From Africa with Love

As many of you know, Eleanor and I are soon leaving on our long anticipated safari to southern and central Africa. We will be gone from September 7th to October 5th. And as we rush to finalize the many necessary details, our blood is starting to rush as we become pumped up and realize that what was a seeming fantasy nearly a year ago is now almost a reality.

There are any variety of questions which we have confronted and asked ourselves, least of which is: Why Africa? There is probably no simple answer to that question, especially as we read the headlines of our daily newspapers. Perhaps the most obvious response would be something like : Because it is there. Or, it is a unique tourist experience.

During the 19th century Africa was a magnet for European explorers, a type of El Dorado like the New World. More than anything else, what initially drove European exploration of the so-called "Dark Continent" was the desire to trace Africa’s river system, especially that which fed into the Nile; this assumed a mystique similar to the Northwest Passage. In reality though, the so-called "Dark Continent" was not like that for its native inhabitants, but was perceived that way only by European adventurers and colonialists.

Another answer to why we are going to Africa would be that we are seeking a return to the "simple life". Yet as tourists, we will experience anything but a " simple life". Indeed, being on safari, we are an elite of pampered and spoiled white middle-class tourists enjoying champagne breakfasts, gourmet picnic lunches, having "Sundowners " on some of Africa’s most picturesque rivers, and enjoying the sunset on the savannah as we watch the Big Five. This highly sheltered experience hardly allows us to see, no less understand, the grim economic and social African reality around us, ranging from rampant unemployment, a total lack of infrastructure, raging civil wars claiming 200, 000 to 3. 3 million dead, to vampire-like leaders and corruption at all levels.

And in that sense, it is necessary, indeed critical, to remember that the Africa around us is very much the product of European map-makers and colonial administrators. Two historical facts might put African history, and its interaction with so-called Western "civilization" , into perspective.

First , economic demographers have established that in the 18th and 19th centuries, in the order of 12 million black inhabitants from western Africa were shipped as slaves to Brazilian and American plantations, as well as to Arab sultanates; there was an estimated 15 per cent mortality rate on transatlantic slaving.

Second, King Leopold II of Belgium, who personally owned the Belgium Congo, killed over 10 million native inhabitants in his drive for profits from ivory and rubber in the period prior to WW I. This is more than the total number of Jews killed during WW II and 12 times the number of people killed during the recent Rwanda genocide.

By these standards, Karen Blixen, author of "Out of Africa", notwithstanding her liberated life style, who outright stole 1,000 acres of tribal lands from the Kenyan Kikuyu natives (who would later lead the Mau Mau rebellion against the British in 1950) for her coffee plantation was a piker.

Within this context, it probably fair to say that we feel extremely schizophrenic, bifurcated, awkward and highly fortunate that we have this once -in-a-life opportunity to observe what is reputed to be among the world’s finest scenery and most unique animal life, including the Big Five, before it is destroyed by our so-called "civilization". Only a cynic or an existentialist would ask : Who are the real animals, and who should really be kept on reserves?
We will do our best to keep you informed of our adventures the best that we can. This however, is largely dependent on our access to the internet; we already know, for example, that we will be unable to communicate to the outside while we are in Botswana and Namibia (10 days total). But we will do our best to let you know of our wanderings, thoughts and impressions in occasional bullet-like factoids and "opinionoids", and hopefully, if the technology doesn't defeat us, some on-site pics.

Meanwhile, here's a map showing our proposed route,starting in Johannesburg and travelling counter-clockwise from South Africa to Zimbabwe (just long enough to see Victoria Falls), then on to Botswana and Namibia and finally back to Cape Town, South Africa.

Richard