The Magic of it All

The Magic of it All

 

I was sad to leave every aspect of the safari.  It would have been an easy place to spend an extended period of time.  This was a country of rich human texture, where people had stories written across their faces.  I was but passing through.

 

It was my good fortune that Tanya was also coming with me.  We got to the Botswana/Zimbabwe border and had to walk across.  It’s always fun to walk from one country to the next.  Our driver dropped us off, navigated us through exit/entrance customs then met us on the Zim side, took a photo of me under the rusty “Welcome to Zimbabwe” sign, then deposited us at the elegant Pioneer’s Lodge in Victoria Falls.

 

Two days later I was sitting in the Victoria Falls airport. I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was lost.  There was a sadness.  What I had seen was so astounding that I knew it would be hard to replicate, even if I returned.  There is nothing like the first time.  I had read that once you experience Africa it’s difficult not to be impressed, and that’s my case.  

 

I wish I’d had more time to sit with the land.  I wish I’d had more time to sit with people and hear their stories.  I wish I’d had more time in general, not just for the animals and the people.  Africa is different.  I’ve never been here before in any form.

 

I will forever remember the spacious solitude, silence and stillness, its splendid isolation and showers of starlight let loose each night.

 

I remember once coming out of a grocery store in Buenos Aires on a nice summer’s day.  I stopped, and looked around.  where am I, I thought?  I could have been in Paris.  I could have been in Manhattan.  There was that sense about the moment that I could have been just about anywhere in Europe or North America.  I even get that feeling once in a while in Mexico.

 

But not Africa.  As my friend Glenda used to say, “we’re not in Dannemora.”  

 

Really, what do we learn about Africa in school?  When I was a child, we donated pennies to save pagan babies on the dark continent.  Hopefully, they don’t do that today, although radical right-wing, MAGA Protestant denominations end missionaries to Africa to evangelize a radical form of American Trump Christianity.  Some of the most heinous anti-LGBTQ legislation in the world exists in some of these countries thanks to American evangelicals and their cultural agenda.

 

And it’s not as if Africa is on everyone’s radar.  It’s far, relatively unknown and expensive to get to. The average tourist who ventures out of the USA talks about river cruises in Europe, trips to Paris and London or winter breaks on a Caribbean island.

 

Where on the globe have you have ever seen hippos grazing in the forest or elephants playing in the shallow waters of a river?

 

Two weeks earlier I’d left Mexico City, an absolute blank slate.  I’d had no time to do deep research about the places I’d see, had no expectations—something I’d learned to do years ago.  Expectations create disappointments and that’s not a good thing.  That fact that this part of the journey—Sao Paolo, the safari Victoria Falls even happened was a small miracle what with the issue with my visa and being so sick.  I was beyond grateful.

 

The flight took off on time.  It was a full 90 minutes into the flight that I saw any sign of habitation below me.  South Africa spanned out as far as I could see as barren desert.  It was a land of spacious solitude, silence and stillness.

Two small town finally emerged and it made me wonder who lived there and why.  Like Australia, South Africa is built along its coast.  Inland is too hostile.

 

I landed in Cape Town.  A new adventure was waiting.  Steve was in the air somewhere over Europe on his way to Quatar then on to South Africa.  The whole purpose of being in Africa in the first place was a cruise that would begin midweek.

 

But first, some de-stimulation.  It had been a most extraordinary 10 days in the bush and some downtime was welcomed.