Blue Sun

Southern Africa Email 2 - Part III

After Chobe, we flew to another part of Botswana for more safari-ing.  Where Chobe is at the northern tip of Botswana, we headed to the Tuli Block in Southeastern Botswana, along the Limpopo River, to a privately-owned reserve that borders South Africa and Zimbabwe.  Because the Mashatu Game Lodge is privately-owned, our guides could drive anywhere they wanted to on the property, which made locating hard to find game much easier.  While the herds weren’t as large, we were able to get very close to groups of elephants, lions (including a lion kill) and spotted hyenas.  And Mashatu offered specialized safaris, which added to reserve’s allure.  One morning, my mom and I went on a “Cycling Safari,” biking with two guides across the vast stretches of savannah, which provided a much welcomed workout and a more realistic perspective of the size of several animals (zebras are much smaller than I expected – about the size of a large pony or small horse, while eland, which is Africa’s largest antelope, is enormous).  The other specialized safari I went on was a “Predator Drive” with a guide who studies predators for governments and environmental groups and runs these tours to fund his research.  On our Predator Drive, we visited the den of spotted hyenas (hyena look like dogs, but more closely resemble cats and have the strongest jaw of any animal on earth), watched honey badgers (which are small and incredibly feisty – often scare off predators much larger than them, like leopards and cheetahs) and observed 3 territorial leopards square off against each other.  Fascinating stuff.

But there were 2 incidents that made Mashatu the perfect ending to our trip.

The first was during our first night drive.  As we cruised around the 75,000 acre property in our open-topped Land Cruiser with our 2 guides, one of them spotted a female leopard about 30 yards from us.  Then out of nowhere came a male.  And before we knew it, we had full-on RLP – Real Live Porn; though in this case, I guess it should be RLLP – Real Live Leopard Porn.  It was all Bloodhound Gang from there – “you and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”  The 6 of us in the car became instantly entranced voyeurs.  For the next 45 minutes we were hypnotized as these two leopards continued to mate.  Female leopards are apparently in heat for about 4 days, during which she’ll identify and seduce a male partner.  And once she does her little dance to attract him, they’ll stay together for those 4 days or so – having sex up to 120 times in that period.  Yes, 120 times – with the frequency increasing as the days do.  The sexual encounter involves the male mounting the female, going at it for about 15 seconds, roaring, climaxing and then having the female scratch him (I guess literally leaving her mark).  The roars were incredibly loud and forceful, leaving us to speculate what the male was exclaiming – “Oh God!”, “Who’s your daddy?”, ”What’s my name, bitch?!,” or “Do it!”  Our guides thought we caught them in the 2nd day of this hedonism as during the less than 1 hour we watched, they went at it 6 times!  Yes, 6 times!  I had only heard of a feat like this once before, and that was my college roommate during the first 2 weeks of his relationship with a girl he started dating when we studying abroad in Australia.  Well, he did something right, because “6-Times-A-Day-Jeff” as he was thereafter known has now been married to the girl for 7 years. 

Of course, watching two animals go at it with my parents was a little unsettling, especially when I hear comments from my mother like (after the leopard’s third time) “Wow, Matthew, what stamina he has,” or my dad joking about coitus interruptus we’d cause if we moved too close.  Unfortunately, the lighting wasn’t what I was accustomed to in filming these encounters. 

The second highlight truly belongs to my dad.  When he was in South Africa 4 years ago, the only animal he didn’t see that he wanted to was a cheetah.  Cheetahs are fascinating in that they are the fastest land mammals on earth, as they can run at up to 60 mph for stretches of time.  They are incredibly graceful animals.  So his primary goal for the entire trip was to see a cheetah (or cheeter as he was pronouncing it).  And he didn’t stop telling us this.  Unfortunately, he didn’t see any in Kruger National Park this time around.  And even though there are no cheetahs in Chobe, he incessantly joked around with our guides “when am I going to see my cheetah.”  I grew to hate the word and the animal after just 3 days, or 300 mentions by my dad, which ever came first.  And then we arrived in Mashatu, which supposedly had a family of cheetahs somewhere across its 75,000 acres.  Upon our arrival, my dad had the same giddy excitement as a middle-aged man watching Britney’s “Baby One More Time” for the 2nd time.  And in three days of searching, we had no luck.  So while my mom and I were on our Cycling Safari on the last morning of our time at Mashatu, my dad went off with a guide on his final drive of the trip.  Over the radio, our guide heard that there were cheetahs spotted, to which my mom and I immediately thought my dad got his wish – to see his beloved cheetah.  We thought of my dad and were overjoyed.  And then 15 minutes later, we heard another voice over the radio about a visitor who was at the cheetah site but had lost his camera, so his jeep had to turn back to find it – and we immediately knew it had to be my dad.  Like I said, African Vacation with the Clark Griswald played by Matthew Wallis.

