Kenyan Odyssey

Fifteen years ago I surprised my ex-wife, MHS, with the anomalous announcement that I'd like to go to Africa. Speechless for one of the few times in our marriage, she could only stare across the room at me in stunned silence, while today, looking back, I can only imagine the thoughts roiling her brain: Has he lost his mind? This is a man whose boundaries are defined by the farthest reach of the Schewel footprint, Plymouth, North Carolina, a leisurely four-and-a-half-hour drive from home, occasionally stretched as far as every southeast redneck's favorite vacation spot -- Myrtle Beach. Is he planning to take me along? Or better yet, will he be coming back?

Yes, belying the various adventures chronicled on this web site -- cruising the Mediterranean, sailing in the British Virgin Islands, cycling in Italy, Ireland, and Northern Europe -- back in those days the mere suggestion of long-distance travel to exotic locations would be summarily dismissed as beyond the pale, which for me was circumscribed by a contented provincialism, with a few noteworthy exceptions.

In 1989, shortly after my father's death, a supplier friend -- whose signature sales pitch, "Buy this plant stand, Marc, you'll sell telephone numbers," never failed to elicit groans of incredulity -- persuaded me to accompany him first to Taiwan for work and then to Hong Kong for rest and relaxation. He promised me an unforgettable experience, and for once he was not exaggerating: the worst Chinese food I have ever eaten; traffic and pedestrian congestion so impenetrable I had to terminate my morning run; the impulsive purchase of a fake Rolex that expired two months later; furniture factories housed in sheds, shacks, and cottages primitive enough to discourage the most unscrupulous of buyers; an isolated farmhouse flaunting a big-screen tv and adorned with Michael Jordan tee shirts; and a dainty foot masseuse who squeezed and pummeled every bone, muscle, and ligament into a gelatinous mush.

In 1992 I was enticed (along with MHS) to Israel on a "mission" to research my ethnic roots -- conceding that every Jew should go there at least once and having paid for this ostensibly free trip many times over by my contributions to the United Jewish Appeal. Even more memorable than Jerusalem's Old City and Wailing Wall, the Hall of Names and Pages of Testimonials at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, sightings of luminaries Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, and a West Bank history lesson in a Hebron classroom was a single-day itinerary which encapsulated the past, present and future of the Jewish State: scaling the heights of Mount Masada, where one thousand freedom fighters committed mass suicide rather than surrender to their Roman conquerors; watching fighter jets in training against a background of Arab nomads at a desert Air Force base, in a land where peace is always temporary; and wandering through a modular city of recently resettled Ethiopian refugees, whose faces beamed with the joys of liberation, hope, and full stomachs.

Not long afterward MHS and I were lured to Italy by a friend's gracious offer of accommodations in a small town near Orvieto, which gave us the opportunity to explore the lovely Umbrian countryside, sample the province's exquisite cuisine, and acquire a taste for its soothing red wine.

But were it were not for National Home Furnishings Association Board Meetings and Conferences -- which took me to San Francisco, Phoenix, Montreal, New Orleans, Santa Fe, San Antonio, Charleston, the Bahamas, and Mackinac Island -- my world-view, up to that time, would have been confined to the Lynchburg fishbowl. I even scoffed at the reputed pleasures of the grandest city in the world, New York, leaving MHS to make her annual junket to the U. S. Tennis Open without me, and snubbing my older son, who had been happily ensconced there since 1997 building his resume as an accomplished television film editor.

Why this stubborn resistance to broadening my horizons? I submit that my reasons were threefold, not any one of which contained an element of rationality. First, I harbored a perverse fear of flying, which, while not daunting enough to preclude an occasional two or even three-hour (although it seemed to last forever) leap from one state to another, was too oppressive to permit the consideration of an intercontinental marathon. Indeed, one of the few regrets I have is forgoing a business meeting in Banff, Alberta -- having heard from many of its unsurpassed beauty -- because I thought it was too far away and too tortuous to get to.

