Where The Wild Things Are

     Each morning at precisely 5 AM, the birds outside provide nature's version of an alarm, a peaceful way for us to awaken, and then fall back into that glorious extra hour of deep sleep.  We sleep with our doors open during this time of year, the cool 60F air providing a hypnotic-like chill to our heads while our bodies are comfortably warm under the covers.  All of that would change in a few days however, for the "wild" things at our destination would be truly wild, as in predator-wild (and we humans, the prey).  We were on our way to Africa.

     I should back up a bit for Africa was far from being some place we had on our travel list.  No matter where you are starting your journey from, Africa (at least the southern part of Africa), is a long ways away as in a full day's travel (or 2 days if you're breaking it up).  15 hours from Los Angeles to Qatar, then another 9 to Johannesburg; or if going from Salt Lake City to Atlanta then figure about 4 hours of flying then another 16 to South Africa;  It's 10+ hours if you decide to go from San Francisco to London, the another 10+ hours for the flight down to Johannesburg.  But our friend and professor (the only white person to be named an elder of the Meru tribe) was retiring from leading safaris and would be conducting his final "tour" of this second homeland of his, only this wouldn't be the usual safari; we would be inside and working with the animals in the bush, watching the tourists' and their vacation safaris going by on the outside.  We would be working as interns with both orphaned and endangered species at Hoedsprut.

     So Africa.  When you think of the continent of Africa one tends to think not of Egypt, or Morocco, or Libya, or even Djibouti each of which is located in Africa.  But mention Kenya or Tanzania and you suddenly think of lions and elephants, not camels and falcons.  But once again, with a long trip ahead of me, I would find that sleep on an airplane is a distant fantasy.  Tired as I was, and with my wife near-snoring next to me, I began the first of what would become being awake for nearly 48 hours.  The time changes, the walks to and from gates, the repeated taking off of my shoes and the emptying of my pockets for airport security, the storing of bags and the fidgeting in my seat, the many books and articles and scribbled notes I would take out and put away (all with the best of intentions).  You would think that all of that would make my body simply give in to sleep.  But alas, it was not to be, flight after flight.  Another scotch, please, and another bottle of water.  Must stay hydrated, you know (and must go to the bathroom again, you know). 

     Still, I never tire of the marvel of flying, my flight to Johannesburg being on a monster A380 jet, a massive 4-engined plane with wings more than 50 feet longer than a 747; the upper level stretches the entire length of the lower one (it takes four boarding ramps to load and unload passengers).  An even bigger surprise proved to be the amazingly smooth takeoff and the quietness of the ride.  But I still had to wonder?  Just how do these massive steel/aluminum/carbon-composite beasts manage to get in the air and fly for 10+ hours?  Even more boggling, how is it that jet engines perform better by constantly running, as an airplane mechanic once told me, the total opposite of how a car engine would work (no overheating issues here). 

     Perhaps I couldn't sleep because my brother's service would soon be underway.  Perhaps it was just my pattern of not being able to sleep when flying.  Perhaps a mix of the two.   But I think it is more the sheer wonder of it all: the flying, the destination, the fact that I was still able to go on such an adventure.  Why me?  Why was I so fortunate?  I had to rake in the words of Adonnis Creed's coach when he told him: Let go of the fair; let go of the guilt; let go of the whatever was...you old, you broken,  but we're gonna turn those weaknesses into strengths.
  
     To be honest I was walking into a new land as well as a new part of my life.  Listening to some music before I left, I realized almost with a start, that it wasn't about going back or trying to capture what once was, but rather just being thankful that you had enjoyed it all then and that you were enjoying it all now, rather like seeing Earth from, space.  Said a piece in The Atlantic:  Human beings evolved to live on Earth, not dangle over it; in a sense, people who go to space witness something they weren't meant to see.  Would what I was about to experience in Africa be similar to what the astronauts felt?  According to author Frank White: The astronauts' sense of national belonging faded away, replaced by one of connection with their fellow human beings.  They also felt a new bond with their home planet, the only known source of life in an otherwise forbidding universe.  The Earth, with its wispy atmosphere, looked delicate, in need of care.

     When I initially asked about what you would picture when picturing Africa and how for many of us, that view is very limited, consider narrowing that question down further and ask what you would picture when you think of South Africa?  Krugerrands?  Blood diamonds?  Apartheid?  Full-bodied wines?  All quite accurate as far as post-colonial African history goes.  My friend, the white Meru elder, told me that he was visited in a dream by a powerful ancestral leader who told him that he needed to continue to write; there were still so many ancestral stories to be told.  You hear me, the figure told him; I will tell you, 

Candelabra tree whose sap & needles are poisonous 

    David Treuer grew up on Ojibwe land and believed the history of his own land, a story captured so vividly  in the best-selling book, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.  And yet my culture and civilization didn't feel gone, he wrote in The New Yorker.  In reviewing Pekka Hamalainen's book on indigenous cultures, he noted that the author felt: ...we should speak not of "colonial America" but of "an Indigenous America that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial," and recognize that the central reality of the period was ongoing Indigenous resistance.  By 1776, he notes, European powers had claimed most of the continent, but Indigenous people continued to control it.  Instead of a foreordained story of decline and victimization, Hamalainen wants us to see a parade of contingencies, with Native nations regularly giving as good as they got, or even better.  The result, he promises, will be a North American history recentered on Native people and their own "overwhelming and persisting" power.  The more I read on South Africa, the more I found it to have a similar telling of their history, one whose story is fairly limited to only post-colonial history.  Tales of ancestral lands and powers and tribes and chiefs were pretty much summed up in a brief chapter in most books, as if the country's true and detailed history only began after the Europeans arrived.

     Here is how the travel site Frommer's recently summed up their guide for visitors: ...hygiene is rarely a problem in tourist areas, tap water is safe, stomach upsets from food are rare, there are no weird tropical viruses, and medical assistance is generally always within a 10-minute to 2-hour drive.  Procedures, particularly dental and plastic surgery, are so highly rated and relatively inexpensive that there is now a roaring trade in safari/surgery holidays.

     Thabo Mbeki, who followed Nelson Mandela into South Africa’s presidency, said this in a speech: I am an African.  I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.  My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows.  It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun.  The crack and the rumble of the mountain thunder, lashed by startling lightning, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope.  The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the citizens of the veld.  Mbeki, Zuma who followed him, and the current president, Ramaphosha, are all considered corrupt by those I spoke to.  I was ready to land in a wild country...apparently I would find it "wild" in more ways than one.