As a side note, my dad found the camera and claimed he saw the cheetah, but we have no absolute confirmation – just the words of him and his guide.

Two days and a 16 hour flight after the Muchenje Lodge, we were back in the States, where the only animals I’ll be seeing are those in the urban jungle as on the highways

Southern Africa Email 2 - Part II

Appropriately enough, the Chobe Reserve rests on the Chobe river, with Namibia just on the other side of the river.  Every afternoon, the river would host herds of various animals – zebras, giraffes, impala, gnus, hippos and most notably, elephants.  Truly an amazing site to see all these animals interact together.  The image that sticks out most in my mind were the elephants though – massive in size, they were incredibly playful with one another.  They’d splash water on each other, roll around in the mud and generally act like a redneck’s vision of what two girls next door washing a car in a driveway.   The other highlight of the park had to be the lion sightings.  Starting out with a female protecting and resting around her wildebeest (gnu) kill, we saw a pack of 5 female lions, then 2 males with massive manes, and finally, 3 adorable cubs.  In just one day, Chobe surpassed the 5 we spent in Kruger for animal life.

So much of what made our time at Chobe great was our lodge – the Muchenje Game Reserve.  The lodge’s managers – Peter and Sandy – focused on creating an intimate, warm, extended family environment.  Relatively small with accommodations of 20 people per night, all the guests ate all meals together with our guides and the managers included.  Peter and Sandy, both white and in their 60s, showed us part of the difficult side of Africa and racism.  They were from Zimbabwe and had worked as lodge managers for decades, but came to Botswana when the writing was on the wall in Zimbabwe about the direction the government was heading – they saw the decline in tourism as the government did not crack down on crime.  And because of this decline, Zimbabwe’s economy crashed, and with it, Peter and Sandy’s pension.  After investing and building up a pension over several decades of $2.5 million, Peter’s pension was worth just $600 when he was able to first cash it in last year… or another way to think about it, for every dollar they had saved for retirement, they received less than 1/10th of a penny.  But to Peter and Sandy’s credit, they love managing lodges and their love of it comes shining through in the satisfaction of their guests at the Muchenje Lodge.

And the Muchenje Lodge was where Africa Vacation truly started.  Most of the guests at the lodge were British; they were probably expecting a modicum of civility on their trip to Africa and, specifically in their former colony, Botswana.  What they got were the American Griswalds, played in all its glory by the Wallis Family.  We shared a table for our meals with one British family celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary; the father was a Cambridge-educated barrister, the mother very formal and two teenage daughters, well, very-teenage and very British (Oh I love Robbie Williams!).  True to form, my family was not exactly the model of civility – we must have appeared loud, mannerless and voracious eaters – probably a site to see for foreigners, but very comfortably American.  But what probably shocked the Brits the most was our find command of the English language.  Somewhere over the Atlantic, Mom and Dad lost the letter ‘R’ in pronouncing words (probably because they are from Brooklyn and the Bronx, respectively) at least words in words where it appeared after the 2nd letter – so we heard such find pronunciations Krugah (as in Kruger National Park), wautah (water), and leppid (leopard).  And I guess they stored these Rs somewhere, because every now and then, Rs appeared where they shouldn’t have been – cheetah became cheetar (which sounds like the guy at your table you want to know while playing poker) and Cubar (Cuba).  To some finely educated Brits, it must have sounded like us Yanks were scratching a chalkboard with our nails every time we opened our mouths. 

But our dining highlight had to be the Aussie family at our table.  I know that people often imitate the fashions of celebrities, occasionally even their hair styles – we all knew “the Rachel” helmet and the Clooney cut were all the rage in the mid-1990s.  But never in my life did I ever expect to see someone with the same gray-coloring style as Paulie Walnuts (http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/cast/character/paulie_walnuts.shtml) from the Sopranos – much less a 50 year old, 200 lbs woman!  The matriarch of the Aussie family had stylized gray streaks across the front and one side of her hair with the remainder colored chestnut.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both.  Of course, she barely one-upped her husband who, about 4 inches shorter than her, pulled off the shaved-head, ZZ Top full beard to a tee… and he was mute. 

We finished our Chobe trip with a tour of a local village where our game drive guide was from.  Botswana is a relatively wealthy country for Africa (diamonds are its biggest export) and has so much land with just 1.5 million people that its citizens just have to ask the government for a piece of property and they get it free of charge.  The village we visited had 20 people, 100% literacy, high cell phone penetration but no running water or electricity.  Bizarre, but indicative of much of Botswana – many villages try to remain true to traditional tribal practices and a subsistence farming lifestyle.