Second, I was reluctant to absent myself from my business for the near two-week period most of these excursions entailed -- in an era when instantaneous communication via email and text was as fanciful as Dick Tracy's two-way wrist radio; it was an ill-founded qualm, since the loyal, dedicated, and self-sufficient team which I was fortunate enough to captain was more than capable of sustaining -- and even improving -- its performance in the interim.

Third -- do I dare admit it? -- I just didn't want to spend the money. I'm not going to say I couldn't afford it, because I could. But I can least offer the lame excuse that during this period I was in the midst of putting three children through college -- at institutions that were each more successively proud, if price were the measurement, of their pedagogy: Northwestern, Bowdoin, and Duke.

Standing alone, any of the objections would have been easily demolished; layered atop one another, they proved impregnable.

Two other prickly absurdities capped the barrier like strands of barbed wire. First, I was loath to interrupt a compulsive regimen of running, swimming, cycling, or lifting, during which, at various times, I would establish consecutive-day exercise streaks of two to three years. (Actually, I think some were even longer.) If asked why I would subject myself to such punishment, I would reply that, once the numbers start to accumulate, the greater the motivation not to falter -- not to succumb to fatigue, to that nagging cough, to the inconvenience of a predawn flight -- because the true anguish arises not from the pain of the workout but from the panic of its omission, when the long string of sweat-soaked opalescent sunrises peters out.

Second, I always figured that if there were places in the world I wanted to learn more about I could just pick up a book and read about them, a fatuous assumption that collapsed under the weight of two incongruous fallacies. Having long ago satiated my modest appetite for writings boasting a modicum of intellectual value and replaced it with a steady diet of trashy mystery thrillers, I rarely if ever tasted any other flavor (unless required for a Book Club). And when I did, oh, the irony, as occasionally a foreign subject would pique my curiosity and inspire me to contemplate an on-site inspection.

One of the most seductive of such works is Nelson DeMille's Upcountry, in which the protagonist, a Vietnam war veteran, is sent back to the scene of his former exploits on some contemporary convoluted espionage mission. While the plot is thin, the descriptions of a land and people ravaged by combat but now a reinvented developing country stirred a desire -- not yet fulfilled -- to witness for myself the bustling city streets, the lush rain forests, the teeming rice paddies, and the idyllic tropical beaches -- but avoid the furniture factories from whence flows seventy per cent of the bedroom suites displayed in my stores.

As for that Africa surprise, it was the product of one massive tome, Thomas Pakenham's The Scramble for Africa, a magisterial account of European imperialism's frantic colonization of the Dark Continent (1876-1912), of one relative lightweight, Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, a grim expose of the Belgian ruler's ruthless exploitation of his Congolese possession and its attendant slaughter of six million natives, and of one glossy brochure, the latest edition of Washington and Lee's Alumni College/Traveler, which I decided to thumb through rather than consign to the same fate as its predecessors: the recycling bin.

While one could opt for a Lexington summer school session on scintillating topics like "The Young George" or "Robert E.'s Last Days," the principal curriculum consisted of a buffet of delectable destinations, whose delights were extolled in the flowery rhetoric of a tenured English professor, unveiled in a collage of scenic vistas, and verified by a host of enthusiastic testimonials.

All the rewards of deflating one's bank account were eloquently summarized: absorbing the history of nations and civilizations by osmosis; immersing oneself in the culture and customs of strange peoples; discovering natural wonders and awesome beauty at every turn (although Central Virginia can hold its own in any contest); eating, drinking, laughing, and playing with a gang of new friends; and sharing it all with a loved one.

Always left unmentioned is this guilty pleasure: We like to travel so we can tell everyone where we are going and where we have been. Who doesn't like to be the center of attention among a gathering of his peers? Why else does one politely decline an invitation to an event or meeting, or disclose the void behind the answering machine, not by simply stating, "I will out of town," but by declaring with a hint of braggadocio, "I will be out of the country?"

