A BIG Drop in the Bucket List
I’ve never kept a bucket list. In fact, until I watched the Nicholson-Freeman old boys’ adventure several years’ back, I had never heard of such a thing. Oh, the metaphorical kicking the bucket was in my lexicon, but keeping a catalogue of must-sees and must-dos before my expiration date has never been a preoccupation. I do have some dreams of things I hope to experience before life’s final curtain descends. But, these are held in no particular order of necessity or priority. So if I get the chance to trace the steps of D-Day heroes and once again breathe deeply of the air that stirred the thoughts and passions of my ancestors in the British Isles, so much the better. But beyond these musings, most of tomorrow for me is cast in a haze of maybe and God willing. So it came as an unexpected surprise when my wife and I were invited to join several former colleagues on a trip to South Africa. While such a far off destination would not rank high on my bucket list--if I were inclined to keep one--the opportunity to share in an adventure with such good company could not be resisted.
To be honest I had some reservations about going. Between uncertainties over political unrest and COVID, and the regimen of precautionary shots and pills we took to ward off all manner of mosquito, air- and water-borne diseases, it seemed like we were embarking on an ordeal more than an adventure. And the thoughts of 16 hours of confinement in a Boeing fuselage, stomaching food reminiscent of long-abandoned TV dinners, my neck rebelling from the bobble-head catnaps I might steal in seats more suited for sleep deprivation than relaxation—all gave me second thoughts. At the same time, Africa has always held me in its grip, from my childhood’s longing to join the Adamson’s raising lions in Kenya to my admiration of George Schaller living among Mountain Gorillas in Uganda. Countless Lowell Thomas travelogues plus Marlin Perkins and Jack Hannah television safaris further spurred my fantasies of someday catching one up-close glimpse of Eden before it is gone. As I weighed the inconveniences of travel with the allure of the wildlife awaiting us, along with the joyful anticipation of sharing this adventure with dear friends, the balance in favor of going tipped towards yes.
Those 17 days from Newark takeoff to touchdown in return transported my wife and me to a world that was both very much like, and radically different from the familiarities of our American existence. Without pretending to offer anything more than a few passing impressions, I offer these observations of what we encountered and the impact it had on providing us a more informed judgment of this place from which all of us can trace our specie’s origin.
Africa is bigger than most of us can conceive. It staggers our Mercator-accustomed minds to fully appreciate the expanse of the landmass of the earth’s second-largest continent. Even our two most populous countries, China and India, could easily fit within it. The Sahara would have sand to spare should America be superimposed upon it.
Within its 11.67 million square miles can be found the world’s longest river and largest non-polar desert, largest (by volume) waterfall, the second largest tropical rain forest and canyon on the planet, and the highest volcano in the Eastern hemisphere, snow capped Kilimanjaro. All three of the earth’s latitudinal meridians cut through Africa, giving tourists to South Africa the odd experience of feeling hotter while heading north. And since our tour group was traveling in October, we felt summer’s, not winter’s, approach. Whatever expansive term you prefer—huge, immense, vast—Africa wears it well.
Africa is breath taking. Beauty may be in a beholder’s eyes, but it can also be heard in the collective “ahs” and “wows” of spray-soaked tourists leaning over the brink of the mile-wide chasm native peoples call “the smoke that thunders.” Better known as Victoria Falls in honor of explorer David Livingston’s British sovereign, it is twice as high and wide as our Niagara. To our group of 19 travelers from Tennessee, Arizona, Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Colorado, it was nothing short of awesome, an overused word I try to avoid, but one which, nonetheless, fits the mighty river’s cataract that bisects Zimbabwe and Zambia on its way to the Indian Ocean. And we saw it during the dry season!
Many more photo opportunities kept us reaching for our cameras and phones. From the dizzying heights of Cape Town’s Table Mountain to Good Hope’s two ocean vantage point; from the 2,200 foot escarpment called God’s Window to acres and acres of sugar, banana, wheat, teak, eucalyptus and pine nurseries; from the coastlines to savannahs, turbid water holes to the life-nurturing Zambezi, this part of the world far exceeded my expectations in beauty and inspiration.
Survival is the order of the day in Africa’s remaining wild places. Africa brings one closer to life’s dramatic rawness than we often see in our much more tame and managed American landscape. Like most tourists we were steered toward spying the Big Five in their natural habitats: elephants, rhinos, lions, leopards, and water buffalo. In this quest our tour guides were successful, even if leopards and rhinos evaded detection beyond a few fleeting glimpses. But elephants, buffalo and hippos appeared to be thriving under rigorous national park protection, accompanied by large and diminutive antelope, zebra, giraffe, warthogs, monkeys and baboons, hyenas, wild dogs, basking crocodiles and avian species of many sizes and colors. In our Toyota land cruisers we took in the drama of life and death in a land in which we were both interlopers and spectators.
