Table of Contents
| 1 | Life Before Death | 1 |
| 2 | Arrival at Last | 36 |
| 3 | The Welcome of the Bush | 59 |
| 4 | At Home in the Fields | 91 |
| 5 | Good Intentions | 117 |
| 6 | The Story in the Sands: Safari on Foot | 140 |
| 7 | Stalking on the Serengeti | 166 |
| 8 | Killing in the Crater | 189 |
| 9 | Crossing the Grumeti | 207 |
| 10 | Strangers in a Strange Land | 221 |
| 11 | The Impenetrable Forest | 252 |
| 12 | The Journey Back | 279 |
| 13 | "Sobat!" | 306 |
| Acknowledgments | 321 |
Read an Excerpt
1
Life Before Death
February 25, 1999, 5:30 A.M.
I LAY ON my stomach, slightly chilled, and listened to the scops owl's churring call. His soft staccato was coming from somewhere near my tent, probably the umbrella acacia tree; the other shrubs would be too low for him to feel safe. As the first low morning light reached the Serengeti from Ngorongoro Crater, I pondered where I should lead my safari group this morning. We had already been camped here on the north side of Lake Ndutu for four days, encountering probably more than one hundred lions and fifteen cheetahs. By blind luck, we had stumbled onto a leopardess and her two cubs as they chewed on a young wildebeest, which they had stashed in a low and thick acacia kirkii tree. We "needed" to see nothing else; today was one of those rare days when I felt no pressure to produce something. I knew we would still be given some sighting, as a reward for the four days of dusty driving that had brought us here.
Exactly ninety-seven hours later, it would be machine-gun fire that would roust me, not a five-inch owl. Before that day ended, thirty-one of us would be captured, sixteen kidnapped, and ten murdered in the jungle along the border between Uganda and the Congo. Right now, however, I felt the natural promise Africa has always provided me, as I listened to the owl again, picturing his fluffed body vibrating ferociously with each burst of sound.
It was cold for February, considering we were on the African equator during the hot season. I was worn down from seven weeks of being on safari. I rolled my legs onto the canvas floor, pulled on my clothes, slid into my tire-tread sandals, grabbed my binoculars and bush jacket, and stumbled through the open tent flaps into the darkness, toward the campfire and the smell of coffee. Feeling the remarkable cold wetness on my ankles and feet, I paused a moment in the damp grass to hear the owl call from the acacia.
I sat before the flickering wood, coffee already heating my hands and stomach, and decided to let my clients sleep a little longer. A couple years earlier, I had led two of them, Rob Haubner and Susan Miller, on their honeymoon safari, when they had seemed permanently joined either by arms or legs, and on this trip they appeared no less intimate. Both Rob and Susan and the other couple on this safari, Bob McLaurin and Susan Studd, slept in tents complete with queen-size beds. I envied the way I imagined Rob and Susan intertwined, completely at ease, trusting, and sound asleep. My life was a good one, but it was sometimes lonely to have my prime allegiance lie with Africa.
Our driver, Emanuel, spoke a soft greeting, as is the African custom no matter how urgent the matter. We briefly talked of the plan to pack a breakfast and head north again to the tall rock islands of the Gol Kopjes, so remarkable in their smoothness as they rise out of the gentle plains of the Serengeti, and a favorite haunt for predators because of the cover they offer. Emanuel disappeared back to the kitchen tents and out of habit I tossed the last quarter inch of coffee from my enameled cup and stood. I hate waking people up.
I tapped on the canvas of Bob McLaurin and Susan Studd's tent once, twice, and then spoke. Bob answered with a muffled "All right," and I shuffled off to the other tent, twenty yards away. Rob Haubner and Susan Miller had furled their tent flaps back, as I had, so I stopped short and told them in a strong voice that it was morning, or close enough. An immediate and bright answer came from Rob, with a groan from Susan, and I turned back to the beckoning firelight.