Maybe subconsciously I too was eager to impress, although loath to admit it. Nor was I even thinking about the wildlife, which is Africa's main attraction. I had simply stumbled upon a couple of good books, had acquired a little knowledge (which is a dangerous thing), and was now energized to augment it.

Washington and Lee sponsored trips are supposed to be the creme de la creme, providing its customers the ultimate experience -- the best itinerary, food, accommodations, guides, companionship, and education money can buy. And, having enjoyed three of them, I cannot deny that the designation is well-deserved. But neither can I repress the cynical observation that there is an ulterior motive to all this collegiality: Keep your friends and alumni close and connected, so that when the Development Officers come calling, they will be greeted with open pocketbooks.

The only problem with this mantra was that if I was looking for any long-lost classmates, they were few and far between. Apparently the University's mailing list far exceeds its graduate roster, as there were more Lexington and Lynchburg townies -- all wonderful to be with -- in each of my groups than there were Blue-and-White Minks.

Nevertheless, the aura of elitism was irrepressible, and to such an extent that it seemed wholly appropriate that midweek a seasoned veteran of these affairs should pull me aside and whisper in my ear, "You do know, Marc, that at our last supper at least one of each couple is expected to give a brief commentary on what he has seen and heard."

I was one of the few genuine alumni in the troupe; it was surely incumbent upon me to uphold the intellectual reputation of my alma mater. Since this was long before my blogging days, when I was too lazy to maintain a journal or even scribble the barely decipherable notes that would be so essential to my rambling dissertations, and since extemporaneous speeches then, as now, were not my forte, I was panic-stricken at the thought of ill-preparedness. Lodged in the rear seat of a cranky Land Rover, bouncing over a ruined roadway more cratered than the Sea of Tranquility, I snatched a stray sheet of paper from one neighbor, borrowed a pen from the other, and began to compose the last resort of all presumptive comedians -- a poem, and of course in its most mindless format, doggerel, or rhyming couplets.

I'm glad I did. Other than a few hazy memories, it's the only record I have of this "Kenyan Odyssey." Back then, digital cameras were as futuristic as, well, i-phones, and photographers captured their images on a plastic material known as film using shutter, rangefinder, or reflex equipment, depending on their level of expertise. I don't know which kind MHS owned, but it served the purpose, birthing our own private National Geographic collection. I had hoped to reproduce a few of those pictures for this article, but they have all disappeared, along with the scrapbook she collated of the best two dozen and my perfected epic.

An explication of some of the references in the poem, as well as some additional reflections it has prompted, may be instructive.

*I exorcised my fear of flying somewhere over the Rift Valley after, in sequence, four eight-hour transcontinental legs, North America to Northern Europe to East Africa, and back; an early morning descent to Amsterdam in fog so thick we felt the wheels strike the runway before we saw the ground; buckling into a rebuilt World War II vintage DC-3 museum piece with wings so muscular and limber they flapped all they way to the Masai Mara; and, having chosen a day trip to Victoria Island as safer than a balloon ride, buzzing the gravel landing strip in order to clear it of chickens and children, explained the pilot of our eight-seater private plane, himself mysteriously far from his Wisconsin home.

*Since it's not wise to tempt the creatures roaming the African bush, I was able to alleviate my running frustrations only twice: first, during our Amsterdam layover, through a city park packed with the local crowd, youthful, slim, fit, and smoking (not necessarily cigarettes), and second, about a week later, along the inner fence line of our tented camp, where one minute I spied a gaggle of hungry baboons scouting the garbage dump from afar, and in the next heard the thump-thump of one tracking me down, only to glance back in fright and be relieved by the sight of a blue-eyed, blond-haired, bare-chested fellow human.

*I was warned to exercise dietary moderation, but the bountiful and scrumptious fare laid before us thrice daily -- salads, fruits, tomatoes, yams, beans, corn, eggs, and infinite varieties of meat (this was long before I ever dreamt of pseudo-vegetarianism) -- sparked a sinful gluttony that raged unchecked -- for about four days, until my bowels began to pay the price. Chastened by rocky rides and infrequent rest stops, I gradually diminished my intake, so that at the end I was subsisting on soup, bread, and bottled water.