Even under the watchful eye of park rangers trying to manage such a diverse menagerie, poaching and habitat shrinkage pose formidable challenges. As I took this all in, my mood kept shifting towards the melancholy realization that we could be among the last people to ever behold the spectacle of life in such a natural environment. At the same time I came away encouraged by the way animals and humans had seemingly found a way to abide each other’s presence. If the monies generated from tourists and trophy hunters chosen to cull outsized herds can preserve this delicate ecosystem contained behind electric fences, then generations to come may yet have the chance to enjoy and learn what nature may teach us about life in its most natural condition.
Africa has much to teach us about our own survival into the future. I don’t believe I was alone in bringing to South Africa a number of preconceived notions about this land of so many contradictions: immense resource wealth and profound human poverty; a racially cooperative and optimistic society somehow undaunted by its history of colonial exploitation, tribal conflict, and racial apartheid. I came expecting to enter a third-world environment overflowing with racial tensions. But the resentments I suspected I’d feel due to my own race never surfaced. At no time did any of us feel intimidated or unwelcomed. Rather the people of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana impressed us with their graciousness and hospitality. They were eager to tell us about their countries and to share all they could about their land, their history, their wildlife and their aspirations for a better tomorrow.
The collage of images below captures four awakenings that will forever inform my judgment of this place and the people who call it their home.
· Children walking to school. These uniformed, typically smiling youngsters, were seen throughout our journey walking to and from school. Their commute was no easy trek through the neighborhood, but demanded they walk miles along highways and secondary roads in pursuit of what we so easily take for granted or hold in disdain: an education. It made me wonder how many of our young people—or their parents--would ever be willing, or able to make such an effort in the pursuit of learning. I came away inspired by the determination of these young people who may be Africa’s best hope for the future.
· Shanties and garbage. Our travels in South Africa took us into Johannesburg and Cape Town, each a sprawling metropolis of office buildings, traffic congested highways, multi-story office buildings, upscale hotels, restaurants, shopping centers, hospitals, universities and athletic stadiums. To its credit our tour company also included shanty towns like the one pictured above. We wondered how these folks could endure living in block after block of one and two room clapboard and stucco structures, many with tin or thatched roofs, garbage strewn wherever human hands or wind had deposited it. Such ghettos continue the legacy of more than 50 years of apartheid, still holding darker-skinned people in the grip of poverty and unemployment. This, too, is South Africa, then, now, and who knows for how many years to come.
· A place call Langa. In the midst of one of Cape Town’s poorer neighborhoods is a place where both hope and redemption flicker. It features schools and a center for the cultivation of art, music, theater and artisan creations. In Langa the shackles of the past are slowly being removed through education, skill acquisition, and the synergy of a community whose residents are determined to write a different history for themselves and their country. For those of us passing through as visitors, the vitality and spirit of its people were infectious. We went away encouraged and inspired by what places like this may mean for the people and the future of this land.
· Nelson Mandela. As the image of South Africa’s most celebrated leader portrays, he yet stands over his beloved country with outstretched arms, even years after his death. A contemporary of our own Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. Mandela was a prophetic voice for change in his quest to end the segregation and discrimination under which the black and colored peoples of his country lived from 1946 until the early 1990s. Imprisoned on an island for 27 years, his voice of moderation was never stilled, gradually wearing down the white minority who ultimately stepped aside in granting full citizenship to all South Africans, irrespective of their heritage or skin color. Most impressive to me was the message of reconciliation he conveyed to those whose retaliatory impulses were transformed into a forward-looking, not backward-festering, vision for their nation.
When Americans go abroad it is often with a chip on our shoulder as to who we are—or think we are—and the many creature comforts we enjoy each day. But South Africa has a way of changing one’s perspective from ours vs. theirs to us together. This trip in particular is making me reconsider what I think I understand about the past, about racial coexistence, and about the responsibility we share, towards each other and the natural world that is now in our care. And perhaps above all, it gave all of us some proof that forgiveness, understanding and compassion, when modeled by leaders like Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, can redirect even the most hateful and vindictive of our passions and convictions. I can only hope and pray that, in time, we will take that to heart in our country too.
