Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World (30 page)

They help people, once again, believe in trees.

 • • • 

On the ride back to camp, the women start to reminisce about their weekend adventures. I listen from the backseat, clutching the metal bar in front of me as we hop over unseen termite mounds, earthen speed bumps hiding in the grass.

“Remember that time the hyena stole our fruit salad?”

“Oh, we were so looking forward to that fresh fruit! And he spilled everything on the ground! What a disappointment. None of us, not even the hyena, got to eat any of it!”

“And remember when that elephant charged a vehicle in South Africa?”

“Yes! The elephant’s tusk ended up just inches from that man’s chest!”

“What about when that lion mauled the tent next to ours?”

“Well, that was irresponsible how they left their food lying around.”

Tsetse flies might mistake my mouth for an airplane hangar, gaped as it is. Hestermarie notices. “Everyone was fine,” she assures me of the lion mauling, “but the place was a mess!”

I sputter: “How do you go out weekend after weekend knowing these are the stories you might—or might not—come back with?”

Hestermarie’s friend says, “The experience! The experience is worth everything! This is the bush. It is the spirit of Africa! It’s not as though it’s easy to be here, but you go out expecting these things to happen!”

And that’s when we hit a mud hole.

Within seconds, our back tire plants into the ground, sealed in muck.

“Should we get out?” Hestermarie calmly asks Humphrey, who surveys the high grass surrounding the vehicle.

“Not here,” he says.

Even in the road, grass is high. There are likely unseen dangers lying in wait. I haven’t had ranger training, but even my limited time observing wildlife out here has taught me that. But the two pot-bellied men are already on the ground, wearing flip-flops and mesh water shoes. They are outdoorsmen who have walked through herds of elephants, directly feeling their infrasonic rumbles. Humphrey’s protests prove futile. The guests are many, our guide is one. And the reality is: We need to work together to get out of this.

I scoot to the left, following my fellow safari goers. We hang off the frame of the vehicle, trying to loosen its tires, to no avail. It will not budge. The vehicle is so off-kilter now it is in real danger of flipping. And it’s not my imagination or greenhorn safari nerves telling me we’re in trouble—it’s nature.

The sun will soon hit the horizon, signaling to all of the Serengeti’s animals—human and otherwise—that it’s time to hunt. I know this due to a trick l learned early on in my time here, aligning my fingers with the horizon, my body with the earth. Each finger that fits between the sun and the horizon represents five minutes.

Pointer. Middle. Ring. We’re running out of time.

I look at the ground below. In a small, exposed patch of mud, I see the unmistakable rounded print of hippo tracks. They’re sunk as deep as our wheels in the mud. We’re close to camp—it’s almost visible from here—but we’re also in the animals’ path.

“It’s like I said,” the spirit-of-Africa lady tells me gleefully, “we just expect things like this to happen! This is what we do on our weekends!”

Hestermarie adds, “
Now
you’ve had a real African experience!”

The men are trying to help Humphrey with the vehicle, but they report that something is wrong. “I’m afraid it’s going to flip,” one of them warns Humphrey. But they decide to give the engine one more go.

I slip back into my seat. The women tell me to brace myself, and I wrap my fingers around a steel bar, knees against the seat in front of me. It’s almost full dark now. The group is silent. The vehicle’s engine throbs, surely annoying elephants for miles around.

“Did you radio the camp?” one of the men asks, his adventurous tone somewhat faded now that he’s realized something is wrong with the vehicle’s mechanics. He looks at the roof, maybe rethinking his request that the canvas be removed for bird watching. If nervous predators visit in the night, he told me earlier—as a hypothetical—the smartest thing to do is to climb up there. But there’s nothing to hold us.

Finally, we see a light ahead. Most of the time safari vehicles leave lights off at night since grass reflects. They’re letting us know they’re coming. When they are close, we shout for them to stop, lest we all get stuck. What would we do then? They heed our warnings and pull up alongside. But when they reveal the cord they’ve brought for towing, it’s obvious that it is not long enough to get us out of our mess.

Early attempts make our vehicle sputter and it’s agreed that there are too many people in the vehicle. But we cannot be left standing outside. The air has grown cooler. I can almost see our scent swirling on the thickening air, slipping into the noses of hungry predators.

