We met up with our travel companions in Johannesburg, South Africa. She, who I have socialized with before, and who I would call Madam Buttercup, greeted me with a whispery, “Ooooh, so glad to see you. I am so excited about our safari!” I wondered how many teaspoons of aspertame went into that greeting. I was glad to see them too. But then; two, three, four times she cooed, “Ooooh, I am so excited! This is going to be so nice!” I could not bring myself to return the sweetness. Maybe I was just tired and I was personally low on Splenda. The next day, we flew off to Windhoek, Namibia.
After landing, we fetched the SUV and started our six-hour drive to our first safari destination. Madam Buttercup then proceeded to talk non-stop. I mean she spoke with no “periods.” Her monologues contained commas, semi-colon, whiny phrases, unconnected ideas.” Everytime someone interjects something, she would say “No, but…” I never heard her say, “You are right.”
I could not decide what concerned me at first. Was it the whining, was it the non-stop incessant talking? Or was it all of the above? The topics many times were banal and eye-rolling. I started to feel oppressed. What did I do? I plugged my Ipod earbuds. The talking continued, sometimes in monotone, addressed to no one in particular, God knows about what, punctuated with “Oooh or Aaaah…”repeating the last sentence she just said. ” For example, “I was in college and I decided to take Chemistry versus Biology.” “Aaaah, I wondered sometimes if it was a mistake.” “Aaah, maybe…it was a mistake.” On my Ipod, I could hear the Beatles’ “Help! I need somebody, not just anybody, won’t you please…HELP ME!”
The drive was not without glitches. It had been raining and there were flooded bridges and dips on the roads. This required the men to get out of the SUV and check the water level of the dips to make sure we could drive through it. We got stuck at some point, with water getting in the SUV. It was happening too often and we were approaching sunset. She whined, “Oh, we need to go back. We cannot drive in the dark. The more time we spend going forward, the more time we lose to turn around and take another route.” I said, “We can be late; we are on vacation.” She did not respond. Instead, she talked to herself, to say the same thing, as stated above. Then she added new language. “I read that we should never, ever drive over the reserves in the dark.” “It is not right for us to drive over the reserve in the dark. Ooooh, we should not drive in the dark.” I pretended to be asleep.
We finally reached a place called Solitaire. It is a little dot in the country of Namibia, an hour away from the Kulala Desert near Sossusvlei. We stopped for petrol and a much needed bathroom break. There are no restrooms in the wild. You learn to do it in the bushes on the pretext of “checking out the tires.” The whining started, “Oooh, we need to stop here for the night, we just have to stay here and let the men sleep on the floor.” HB called our camp. He was told that we could drive slowly on the roads to camp so the men decided to continue the drive. She whined, see above.
We arrived in the desert lodge around 9pm and were met by the staff with nice hot towels and dinner served immediately. Our “tented”cabin was well-appointed, with hot water shower and nice comfortable beds. There were lizards and crickets humming outside our doors. I could hear our companions talking to each other all the way from the next cabin. What could they be discussing? Have they not run out of things to say in the last thirty years? Or had she not run out of Webster in the last six hours? I imagine talking to my HB, “Oooh, I would really like some pancakes today. Shall we go to IHOP todaaaay??! Ooooh, Ihop!” I know that HB will look at me and say “Honey, cut the shit.”
After a couple of days and seeing spectacular sand dunes, I decided to be nice. Indeed, I ignored and tuned out, plugged my ears with the earbuds of my now discharged Ipod, although I sometimes tap my foot as if I were listening to fusion jazz, say, by David Sanborn. It fhe truth be told, I actually went murderously bonkers. I pretended to be asleep and I pretended to be clueless. I say in the most innocent manner, “Huh? Or “Sorry, I was not listening.”
One day, we were in a ladies room of this rustic restaurant when she said, in a manner of a bored waitress reciting the special of the day for the 100th time, “grilled tilapia and a side of corn bread or greens or house salad “…Osama Bin Laden…” She spoke over the noise of the hand dryer I was using while she was in her stall. I said, rather tartly, “What are you talking about?” “Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces.” I said, “How did you learn of it? That is good news for Americans.” Then she said “…we cannot show our reaction. We do not know how the locals feel about this…, etc, comma, comma, no period, semi colon, comma, ellipsis, colon, comma, ellipsis, another comma, pause…” I cut her off. “Okay, I get it.” Actually, I was thinking more like, “Okay, I fucking get it.” I attacked my lunch instead.
