|
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 honeyrnoon
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.
Copyright
© 2001 Mark C. Ross
|
Top