Finally, the guides decide we should switch vehicles. So we jump out. I use the attached steel ladder to get down. When my feet touch ground, they find the muddy precipice of a hippo track. The cruisers are circled like metal beasts attempting to protect our small human herd.

Humphrey grabs my arm and I pull myself into the rescue vehicle. As soon as we are all in, the driver flips on his lights, and we see five hippos staggering out of the river onto land. When their eyes catch our headlights, they appear to glow like neon signs. “Predators’ eyes reflect red and herbivores’ reflect green,” he tells us.

One of the South Africans shines a flashlight into the darkness. The beam finds a line of hippos, water glistening like diamonds encrusted on their skin. “Put that away!” the driver says. “You will blind them!” With dramatic emphasis, he turns off the headlights and we inch forward, hippos crossing our path, appearing as shadows wading through milky moonlight.

Back at Grumeti, a night watchman escorts me to my room. I lie awake, listening to twigs cracking under the weight of something walking around the sides of my tent. Finally, I fall asleep. I dream until Matt calls for me to wake up, rhythmically saying my name, which my parents picked from a book because they liked the sound of it. The vibration of Matt’s voice almost feels like it’s shaking me:
Leigh
Ann. Leigh Ann.

Is it morning? I sit up, caught in the fluid terrain of dreams and reality.

Is Matt
here
? Why can I not see his face? How can his voice possibly be reaching me?

Slowly, I continue to solidify consciousness. I feel the breeze kicking up through the mesh vent holes at the top of my tent. I see dancing slips of moonlight on canvas. I smell the river. My fingers trace the uneven edge of a hand-woven throw. I open my eyes.

I am not in my house. I am not with my family. So why, how, is Matt still talking?

Leigh Ann. Leigh Ann.

Then, as if in slow motion—as if in a movie—the words begin to morph.

Rarrraaann. Rarrraaann.

It’s not my husband; it’s the hippos.

When I recognize the animals’ voices, I laugh out loud. The hippos respond with snort-cackles. I can hear them jump—one to three tons at a time—into the river a few yards from my front tent flap. Their belly flops are followed by vigorous thrashing and splashing that makes the river roil. After a few minutes, they settle in, and I fall asleep to a watery chorus.

 • • • 

On my final day in Tanzania, I have an eight-hour layover in Arusha. A kindly shuttle driver suggests I pass some time visiting the local cultural center, a sleek, modern building designed to look like a Maasai warrior’s shield. I expect to find a tourist trap. And I do. But, with time to spare, I wander behind the building, where I discover a thatched-roof hut. Fraying burlap has been hung in its open eaves for shade. Half the structure is a kitchen used by workers of the cultural center. The other half is a woodworking shop where men create handicrafts for its souvenir store. The workshop is strewn with shoe-polish-stained rags. It feels comfortable. Familiar for obvious reasons as the Serengeti did for mysterious ones. It reminds me of my husband’s basement work space, my paternal grandfather’s kitchen, my maternal grandfather’s barn—places where they all, respectively, whittled wood.

The resident carvers are finishing lunch. One is still eating, scooping the white paste of traditional, corn-based
ugali
with his bare hands. We introduce ourselves and learn there are nearly as many tribes represented under this roof as there are people: Kamba, Chagga, and me—cultural product of A Tribe Called Quest.

The two most talkative men—John Ndambuki and Jeremiah Kimeu—are sitting under a lifesize ebony carving of Jesus, his slender arms outstretched. Around his head is a crown of acacia thorns. His hair is close to his scalp, tight as wool. Below him is a collection of wooden, dark-skinned men in khaki suits and white hats I recognize as Colonial-era British pith helmets.

I tell the men that my husband is a carpenter, and that both of my grandfathers were woodcarvers, and they’re genuinely thrilled. They want to know what sorts of woods my husband uses for his work. I talk of pine and walnut and cherry, the difference between North American soft- and hardwoods, a little surprised to realize how much I have learned by association over the years.

Jeremiah pulls out a coaster-shaped piece of ebony to show me its coal-colored heartwood. He knocks on it with worn knuckles and suggests I do the same. John pulls a small scrap shaped like the top of a Maasai talking stick—a ceremonial object that gives its possessor a turn to speak—from a pile behind him and holds it up for me to examine.