Relief came in but not any sooner in the form of a 2-hour flight on a Cessna. She was busy talking to her videocam as we lifted off. You see, she could be looking at a lion and say “Here is a lion, and they said this is a male lion and that behind is the female lion!” People must really be stupid if they are watching a video of a lion and not know what it is. Or she would purr “Ooooh an elephant. Now it is walking…” I was imagining her saying, “Oooh, an elephant, a defecating elephant...and next to it is the baby elephant, eating the dung. Ooooh, so cute.” Maybe it was the Maloram I was taking. I cringe whenever I hear that “tinkling bell” of the videocam because I am sure to hear another whispery editorial. “There is a leopard and we are looking at it and it is walking to the left.”
Our chartered “relief” flight took us to Ongava Tented Camp, still in Namibia. We were asked not to come and go as we please without an armed ranger. One night while we dined, three rhinos came to lick salt in the waterhole. HB tried to take photos but the rhinos advanced to what amounted to five yards from his camera. Slowly, HB retreated and sat next to me. He told me his heart raced when the rhino advanced. I learned something amusing about rhinos- when they lick the salt and ate salt rocks, they sound like the “wash cycle” of a washing machine. It was an honest to goodness “gloogh, gloogh, gloogh” all the way through and I was so glad Madam Buttercup was not there to hear it or I will never hear the end of “These are rhinos (what as opposed to monkeys?) and they are licking salt rock. There are three rhinos, left, right, and center. They are white rhinos. Here we are hearing them licking the rock, now they are walking away. Now I am being stabbed by a Maloram-crazed camper."
Ongava was full of springboks, oryx, wildebeest, rhinos. We ate well, we drank good wine, we went to bed in a very comfortable canvas tent with hot showers, overstuffed chairs, down quilts. Our routine consisted of a “six-o’clock knock-knock,” morning drives, come back for lunch, take an afternoon siesta, have some tea at 3:30 and go for an evening drive, stop for sundowners at around six or whenever the sun sets. The most amazing part of a safari is that one is never guaranteed to see the animals during a drive. What might be a “fruitless” morning drive may end by sighting a leopard or a hyena on the way back to camp. We had a day drive into Etosha National Park and sighted zebras, warthogs, springboks, rhinos, etc. In Ongava, our camp backs into the wild and antelopes freely roamed a few yards from our balcony.
To break the trip, we went to Cape Town to enjoy a visit to the Table Mountain and the Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden, and Boulders Beach (penguin colony). During the drive to the mountain top, Ms. Buttercup proceeded to read the literature for each site, which drove my HB to his breaking point. I dutifully plugged my now freshly charged Ipod, and chose to listen to the Corrs. At the gardens, HB surprised me by announcing, "My wife does not like people talking to her when she is looking at flowers. She wants to meditate." Later on he told me, "I just saved you." I said, "You saved her. I was going to kill her." We decided to separate and meet them for lunch a couple of hours later. It worked well! Until we sat down to eat lunch. Before she ate, she proceeded to identify what is on her plate and wondered about the way the dumplings were formed, told stories about some deceased relatives who used to make similar things and revelled in telling whoever cares about the filling that the RIP relative would stuff the dumplings with. I mean it was just plain phyllo dough twisted with meat filling! To top it all, she started to discuss how to cook the food on her plate with the waiter! The waiter patiently listened and excused himself during a brief comma and a preposition and before another subject agrees with a verb. When she finally started to eat, her entree was reduced from a work of art to a science specimen. You guessed it, "Ooooh look at how the chef turned this phyllo dough into something intricate; he must have spent so much time perfecting this. My mother would..." I wish I cared as much as she wished.
Our Cessna picked us up from Ongava and continued our journey into Sandi Sand, South Africa, in the area bounded by Kruger National Park. However, we stayed at a private concession and stayed at a camp called Exeter River Lodge.
Our cabin is almost as big as my whole house, well, the first floor of my house and my neighbor's first floor, at least. Ronny-Ronny was our butler. He says everything twice as in “Would you like a café-café or juice-juice?” HB warned me that if I double my words, Ronny-Ronny will say it thrice. And he was correct. “Ron-Ron,” I said. “Will you please bring me a salad-salad instead of dessert-dessert?” He responded, “Pleasure to bring you a salad-salad-salad.”