*Alas, I missed the best meal of all, breakfast on the river bank, not because I was ill, but because after a week of game drives, I didn't feel like rising at 6:30 AM for another repeat performance, except this one included a unique highlight, I learned afterward, as our guide directed the caravan toward a lion's den where all the faithful (minus me) got lucky: they stalked a female engaged in the common yet cruel practice of devouring one of her own offspring, which, while disturbing, did not discourage them from moving on to enjoy their own sumptuous spread.

*Another rarity is eyeballing a wild rhinoceros, a species so decimated by the lustful harvesting of its sexually potent horns that heroic conservationists are now nurturing it back to life on private farms, cultivating gentle beasts tame enough to feed by hand. We detoured one evening to a mountain cabin where we were advised to sleep lightly, lest we fail to be roused by the alarm summoning us to the solarium overlooking the great salt lick, where, precisely on schedule, a rhino ambled by for his midnight snack.

*If I'm ever asked, "What's Africa like?" I always draw this simple analogy: "When you drive through the Virginia countryside and look out into the surrounding fields, you see cows, horses, and pigs. When you creep through the African bush and gaze over the tall grass, you see elephants, giraffes, gazelles, and hyenas."

*And, naturally, that's what hunters bring home from these safaris, or did when we went, boxes and boxes of photographs, stacked on tables, blanketing the floor of the Lexington home where we were invited to a reunion of our travel mates, who, overwhelmed by the superfluity, were tossing them up for grabs. Looking at all those animals, I was struck by the notion that people are a lot more interesting, and saddened that they had all but been ignored in this frenzy of picture-taking.

*As for that farewell banquet, I believe someone had played a practical joke on me, because when the call went out for volunteers to stand and speak, it was met with universal silence. After this portentous pause, realizing I could do no worse than be lauded for an honest effort, I rose and delivered these lyrical verses:

We leave from the states with Washington and Lee,
And land in Amsterdam by the Zuider Zee.
We marvel at Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh;
These trips are for study and not just fun, you know.
We see frozen canals and many ice skaters,
Watch diamond cutters and dine on riistafel.

Another overnight and we arrive in Nairobi,
Where we meet a good guy; his name is Tony.
We visit a giraffe park, and lunch on the lawn;
Between all those courses it's hard not to yawn.
Those still alert visit the home of Karen Blixen,
Whom they are startled to learn was a regular vixen.
Then it's off to the Safari Park to rest for a while,
Before dining on pig, chicken, eland, and crocodile.

By now we're together, one big family,
As we board our next plane, a Kenya Air DC-3,
And fly west to our campsite; get out your camera.
It's right in the middle of the Masai Mara.
On your first game drive, oh the sights you'll discover,
As you graze the tall grass in your green-spotted Land Rover:
Impala, gazelle, warthog, and hyena,
Elephants, giraffe, topi, and even a cheetah.
What vistas, what visions, will wonders never cease,
When you happen upon a herd of wildebeest.
And then in the bush a lion and her pride,
Because from our good guide, there's no place to hide.

We're up early next morn to board a small plane;
Our pilot's a Wisconsin who says call him Dane.
I've never liked flying. What a way to travel:
The runway was nothing but dirt and some gravel.
It was a beautiful day on Victoria's Lake,
As we searched for the perch for all to partake.
Alas, no luck, and we're ready for departing,
When you should show up but dependable Harden.
With the catch of the day we flew back to camp,
Leaving behind all those ants and some pants.

We're out the next day to see the Masai.
Down to the river is a really rough ride.
These are folks who have kept their traditions,
Like face-painting, polygamy, and painful circumcisions.
All day long the men sing, dance, and defend
Their village from enemies real and pretend,
While the women their daily duties perform.
I think to myself as I listen and learn,
What would a fine lady like Ms. Martha Lou
Look like building a house of cow poo?