Exactly one year earlier, we had been here as well, all five of us. But the rains of El Niño had chased us away, making it almost impossible to drive, and when we flew out it had taken us three tries to get airborne because of the mud. This safari had more than made up for that: Yesterday alone we had watched a terrific, though horrendous, battle between two hyenas and a wildebeest. Its entrails hanging, the wildebeest had fought off its two attackers for forty-five minutes before it weakened and was killed. Bob McLaurin and Susan Studd, understandably, had not been able to watch the killing, and they had urged us to leave. They finally relented, however, allowing Rob, Susan Miller, and me to document with our cameras this once in a lifetime experience. Maybe Bob and Susan were right not to watch, but the biologist in me had to record it, and the three of us were captivated by the vital and basic life that was this death.
"Morning, Mark," Rob said. He'd crept up on me, and I jumped as he settled into the chair beside me. He already had his coffee as well, and I could just make out the firelight reflecting on his Teva sandals as he hunched toward the fire. His long frame settled deeper into the canvas chair, his boyishness belied only by the three-day stubble that caught the firelight. The flames swayed in a slow belly dance. "Flawless," he said, as he cocked his head toward the ice-clear stars pricking holes in the flat blue-black of the sky.
Susan ran her hand across my shoulders as she passed on her way to Rob. There she leaned forward and collapsed sleepily into him from behind. His coffee spilled as her arms encircled him and her head landed at the back of his neck, against his left shoulder. He did not complain. After a minute, she raised up and moved to the chair beside him and Rob rose to get coffee for her.
Both Rob and Sue were from Portland, Oregon, but they had lived all over the world. Rob had been based in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, traveling throughout the Third World for Intel. Susan organized big multimedia conferences and presentations everywhere, and she had all the "people skills" anyone could want. They had been married at the Portland Zoo and their 1997 honeymoon trip, at the Maasai Mara Reserve, was our first safari together.
Emanuel appeared again, telling me in Kiswahili that both breakfast and lunch were packed in the truck, that we had coffee, tea, and water as well. Everything was set.
Susan Studd, without a hint of meanness, had warned us all not to talk to her in the morning for the first hour or so, whether she had had coffee or not. Bob didn't argue with his wife and I certainly wasn't going to, so when the two of them showed up a few minutes later, festooned with cameras and extra clothing, no one even uttered a hello as they settled into the remaining chairs. Titus, the camp waiter, held out a silver tray with two more blue enamel cups. The steam wove its way toward the star-dotted blue-black sky, holding the orange light of the fire, as it twisted upward and melded with the dark.
We were morgue-quiet, half-awake. I was loath to speak, but did. "We probably should get rolling if we want to be at Naabi Hill as the light breaks."
With Emanuel deft at the wheel of the Land Rover he had driven for some ten years in territory like this, we rode in silence for forty minutes to the ranger's post that guarded the Gol Kopjes. I sat on the roof, as always, steady cold tears in my eyes because of the chilly wind. A year later, as I drove down into the crater of Ngorongoro with a different safari group in tow, I would cry hot tears as I recalled this camp and the softness of this dawn.
We found and followed a cheetah for almost two hours before she killed. It took another thirty minutes for her to finish her breakfast of young Thomson's gazelle, and then we went for our own breakfast of bacon and cheese rolls and fruit salad that Arthur, our camp manager, had made for us. Because it was still early and we were still cold, the six of us sat in the sun on a rib of granite that surfaced like a whale's back as it breached from the grassy ocean. Rob and Susan sat on the ground, their backs propped against the stone, their shoulders touching, as we talked about the photographs we'd hoped we'd captured of the running cheetah as she slapped down the Tommie and strangled it. We actually reveled in the images of the cheetah's bloody face as she rapidly devoured the young gazelle. Not only in location but also in attitude, this place was a world away from Rob's and Susan's lives in Portland, and at Intel. The success we had seen the cheetah achieve in the dawn hours was definitely different in kind from what software competitiveness or even city living required. Here the tasks of life were more elemental and clean, even if, at times, they appeared brutal to human eyes. I think Rob and Susan relished it for those reasons, withdrawing from their own urgent lives to be witnesses to nature's necessary rhythms.
