. They know the land as they know their children's bodies, every freckle and bump a beloved site with a memory attached. And sure enough, soon all of the Land Cruisers would mysteriously appear "over that ridge," to watch the lioness roll about in the tall grass. My aunt narrated softly into her camcorder; my cousins aimed their telephotos with authority. My mother and I held hands, for the first time in years. We cursed the inadequacy of our equipment, and of our language to describe the view. This trip was termed a "photographic safari," but the act of photography quickly became a distraction, a chore to be gotten through before sitting back and watching the real show, in real time.> Our last day in the Masai
Mara, we stopped to see a group of white rhino, transplanted from South
Africa in the hope that they may help replenish Kenya's drastically poached
rhino population. They are kept under close watch by rangers, penned in
at night and allowed to roam under supervision during the day, like delinquent
teenagers. It was more than a little bit frightening to hike up a hill
and find them grazing there, so close that we could have touched their
leathery hides. And it was my own indomitable mother who demonstrated
just how vulnerable we were. As she hastened to catch up with the rest
of our group, one "small" rhino acted on a similar impulse to
rejoin his family. A quick bit of mental geometry was all it took to realize
that the trajectories of mother and rhino were about to intersect. "Shan-non!"
She called my name in a quavering voice I had never heard before. I was
paralyzed. The woman who bore me was about to have a run-in with a baby
rhino; what on earth was I going to do about it? "Hurry - or stand
still!" a young ranger shouted to her, only marginally more helpful
than me. Panicked and disgusted with both of us, no doubt, she made tracks
- and proved in the process what 68-year-old legs are capable of. The
rhino, a perfect gentleman, let her pass. Crisis averted, we continued
on our way and hurried off to the tiny Mara Airstrip for our flight back
to Nairobi, and home. Why not, in a world where
you may encounter over ninety varieties of antelope, where the breadth
of the sky can turn a herd of elephants into a litter of kittens? Africa
seduces with an embarrassment of riches, but it demands from us a certain
hunger, the arrogance to believe that we deserve it. Perhaps I hadn't
possessed it when I left New York two weeks earlier, or perhaps it was
just asleep. Today it is wide awake, ravenous, looking for its next adventure.
What a cleverly wrapped gift this trip was, after all. Things my mother
could never tell me with words, she told me with Africa.
African Safari Adventures throughout the East African Bush. |
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