Preparing for an African Safari--A Meditation on Truth and Reality

Going to Africa has long been a dream of mine, really, since childhood. There was always something intriguing and adventurous about it. This dream began with movies about Africa. Tarzan comes to mind immediately. Life in the broad-leaf jungle and swimming in fresh lakes and streams seemed as appealing as wearing safari khaki clothes and pith helmets. 

 

 

Of course, Tarzan was a fantasy fiction of author Edgar Rice Burroughs who wrote these stories based on his belief in scientific racism and eugenics. These theories held that white Anglo-Saxons were the world's elite, particularly the English nobles from which Tarzan was born. As the story goes, his family dies in a plane crash in Africa, and the apes discover him and nurture him from babyhood to manhood. As Tarzan grows up, he surpasses not only the apes but the Black Africans who are depicted as inferior and not wholly human. Today, this is not a particularly good story to tell, and yet, its influence runs deep.

In sixth grade I did a map project about a boy who came from Tanganyika, traveled north to Egypt, and then crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the USA. I liked doing the project, and I especially liked the name "Tanganyika". It sounded so African! I vowed to go there some day. 

Tanganyika became Tanzania in December 1961 after years as a German colony and later on as a British territory. I've yet to go there, but someday I will.

My sixth grade year was a very influential time for me as I decided I wanted to do something on the international level, travel around the world, and teach high school social studies. Around that same time the Peace Corps was established, and many African nations were becoming independent from their colonial past. I definitely wanted to be a part of it all.

Over my adult years I have met many Africans and have traveled to different countries there: Morocco in 2013, Rwanda and Kenya in 2010, and Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa in 2023. I never taught social studies but I did obtain a doctoral degree in international education, became a world traveler, and for the past six years have lived in France. This safari to southern Africa would make it my 40th with my lifetime goal of visiting 50 countries. 

Even though I'm 73 years old now, I'm still holding out hope to go to Africa through the Peace Corps or some Catholic missionary organization and teach English as a Second Language. This is not entirely a pipe dream. After all, Miss Lillian, President Jimmy Carter's mother, joined the Peace Corps at age 68 where she served as a nurse in India for two years. That would be a great retirement project for me!

The Nun's Story, a 1959 film based on the 1956 novel by Kathryn Hulme also attracted me to Africa. Audrey Hepburn plays the role of Sister Luke who had wanted to go to the Belgian Congo as a nurse since she was a young girl. She does go there but works in the white hospital with a very competent and cranky surgeon. Sister Luke has struggled with her vocation throughout her religious life then and unsuspectingly falls in love with this doctor. She eventually leaves the convent, and we are left to wonder whether she ever returned to the Congo (and the doctor) or if she fights in the Resistance Movement during World War II. Her love of Africa begins way before she gets there, and once there, she does everything she can in order to stay, including beating TB with the help of "an exceptional doctor". Sister Luke shows how such love for a place can be intoxicating and inspiring. Once again, a woman's adventure in Africa made me want to go there and invoke my own dreams of serving there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another film that stimulated my interest in Africa was the story of Dr. David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley's finding him near Victoria Falls in Zambia. Livingstone, a famous Scottish doctor, explorer, evangelist, and humanitarian had won acclaim in the U.K. for his work in Africa. When he returned there a third time looking a route to the Indian Ocean via the Zambezi River, he was presumed lost or dead. Stanley, a journalist, set out to find him, and when he did he said: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume", which became the meme of his day. 

Our safari group visited Victoria Falls, one of the  world's natural wonders that Livingstone "discovered" and named after his British queen. We visited the town of Livingstone, Zambia, named after him and went to the Livingstone Museum where his journeys and work are enshrined. Artifacts and ethnography of the indigenous peoples are also on display. 

Before we left Victoria Falls, we also listened to a lecture on Livingstone's explorations and accomplishments from a retired guide who also wrote a book on the doctor. He said that Livingstone had a lot to do with exposing the hidden slave trade in Zanzibar and advocating for its cessation. Livingstone was one of the few white Europeans who is still loved and admired by the Africans. His statues have been preserved and not torn down as those of other white European colonialists, a testament to his loving kindness to the African people he served.