Southern Africa Email 2 - Part I

August 18, 2004

Ok, I’m back in the States… this is my first chance to email about the last 10 days of my trip since email access was rare or too expensive.  Read on… I promise it’s good.

When I last wrote, I was in Johannesburg, having just returned from Kruger National Park in South Africa.  Our next adventure was to head to Livingstone, Zambia to see Victoria Falls (named after they guy in Lord Stanley’s famous phrase, “Dr. Livingstone I presume”).  Victoria Falls… in addition to being a perfect porn actress name, Victoria Falls is one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World.  A 100 meter high water fall on the Zambese River, Victoria Falls is the border between Zambia from Zimbabwe, can be heard several miles away and is literally a mile wide (and more than an inch deep).  The charming 100 year old town of Livingstone (about 8 kilometers from Vic Falls) has grown in recent years to accommodate the additional tourism after the fall in Zimbabwe’s tourism industry due to the country’s increasing lawlessness.  Zambia and Zimbabwe have a long connected history, as together they comprised Rhodesia, the British colony named after the one-time world’s richest man, Cecil Rhodes (the dude who created the scholarship that now bares his name).  He is also the same guy that only hired men, kept the youngest ones closest to him, and would fire those that married women.  Things that make you go hmmm…

We spent 2 days in Livingstone having fun negotiating at the markets, talking with locals (the people of Zambia are amongst the friendliest I have ever come across – those inside and outside the tourist industry) and visiting the Falls itself.  To give you an idea of how massive Victoria Falls actually is, approximately 900 million liters flow through it every minute; there are a little less than 4 liters per gallon, so that’s about 250 million gallons flowing through Vic Falls.  Flushing a toilet uses 1 gallon of water, so put another way, in 1 minute the same amount of water flows through Victoria Falls as if everyone in the US went to the bathroom and flushed at the same time!  It’s like Super Bowl commercials 24/7. 

The massive amount of water drops 100 meters to create a vast mist which at times feels like rain.  This white mist is so pervasive that Victoria Falls is known to the local people as ‘Mosi-oa-Tunya’ - Smoke Which Thunders.  But the mist and massive size make for some great pictures, especially for rainbows.  Our time in Livingstone ended with a sunset cruise on the Zambese River.  We skipped the African Queen (no Bogart or Katie Hepburn, no dice!) in favor of a smaller, open bar boat with just 2 British girls and an Aussie guy (of course, there are more Aussies outside of Australia than actually on that big island) joining us. 

Early the next morning we made our way to northern Botswana, crossing over a body of water in 5 minutes that is the intersecting border of Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia.  Botswana is roughly the size of Texas and bigger than France.  We were headed for a small lodge right outside of Botswana’s Chobe National Reserve, home to some of the largest herds of elephants, lions and other prize game.  There are supposedly 45,000 elephants in Chobe – or put another way, if you had $1 for every elephant in Chobe, you still couldn’t pay for a year of b-school. 

Southern Africa Email 1 - Part II

If racism were an Olympic sport, the Afrikaners would be like the old Soviet Union; somehow in every event, you knew they were in medal contention, even not outright favorites for the gold medal. Afrikaners could make David Duke and Daniel Carver appear open-minded. It's still astonishing to hear some of the things they have said to my family. For instance, one Afrikaner commented, "We like the US. Your black people are not savages." That's a direct quote. Another said that the South African blacks are killing thousands of whites a day in South Africa, but the media doesn't report it because it is controlled by the blacks. So now you have conspiracy theorists too. We have a place for people like this in the US -- it's called rural Idaho.

Anyway, with that in mind, it makes traveling in South Africa as white person very bizarre -- almost uncomfortable. On one hand, you have Afrikaners who feel at home making comments that abhor you, but you really can't do anything about it; on the other, you are a distinct minority walking around town, and don't know if the people around you view you as a racist too -- because many of them only know of whites who hate them. It's not like you can walk around with a t-shirt that says I'm not a racist to quell the tension.