“It is like pine?” John asks.

I nod, excitedly, to confirm he is right.

“Sit,” Jeremiah prods. “Join us.”

He pulls up a low-lying stool like the ones they’re sitting on. It reveals its age in a stone-smooth concave seat. There is a large crack on its right side. When I sit, I can feel it against my thigh, making it seem as though I’m inside a nearly-opened egg. Jeremiah takes down a flimsy plastic bag full of crumpled newsprint. He slowly twists the paper loose until an ebony animal falls out.

It’s a wildebeest.

The animal’s right leg is out. Its grasshopper face has a small goatee. Its beard seems to drip from under its chin. Flank muscles catch light, giving the animal a sense of muscular movement. “Why did you choose to carve a wildebeest?” I ask. “It isn’t exactly known for its beauty.”

Jeremiah shrugs. “I like the walking of this animal. The migration is good because you have to move forward. You have to learn together. You have to play together. The wildebeest show us this.”

No matter what is happening, no matter how busy he gets or how hard things are, Jeremiah tells me, he can think of the wildebeest making their way and feel calmed. “Always,” he says, “always, they are moving.”

He places the wildebeest in my hands. It is as cool and smooth as river stone. I rub its abdomen with my pointer finger. He pulls another animal from his bag, a zebra carved of light wood and painted with stripes. “I like the zebra, too,” he says. “All one family.”

Jeremiah learned to carve from his father, who learned from his father. Now, here in this shelter, he is teaching two teenagers the craft, alongside John, who—with whitening hair and a stained blue work suit—is the eldest of the group.

Next door, the grill steams. The smell of coffee floats over a partition, along with the indecipherable chatter of men eating at the counter. Tanzanian hip-hop blares from a stereo covered with a dirty washcloth meant to protect it from sunlight. I move my head to the beat, and the youngest apprentice—maybe sixteen—pauses from his polishing to laugh at my goofy antics.

“You like?” he asks of the music.

“
Ndiyo!
” I answer “yes” in Swahili. This seems to please him.

“What is your name?”

“Leigh Ann. But people here have been calling me Leone.”

It’s a name I’ve actually started answering to. At first, I didn’t correct my hosts because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I figured Leone must be easier to say for Swahili speakers than Leigh Ann. And, really, it didn’t feel like a big deal—ironic given my reaction to Osman’s name change, I know. But I’ve come to like being called Leone in the way Humphrey has taken to the Swahili mispronunciation of his English name.

“It is a local name, a good name,” the carver tells me.

Leone, he explains, means lion.

His hand disappears into a basket of rags and emerges holding a male lion with a sleek, subdued mane, ebony tail curved up along its back. It is one of John’s carvings that the apprentice has been asked to polish. The young carver holds it in a shaft of sunlight to show me its detail, and then he begins to rub it with shoeshine from a dented tin.

Jeremiah hits a chunk of rosewood with his machete, a tool of poachers turned to an instrument of art. The torso of an endangered rhino begins to emerge. John is still holding the scrap of cypress wood he’s picked up to illustrate the weight and shade of my native eastern white pine, and—after sharpening his tools, metal on wood—he, too, begins to work.

“What are you making?” I ask.

He gives me a shy smile and says: “I am making you.”

At first, I think this might be some sort of three-dimensional interpretation of the caricatures drawn for passersby at fairs and festivals. “You’ve done this before?” I ask.

“Never!” John exclaims, laughing. The other men join in the good humor, entertained by this spontaneous, artistic impulse. One end of John’s stick is mottled with pock marks, as if it were, at some point, filled with nails. He saws it off and lets it drop to the hut’s cement floor, keeping only the unblemished section for the task at hand. Wood shards fly across cement. He takes up a file with a leather handle, rounds my wooden head. Then, he pauses to blow dust from my emerging face.

John slips his creation into the crook of his big toe to brace it against the stump he’s using as a chopping block, each action resonating through the cement pad under our feet. His bare ankles are darkened with scars. Violent hatchet chopping gives way to more intricate cuts with a small knife. He raises his eyes to study my cheekbones, the contour of my forehead.