(Get Me) Back to Africa

By PEPPER EDMISTON

Well, we made it out alive, but now I want to go back. Africa’I can’t get it out of my mind. I dream of Africa every night, except when I’m dreaming about redecorating our house. ”Last August, filled with high anxiety, I went to Africa with my sweetie Joe and our sons William and Charlie. We arrived in Johannesburg after flying for 24 hours straight. To handle such a flight you assume you are in hell, this is eternity and you must accept your fate. More than any other place on earth, though, Africa is worth the agony of no leg room whatsoever. ”During our five-week stay, we saw Cape Town (a must) and Durban (a must miss), but the highlight was Botswana, a large country where thousands of acres are preserved as national parks and animals outnumber humans by the millions. In Botswana we went ‘on safari,’ an expression that can describe staying in rooms with canopied beds covered in 400-thread count linen, so long as scary beasts are nearby. ”In Botswana, wildlife is not confined to the wild. On the streets of the town of Kasane, baboons strut through the place like people. The difference, though, is baboons are stark naked. If a male is excited, his huge private parts become bright blue; if a female is ready to romp, hers turn bright pink. Sex in this city is devoid of all subtlety and impossible to ignore. While I was shocked, other family members thought this was peachy. ”It was on the tranquil Chobe River that our adventure began. We journeyed for days in slim metal boats, stopping at lodges along the way. We rarely saw another soul, except for elephant, hippo, zebra, rhino, giraffe, impala, monkey, water buffalo and other animals. It all looked so benign, but when Will asked our guide how long he’d last if he dove into the river, the answer was ‘About two minutes.’ ”Then the guide asked Will, ‘Have you seen a crocodile eating yet? ”’No,’ said Will. ”’Then jump in the water.’ ”Friends were impressed we were ‘on safari’ so long. Don’t be. Here is the schedule for the half-dozen lodges where we were guests: Sleep in a feather bed. Wake up to a mellifluous voice whispering, ‘knock knock.’ Rouse yourself. Dress in your safari finery. Have a hearty breakfast of homemade porridge. Grab your binoculars and jump in the jeep or climb on the boat for a three-hour ride, complete with snacks. See kudu, cheetah and hyena. Return to an enormous luncheon. Nap. Wake up for a vast tea. Enjoy another ride. See wildebeest, wild dog and warthogs. Stop in the bush for wine and cheese served by candlelight. Rest in your suite with a soak in the tub. Dress up. Feast on a six-course banquet while conversing with fascinating international travelers. Repeat. ”We tried our best to follow the rules, but often failed. At a lodge in the Savute area, we forgot to lock our door and returned to find baboon paw prints everywhere. Yikes! They had gotten into my well-stocked medicine bag. I was in a panic until I realized the ‘boons weren’t so smart, stealing only vitamin C and zinc tabs, while leaving behind the better class of drugs. But that wasn’t the worst thing. We wondered why at all times we had been escorted to and from our room. We found out. After we left Savute, we heard that a bartender had been eaten by a lion just before our visit, right in that very lodge. And to think we were thrown by a few baboons. ”Africa has friendlier inhabitants, though, including every conceivable type of bird. My favorite was some kind of weaver, whose mate built her a nest which, if she found flawed, she would shred. He would build, she would shred, until hubby got it just right. There was also the ‘Jesus Bird,’ who walked on water and countless others whose names, in combination, would yield a lovely ‘chanting, lesser-crested, golden-rumped, gull-billed, wooly-necked, blue-eared, long-toed, thick-kneed, bearded, pigmy shoveler snipe.’ ”We learned about every animal we saw. Impalas are called the ‘McDonald’s of the bush,’ because ‘everybody eats them.’ When preparing to mate, giraffes slam each other against the flank ‘thus, ‘necking.’ Successful mating results in a female gestation period of 450 days, making me wonder why gals don’t trot for the border at the first friendly whack. Elephant mothers, however, get the gold medal: they are pregnant for 660 days, or 22 months. I’m glad this was new information for Joe, as my nine months of bitter complaining might have seemed self-indulgent. ”After the glory of the Chobe, we were forced to fly to the rest of our destinations: the Okavango Delta, then the Kalahari Desert. Light aircraft was required; so light, in fact, six people could fit only if you held in your stomach. Remember the dusty planes in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’? The ones aliens had borrowed for decades, then returned to the desert? Those are the ones we flew in. ”But the good news was the bush pilots, wind-burned hunks from the British Empire, dazzling in their khakis. For a moment, they allowed me to feel Meryl Streepish. Flying over the plains of Africa behind a fearless pilot, I lingered in my reverie until a phrase thumped my eardrums. At first, I thought I heard, ‘My dear, praise the beauty of Botswana!’ No, not quite. It was, ‘Mom, pass the barf bag, NOW!’ In the Kalahari, we stayed in Deception Valley, which is hundreds of miles from anyplace else and is flat as a pancake. In Botswana, they say if you lie down and look ahead, you will see the next 14 days of your life in front of you. That’s how flat and isolated it is. In the Kalahari, I became so television deprived I dreamed an entire ‘Mannix’ episode. But Bushmen have lived in Deception Valley for ages and they seem satisfied. We spent a day with two of them who knew some English, but were unable to respond when Charlie asked, ‘How the hell did the leopard get its spots?’ The Bushmen posed their own question, also unanswerable. ‘Will Ahnold really be your gov’ner?’ ”We were always accompanied by a guide and, although usually in a jeep, we sometimes walked. More than once, an enthusiastic naturalist would bend down, pick up something and exclaim, ‘Oh! Fresh lion scat! Feel it, and take a whiff.’ We soon realized even the king of beasts’ droppings weren’t that exciting, though the lions themselves were. People sometimes faint the first time they hear a lion’s roar. I swooned. It is universally agreed that what the lion says when he roars is this: ‘Whose land is this? Whose land is this? This land is mine.’ You bet. ”One night there were so many lions roaring, I was afraid to stay in our cabin, despite the beckoning Egyptian bedsheets. The guys were going on a game-viewing drive, which sounded less frightening than being alone, as we probably wouldn’t see a thing. Wedged between Will, 6’2′, and my solid spouse in his pith helmet, Joseph ‘I AM BAWANA’ Edmiston, I figured I was safe. Plus, our guide had a gun. ”Just our luck, we ran into a pride of lions, 15 feet away, eating a freshly killed zebra. The guide had an enormous floodlight, so we could view the most horrible sight imaginable in bright technicolor, with surround sound. We sat there for an hour, speechless. The noise of the incessant gnawing and crunching was more terrifying than what we watched, but most frightening of all was the sound of roaring. ”The alpha lion, whose ladies were feasting, was lording it over another male, standing 25 feet away. Each time the king roared, the lesser one roared back. What were they saying? Was the big guy not sharing? Is that why the beta male was walking toward us? Joe jumped into the back seat to shelter Charlie, while 17-year-old Will climbed on my lap. Why? ‘What if the second banana is hungry?’ he asked. The fear on our faces must have made us unappetizing, because Beta changed his mind and sauntered back into the bush. I’m still in recovery. ”We learned so much in Africa. For instance, if you become poisoned, you must eat elephant dung, which contains a special ingredient that will cause you to vomit. Who knew a special ingredient was required? In Zulu Land, the word for tree is also the word for medicine. Our favorite tree was the Hanging Over Tree, whose bark you ingest in powdered form after a night of carousing. Did you know that if you discover crocodile teeth it means good luck? Why? Because there is no crocodile attached. ”We learned there are African masks to be worn for all occasions, including the ‘fault-finding’ mask, the ‘make fun of boys who dress like girls’ mask and the ‘create general and constant anxiety’ mask. We learned if you are good to nature, nature will be good to you and that the world did not start with us and will not end with us. And, mostly, we learned we want to go back to Africa. Right now. (Pepper Edmiston has been a regular contributor to the Palisadian-Post for many years. Her husband, Joe, is executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.)