For our fall vacation, which South Africans refer to as simply “vac,” two friends and I went to Kruger National Park in the northeastern part of the country, right next to Mozambique. I never thought I would go on anything called a “vac,” let alone be able to tell people so nonchalantly that I was “right next to Mozambique,” as if it were the same as saying “right next to Burger King” or “right next to that bald man in sweat pants.” Alas, these were just two of the pleasantries of going on safari in Southern Africa.
Note: By “safari” I mean riding around a tourist-infested park in a minivan while a fat Boer named Ziggy tells old German women in loose-fitting khaki that, “No, an alligator and a crocodile are not the same thing.”
We stayed in Kruger park for four days and three nights in a lodge that featured thatched-roofed huts, a bar, a greenish pool and signs telling us to alert our guides if we happened to step on a spitting cobra, as if they would be able to help at that point. It was quite nice, though. Really.
Our meals consisted mostly of sausage, and evenings were spent watching white people sit around and drink gin while being waited upon and sung to by smiling black people.
On our final morning in the park, Ziggy, the fat Boer guide, was to wake us early for a walking safari, which the brochure described as a chance to “identify animal spoor and share the fascinating secrets of the African bush.” Now, I can identify all manner of dog spoor, and my porch at home still bears the smell of rabbit turds from a pet bunny we had years ago, but the prospect of getting down and dirty with exotic poop seemed grand. I was pumped.
(Side note: Wouldn’t that make for the greatest elementary school “What I did on my summer vacation” essay ever? Think about it: Tommy went to the beach, Mary went to Disney world, Peter played with cheetah shit … )
The prospect of waking up at 5 a.m. that Sunday for the walk wasn’t inviting, especially since my friends and I had stayed up the previous night talking to two British guys about that time in Amsterdam when they “got totally wankered on space cakes.” We did it, though, and set off in a small group to hopefully stumble upon elephants, rhinos and buffalo in their natural glory. For safety, Ziggy the fat Boer brandished his good old Glock and flashed a mischievous smile.
“Only for emergencies,” he reassured us. I thought safari guides carried rifles and were well-versed in the ways of “brain shots,” but I guess the small handgun was better than the slingshot hanging out of his other pocket.
It wasn’t long before we were hot on the trail of our first animal. Ziggy the fat Boer had discovered the tracks of two lions, one male and one female. It’s fine seeing a lion in a zoo, and even from the window of a van, but I didn’t feel quite as excited as some other group members on learning that there were likely two hungry lions within a few hundred meters.
“Ooooh, let’s follow it,” said one of the annoying women in our group. I shot her a sneering look. A middle-aged Alaskan lady who was teaching business on a Fulbright scholarship in Cape Town, she didn’t strike me as a fan of the crack pipe. But what else would motivate this woman to chase lions through the African bush with a digital camera? I didn’t know. Her partner, a tugboat driver from Juneau, expressed the same enthusiasm, and I began to hate her, too. But it reassured me somewhat when Ziggy the fat Boer didn’t see a problem with it, so we headed off.
I found comfort in the fact that we three young athletic men would be able to run much faster than the duo of Alaskan morons, the beer-bellied Brits and Ziggy the fat Boer, who was wearing flip flops. Surely those lions would prefer five pasty tourists to the gamy taste of handsome young American boys.
After a few minutes, Ziggy the fat Boer stopped and told us to look up the road through our binoculars. I looked, and about 300 yards up the dusty road were the two lions, meandering along. They caught our smell, stopped and turned. They looked back at us, as if we were the fascinating subjects of a safari. Then they kept walking.
“Can we get closer? I think we should,” said the winner of the prestigious Fulbright scholarship. I wanted to swing my camera-heavy backpack into her peach-fuzzed face. Not only did I not want to agitate wild lions, but the fact that this whiny idiot won a Fulbright struck me as horribly, horribly wrong. Ziggy the fat Boer explained to her that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea, and she griped like a small child. I was glad. Besides, I wanted to go on and explore the fascinating secrets of the bush.
Turns out, it wasn’t as exciting as I had thought. We looked at termite mounds, spider webs, nuts, feathers and more termite mounds. What was so mysterious and fascinating about a tree bark was beyond me. I did, however, discover something that was cool. I picked up an impala bone. Ziggy the fat Boer yelled at me “NOOOO!” and demanded that I drop it.
“Why?” I asked, unsure of what was coming.
“Anthrax lives in the bone marrow of dead impala for hundreds of years. You may have contracted it,” the fat Boer cum doctor explained to me.
I didn’t know what to think. I had just been reprimanded by someone named Ziggy, something that doesn’t happen every day. Moreover, I had survived the anthrax “scare” in Washington scot-free, and it would be a cruel joke to die of it in Africa. If I had to die in Africa, I wanted it to be during a coup, in the Namibian desert or on the tusk of an elephant. But not from anthrax.
I sighed. Of course, I wasn’t sure if I had the disease, but I made sure to cough in the Alaskan couple’s direction just in case. If I’m going down, then those dim-wits are coming with me.
Peter Hamby is a junior in the College and an associate editor of The Georgetown Voice. He misses baseball.