By 11:00 A.M., we were back in the truck and heading farther north. We paused; I scanned the landscape with the binoculars and saw lions almost two miles away. Against the short green grasses, their dark yellow coats stood out boldly, even though they were at the base of another kopje. As we drove closer, more and more cubs grew distinct against the grass, until the pride numbered sixteen in all. We would have lunch with them.
For over ninety minutes we photographed and studied the lions. In spite of the rapidly rising heat the cubs were still full of piss and vinegar, attacking anything that moved, and a lot of things that didn't. Even in the relatively cramped quarters of our Land Rover, time blew by like wind. At 2:30, we drove to a cluster of fig trees on the west side of a distant set of rocks. We could safely rest here because the plains are so open that I could see for ten miles in any direction. After I scouted the rocks for any hidden predators, we all got out, taking the seat cushions from the car, and flopped heavily onto the ground, sighing like lionesses, and slid into sleep. The broad leaves of a ficus sheltered us like a green roof, supported by white rafters.
I lay on my back, knowing I would not doze off in that position. Pleased to see that all four in my group were comfortable enough to sleep right out on the plains, skin touching earth, I watched the ever-present raptors as they moved across the vast blue above the equally vast green. In Africa, some predatory eye is always watching.
Rounding out the day by watching the lion cubs at Simba Kopjes and a sunset over the Moru Mountains that swept us into awed silence, we had come back to camp, showered by lantern light, and now sat tired and hushed by the fire. The night was once again flawless; the few clouds of the hot afternoon had gone westward with the light. Venus dominated the west, while Jupiter ruled brightly overhead.
I had asked the staff to pull the linen-covered dining table out of the long mess tent so we could eat under the stars. The candles, protected from the light breeze by glass globes, sent tiny bolts of light ricocheting off the silver and the stemware.
I do not remember what we had for soup, perhaps groundnut, and I do not recall the main course; maybe it was roast chicken or beef Wellington. I can still clearly see the faces at the table. After nine days in the equatorial sun, everyone glowed various shades of healthy tan and red in the candlelight. Susan Miller, in particular, radiated, but perhaps her aura lay as much in her wide smile and easy gut-laugh as on her skin. This was also apparently a time of day that sat well with Susan Studd. The tension, even the slight scowl, inhabiting her face that morning had long since drifted away with the Serengeti wind. "I'm glad our restaurant table isn't by the kitchen door," she commented wryly. "The view will suffice." The corners of her mouth were barely turned up. Rob just smiled.
After the two couples whispered exhausted good-nights and strolled arm in arm back to their tents, I sat alone at the fire, drowsing, happy about the way I had helped the day acquit itself. The camp crew, a hundred yards away, talked in low tones as they washed the dishes and packed up the kitchen for the night. Hyenas, leopards, and genets had sneaked in every single night since our arrival. The little they had snitched was a small price to pay for their presence. But tomorrow we would leave the Serengeti, so the crew was getting ahead a bit on the massive packing that had to be done. It would take the eight of them all morning to break down the huge, steel-framed canvas tents and their adjoining shower rooms, then pack all the china and glasses, and stow it all securely in the truck. It would take them another two, perhaps three, days to drive the rough road all the way back to Arusha, where the equipment would be checked, washed, repaired if necessary, and stored in a warehouse, awaiting the next safari.
Finally, when my head fell slowly forward and snapped back as if I were in church, I roused and headed for my tent, out of habit checking for shoes left out, snack food forgotten, and clothes and cameras perhaps left exposed to the coming dew. But there was nothing to do. In the tent, my firm mattress and flat pillow were beyond cool and I pumped my legs for a few seconds before settling on my stomach. I listened for lions but all I heard from the west end of the lake were the hyenas, calling to one another as they gathered for another killing foray on the night plains.
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