HB told Ronny-Ronny that Filipinos do the same thing. Filipinos double their words for emphasis like major-major use of double-double words. It came naturally for me. “Ron-ron, can you please make sure the bacon is crispy-crispy?”or “Yes I will have a glass-glass of red-red wine!” Thank you, thank you! Then HB startled me with “Okay, picture-picture!” I laughed so hard-hard it temporarily erased the pain of listening-listening-listening to Madam Buttercup-cup.
One morning, as we headed out, Madam Buttercup stretched out her arms into the air, riding in the roofless LandRover, “Oooooooh, Africa!” No one said anything. Then she started to talk about oil production, solar heating, grizzly bears in Alaska to the guide. Then someone said, “Oh we are on safari, can we just enjoy it?” I added, “Yes, please!” I saw her HB put his hand on her shoulder and she said, “Oh yes, enough of this, let us enjoy the safari.” Alleluia-luia!
That same morning, we saw a crash of elephants browsing. Madam B whipped out her videocam, “These are elephants. See the baby elephant behind? Now they are just being destructive.” After she put down the camera, she said “The elephants are so destructive.” “Look at the destruction caused by elephants.” “Elephants are so pretty yet destructive.” Every time she sees some fallen trees, she would say...(read above).
Regardless, we enjoyed seeing the animals in their habitat; lion cubs cavorting with the carcass of a male impala, two juvenile lions playing like house cats with one pummeling the other; wild dogs feeding her pups; wild dog carrying her pup in her mouth; male lion roaring in our presence; giraffe taller than acacia trees; rhinoceros with its young calf; mongoose, bush babies, alligator, zebras.
The animals would always pleasantly surprise us. We were tracking some footprints one morning. I was distracted by the sheer beauty of the morning and the lush jungle. I got out of my own deep thoughts, I asked, “What are we looking for?” “Lions.” “Oh they are here, on my right, at 2 o’clock position.” They were a yard or two away from our LandRover.
One afternoon, we were on foot following a group of rhinos. Our ranger, Rio, told us "Fall in line so that the animals will think we are one unit. Do not say anything. No flashes. No sudden movements." We took photos then went back to the LandRover. We drove another ‘block.” The others were looking at more rhinos to the left. I said, “One o’clock position, that is not a rock. They maybe lions.” They were. Out was the videocam and the saccharin whispery voice “These are teen-age lions.”
I spotted something moving on the road, ‘A civet.” I spotted a hippo, “There's something in the river and it is not a rock.” “That is a hippo. Well done!” I spotted a cape buffalo and a leopard. A NY banker who was on his honeymoon said, “How is she able to spot that?” I got distracted and a thorny bush almost caught me as the Land Rover passed by so he pushed me gently to prevent my being attacked by the thorns. I said, “Thanks for saving me.” He responded, “If you are spotting the animals, the least I can do is spot thorn bushes.”
HB decided that I deserve a new pair of binoculars for being an “amazing spotter.” To me, it is just instinctive; movement and shape and the ability to spot movement instantaneously. Maybe that is why it annoyed me to listen to Ms. Buttercup because there is no color or texture to her voice; it is a boring refrain. No contrast. No movement. No color. Do-re-mi. She gets stuck on "mi."
Africa is beautiful and I will go back again and again for an opportunity to see and observe the animals and to interact with its beautiful people. The Africans are very friendly, hard-working, and accommodating. They are quick to smile and say “Pleasure” when we thank them; they share their experiences with the wild animals and they are very proud of their country. I am thankful and reminded how very special and worthy of my respect the animals in the wild are. Seeing the big cats make me love my house cats even more.
Finally, the Namib sand dunes moved me in a way that I cannot describe. It was a very spiritual experience; akin to when I felt very close to God as I stood transfixed by the might of the Iguazu Falls in Brazil. That spirituality in Africa was at times disturbed by a caramelized “Ooooh, how beautiful, look at how beautiful…Aaaaah, Africa!” In the end, I did not strangle or take her aside to assault nor batter her. But I will not embark again on another journey where my spirit is vexed by constant editorializing. I have voices in my own head to listen to.
When we got to our house, my husband got out of the car, raised his hands and said, “AAAHHH, Maryland!”
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