Back to our time in Joburg. First day -- Friday -- we signed up for a half day tour with Max's Maximum tours of Joburg and Soweto. Max is black, in his late 30s, jovial and incredibly up to date on world affairs. He had a lot of questions for us about George W., to which we could only respond by saying, "I'm sorry." As I mentioned before, Joburg is the financial capital and has a popluation of 3.5 million, though that's probably low. It and its surrounding areas account for 65% of South Africa's and 25% of all of Africa's GDP. It's also the gold capital of Africa -- and has been since gold was discovered there in 1886. They still mine in the suburbs. Since 1994, when the new (read: one person, one vote) government was elected, there has been serious "white flight" as they call it out of the city and into the suburbs -- specifically to gated, fenced and barbed-wired homes. Joburg resembles a newer US city as very few people actually live near downtown. Crime has gone up downtown and many illegal African immigrants have moved into the neighborhoods that were formerly predominantly white. It's all pretty sad, as the city feels somewhat hollow. We stopped and walked around a few markets, but didn't buy anything. It was somewhat depressing.

The second half of our trip was to the township of Soweto, which is about 10 miles outside of Joburg. Interestingly, Soweto gets its name from the acronym SOuth WEstern TOwnship (ok, I'm a dork and thought that was interesting). Townships were based on the Afrikaner idea needing cheap (black) labor, without having to live near them -- it's easier if they are all clustered and forced to live in specific villages. I expected Soweto to be a bunch of shacks. I was gravely mistaken. Soweto has a population of 4.5 million (so it's actually bigger than Joburg) and stretches across the horizon if viewed from a distance. It has one of the largest hospitals in the world with 10,000 beds. There are numerous neighborhoods in Soweto, that range across economic classes, from deeply impoverished homes of tin shacks (very few now, maybe 10%) to full-on middle class, ranch-style housing that resembles middle class homes in Australia, New Zealand or parts of the US (they kind of look like the house on the Brady Bunch). Of couse, they too have high walls and gates. The big government initiative with the townships is to make sure every citizen in South Africa has running water and electricity. Baby steps.

Southern Africa Email 1 - Part I

August 5, 2004

This email will be a long one, as I try to create an image of South Africa as we've experienced it. I'll do my best Bill Bryson impersonation as I describe the country and a little of its history to give you some context and then go into our travels.

The first leg of the Wallis family's Africa Vacation. We've already re-enacted Vacation (summer 1991 around the US in a Ford Taurus), European Vacation (summer 1997) and Vegas Vacation (December 1998, my brother Brandon's 21st birthday), and now we're one up on the Griswalds.

First stop: South Africa, or as the locals here pronounce it, Sowt Eff-ree-ka

We left 7/28 from JFK and flew 8 hours to Dakar, Senegal, which apparently has nothing to do with the cologne every 16 year old from Brooklyn wore in the early 90s (I know, that was Drakkar, but still, it's awful close). After an hour layover, we had another 8 hours of flight into Johannesburg (or as the locals say, Joburg), with the pleasure of screaming babies in stereo -- one the row in front of us, the other behind. There must have been 20 children on the flight under 3 years old, which has me wondering why airlines don't create a section specifically for young children and their parents. I'm sure they could charge more to other passengers not to sit near children. I know it's worth another $50 to me for an 8 hour flight -- probably more.

Ok, so my initial thoughts on South Africa. This is one complex country. Case in point: there are 11 official languages (English, Afrikaans and 9 tribal ones) and 3 different capitals. Joburg ain't one of them. The 3 capitals and their functions are Pretoria (administrative), Bloemfontein (judicial) and Cape Town (Legislative). Joburg is the financial capital though, so almost foreigner goes through it at one point in their trip. South Africa's cultural complexity trumps even its capitals and languages. They've categorized people into 4 race groups -- white (which is actually split between British and Afrikaner, but I'll go into that shortly), black, Indian (there's a large Indian population) and Colored. The affectionate term Colored refers to those of mixed races -- any combination of black, white, muslim, malaysian or javan -- and is an official term, not a racial slur. Changing directions a bit -- what the hell is an Afrikaner? I wondered the same thing before the summer. Understanding Afrikaners is essential to understanding South Africa; they are the descendants of the original European settlers in South Africa. They are primarily of Dutch descent, though they've thrown some German and French Huguenot into the mix. Initially they were very Calvinist, which meant they believed that people were pre-determined to go to heaven (this is incredibly important to know) -- and they're totally Old Testament. Specifically, as the lone whites on a continent of people darker than them, they believed that they were the modern version of the Israelites who left Egypt, trekked across the desert into the land of Canaan and are god's chosen people. They also believe that the Canaanites were inferior and thus there shouldn't be any real interaction with them (other than for work reasons); here's where you read native Africans for Canaanites. So over the last 3 centuries, the Afrikaners have built a life (mostly as farmers across the country) with a biblical justification for their racism. It was the Afrikaners who voted out the British descendants from South Africa's government in 1948 and introduced the policy of apartheid (by the way, the Afrikaner party was the Nationalist Party, based on the German National Socialist Party, known to all of us as the Nazi party).