Ever heard of the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania? It’s a huge sunken bowl of an extinct volcano making a kind of enclosed zoo for many species of African fauna. I was part of a tour into this self-contained Eden conducting what are called ‘game drives.’ Basically, eight us Americans sat in an open-sided Land Rover while our driver pointed out the elephants, flamingoes, jackals and lions, dik-diks and gazelles. At one dull point we even paused to study a dung beetle pushing a huge turd. Another time we tracked a leopard stalking a waterbuck in the tall grass. Elephants, as you might imagine, were easier to spot. Also giraffes. Herds of gazelle and thousands of wildebeest circled flamingoes. Our guide used his radio to draw and be drawn to hot action spots with other guides.
But not all the wild life was out in the bush. One guy in our group, Alfred, was a roaring pain. He caught two lions mating with his iPad. Of course, he shared the pics with the village lads crowding and gawking like teenage boys drawn to a Playboy magazine. That bothered me. Here we were trying to appreciate a simpler throw-back life style…maybe they weren’t as simplistic as they seemed, but still, we had to respect their way of life. Alfred insisted on forcing modern tech on laid back locals, as if they needed cell phones and screens for a fulfilling life.
He was the kind who wandered to the river at dawn to hang over the riverbank on a rickety fence to watch hippopotami return from a night of foraging. And when we got to our camps for the night, he wandered all the more. I mean, we were squatting in the middle of wild-life territory—in a zoo without cages. Hell, I took out my hearing aids to miss the grunts of nocturnal lions ghosting between our tents. If there was any vantage point close to the edge of—you name it—that’s where you could find him.
After our farewell lunch, I pulled him aside, showed pics of him drooping over the hippo river. I told him I was planning to publish a book for African safari trips and wanted to use him as an example of the ‘problem customer.’ He shrugged, smirked and walked away. I sighed, resigned. What happened in Africa, had to stay in Africa.
Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/