 

My all-time favorite story about Africa is the star-studded film, "Out of Africa". The music, costumes, and story of Karen Blixen (a.k.a. Isak Dinesen), a young Danish woman who tries to succeed in Africa as a coffee grower, at least for a little while, not only appeals to my feminist sensibilities but to my interest in adventure and writing about it. Although our safari group was not going to be in the same area of Africa as the setting of this story, the wide open spaces, the animals, and the game hunts elicited a response of my yearning to do the same things as Meryl Streep did. In fact, safari in southern Africa gave me everything the film shows except the opportunity to have my hair washed by Robert Redford!

One significant note about the music from the film. As I rode in our bouncy jeep looking for animals, the theme song from "Out of Africa" came to mind over and over again. They say that Africa does things to you. I'm sure that composer John Barry must have been on the plains of Kenya (which I had previously flown over during my trip to Rwanda) because the music felt like the plains of Kenya. They also felt like the woodland bush areas of Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe where my safari would take place. There is something very special yet inexplicable about seeing pristine land in Africa that evokes an tenderhearted response. The music from the film represents how Africa touched Karen Blixen's heart. It also represents how our African safari touched mine.

 

Unfortunately, my school books, the news, and other films I saw also influenced me in their depictions of Africa as a place of wild animals and strange, exotic people, some of whom became slaves in my own country. White Europeans exploited the indigenous people without their consent and then constructed theories that deemed Black people lower in morals and intelligence than the whites who cooked up these theories if only to justify their own importance and affirm their subjugation of an entire race. They also exploited the animals of Africa by doing so much hunting that they made some nearly extinct.

Fortunately, after decades of expanding my knowledge of Africa and meeting many Africans and African-Americans, I find such theories and hunting practices not worthy of belief. And, after two weeks on safari and one week in South Africa, I discovered that the people I met possessed an intelligence and set of ethics about the world that if listened to could actually heal a world not only wounded by its prejudices and judgements but suffering from human attempts to control and dominate Nature. 

I learned that the animals in the wild have a certain intelligence and set of rules that governs their behavior. This is not about instinct, but rather a calculated response to their environment and to those they share it with. Africa has much to offer our world in the cause of peace and unity as well as respect and oneness with Nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I grew up in Detroit, one of the most racist cities in the country. Every decision people make there is determined by race, a white, Baptist minister in an upscale white suburb told me during an interview about the city 20 years ago. On the other hand, during the course of my adult life I found many contradictions to those stereotypes as I became more exposed to African Americans--including President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle--and the heroes of Africa who changed entire political systems that had been discriminating against them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nelson Mandela's courage and Bishop Tutu's forthrightness emerged as they tried to re-define South Africa and as they attempted to overcome decades of colonialism and Apartheid in order to unite the country with compassion and grace. So successful were their Truth and Reconciliation Committees that other countries who had suffered similar dark periods in their histories adopted their formulas for change.    

 

When I went to Rwanda in 2010 to accompany and report on my pastor on his and his associate's ministry in trauma recovery, I met another African hero, Fr. Ubald. He had gathered thousands of people to the place where he would one day build the Center for the Secret of Peace as a response to the terrible genocide of 1994 where one million people were slaughtered by their neighbors.

 

 

 

 

 

Fr. Ubald was a good priest. He was devoted to the Gospels and his Church. He knew people locally, and he had connections worldwide. During my time in Rwanda, I witnessed people literally calling him on his cell phone all day long from all over the world to ask him to pray for them to get through some sort of crisis. As a result, he cultivated the trust of people who believed in his love of Christ and his ministry of peace--and who could help him realize his dream.

Fr. Ubald DID build the Center for the Secret of Peace (below) whose vision is to become the world’s leading organization in promoting forgiveness, reconciliation and healing. It is sited on a hill overlooking a lake. I saw a beautiful mango tree there, a tree that I believe had to be the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

 

 

 

Stereotypes and prejudices die hard. However, when you travel, you meet people and see how they live and what they believe. You learn the truth about them--and you have the opportunity to change your false perceptions and prejudices. 

I would also learn that safaris contribute to conservation and preservation of the native lands--and that they are not available just for the sake of tourism. Safaris put you in touch with Nature in a new way where you can see and appreciate how it works, how the animals live with each other, and how the people live with the animals and all of Nature. This safari was neither a colonial gesture nor a childhood fantasy as I had thought it would be. It was an opening to truth and reality.

 

Resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Rice_Burroughs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Livingstone

https://www.secretofpeace.org/