Lunch on the river, then across on a raft;
We don't know whether to cry or to laugh.
For the heat and the wait poor Blake is not made;
So a Masai warrior brings her some shade.
It's been glorious all day, until the blue sky turns gray.
The rains fill the roads as we go slip-sliding away.
Next morning near the river where the hippopotamus float,
We brunch in the bush while they bellow and bloat.
And our last memory of the Mara Intrepid Club
Is a male lion which has slain another one's cub.

Next stop Nairobi, and guess what's in store?
All your clothes, and more, spread all over the floor.
But Tony says we've been traveling so well
He'll treat us to lunch at the Norfolk Hotel.
Then it's back on the vans for a long painful ride;
It's when this doggerel I began to transcribe.
I put down my pen to reach for a water bottle,
But it's hard to swallow bouncing over a pothole.

The vans roll on to the hills beyond.
But where, oh where, is the Club Aberdare?
Hark, Hark, I see the ark,
And none too soon, because it's getting dark.
Dinner and to bed, to await a midnight buzz:
Your summons to observe a wild rhinoceros.
On a morning drive we spy monkeys colobus;
Then it's pack up your bag and get back on the bus.

We stop and we shop, and we cross the equator
En route to our next place; it's Camp Sweetwater.
And always the question is will we arrive
With enough time to embark on another game drive.
We see water draining as observed by Correa.
But I wish he'd discovered a cure for diarrhea.
In spite of the sympathy of our new found friends,
Nothing can stop the ravages of Montezuma's Revenge.
This is so much worse than being constipated:
Suppose you were a giraffe, especially reticulated.

On a game drive we see zebra, eland, and waterbuck;
But the elephants scared the monkeys, and are we out of luck?
No, because our guide Tony is able to convince
The rangers to let us inspect the baby chimps.
Then on to the tame rhino named Morani;
All he does is sit around on his hiney.
But we are quite happy he is cooperating,
Because he offers a special photo opportunity.
Then I lace up my running shoes and go out for a dash,
Carefully watching for baboons darting in from the grass.

What a beautiful sight, Mt. Kenya at sunset,
While gazelles and giraffes graze right by your tent.
I'll never forget Sweetwater and the common zebra,
Because it's where my wife came down with a fever.
She was laid up in bed, looking quite scary,
But made a speedy recovery, thanks to Dr. Harry.
She's on her feet the next day, Akuna Matada,
While Tony lectures us on Jomo Kenyatta,
And how the Kenyans won the right to freedom enjoy,
Only to encounter the corruption of Moi.

On the road it's lunch at the reserve for rhinoceros,
Where we hear a report by remarkable Ann Merz.
Then a hard ride with one pit stop en route
To our next destination, Camp Samburu.
This is the worst road I've ever been on, because
I'm chewing gum without moving my jaws.
"How much further? How much further?" says Ms. Lucille.
"Now I remember; this ride's from hell."
"Hurry up," says Kitty, "I'm getting sick."
But Francis stops to gawk at a bright gerenek.
We see oryx and lion doing their dance,
While tourists are stalking in twenty-six vans.

Next morning we see cheetah enjoying a kill.
I'm sorry, but since it's making me ill,
I'd rather birdwatch a yellow hornbill.
Along the shoreline of the River Osaniru
From the bush emerges a herd of cape Buffalo.
We stop by a tree upon our return,
But before we can see it, the go-away bird is gone.

There's always another surprise around the bend.
And although too soon this trip must end,
While some move on to explore the Serenghetti,
For home I think this weary traveler is ready.
Our last night is dinner at the home of Philip Leakey,
Where we get one last chance to flaunt our Swahili.
"Jambo" is the way to say "How do you do?"
To the Masai, Lua, Samburu, and Kikuyu.
And for a great trip we say, "A sante sana, Rob Fure,"
As we bid farewell with a wistful "Kwaherri."