November
1994
In
a Strange Land: South Africa's Kruger Park
By Mia MacDonald |
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It is difficult to know what to say about South Africa,
such a strange, disturbing and yet familiar and exhilarating place.
Only five months after this year’s elections, the country is really
a whole new world; and yet, the old world is still readily found.
In a week’s trip that took me to Johannesburg, Soweto and Kruger
Park on the eastern border with Mozambique (another country about to
enter the “recovery” stage), I saw hippos sheltering their
sensitive skin wading neck-deep into the Sabie river, stood in front
of Nelson Mandela’s Soweto home — the fence posts painted
in ANC colors — and listened to township jazz with black and white
yuppies in an upscale Johannesburg winebar.
Why would I travel 1000 kilometers within South Africa to see uncaged
animals when it is newly unfettered people who are the big story? Maybe,
I thought, I could experience both, and get a better sense of what this
strange new South Africa was all about. So I booked a four day tour
with a Johannesburg-based company, at the expensive price of about $400
for transportation, lodging and breakfast and dinner each day.
Departure was at 6:30 am in a small white minivan, our safari car for
the trip’s duration (visitors are not allowed to leave their vehicles
in Kruger). The driver/guide was a young (white) woman and seasoned
wildlife watcher, who remained skeptical about the changes taking place
in South Africa. “Mandela’s OK,” she said, “but
what if the next president is one of those Marxist types? Then what?”
The other four members of the tour were a Canadian couple and two spry
77 year-olds from New Zealand.
We drove northeast from Johannesburg, through vast agricultural lands,
the remnants of gold mines, and the Drackensburg mountain range that
in many places looks like the Grand Canyon. Along the way, we passed
small groups of black farm workers, waiting by the side of the road
for private minivan taxis that are their only source of transportation.
Our van had six people; many of the “taxis” regularly carry
20 or 25 people. We also passed several groups of women traders selling
fruit, carved statues and wood necklaces by the road.
At one stop, I bought oranges, bananas, and a beaded necklace imported
from Swaziland. One woman asked if I could help her get a job in Johannesburg.
“There’s no factory near here,” she said, “and
I need a job.” Feeling inadequate, I told her I was sorry I couldn’t
help her; here I was seeing the dislocations and dispossession of centuries
of racist policies. The conundrum of South Africa; small islands of
huge wealth, surrounded by a vast sea of poverty.
We reached Kruger Park at about 11 am on the second morning of our journey,
and entered through an inauspicious-looking gate. Two giraffes were
eating buds from trees nearby. Giraffes! I said they must be tame, wards
of the gatekeepers. No, our guide assured me. “They’ve known
cars and people all their lives. They see the van as some kind of strange,
humming animal and they’re not afraid.” In those first hours
in the Park, we saw more giraffes (almost always in pairs or threes),
herds of kudu — a type of antelope — impala (graceful, small
gazelles with black and white rumps), a hornbill, zebra and, visible
only through binoculars, a large male lion resting after a meal. As
we pulled into one of the many camps in Kruger, we saw at least six
elephants, watching and eating nearby. They were bigger and grayer and
calmer than their sad relatives who fill our circuses and zoos. The
landscape was a mat of dried grass, light brown from the sun and lack
of rain. There were more trees than I expected, singly and in clumps
between low bushes and open ground. Few trees or bushes had leaves,
the landscape just emerging from winter. Greenery was abundant only
near the dry riverbeds and watering holes.
During that first day’s lunch I thought about what I had seen.
It was hard to accept: the animals were real, autonomous beings doing
what they naturally do. It was like a form of cognitive dissonance to
me, so used to dioramas, Disney, natural habitat zoos and Mutual of
Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. How could this not be just like Wildlife
Safari or some other ill-named place in New Jersey I drove through as
a kid where lions and elephants surrounded our car as if on cue? No
one had lured the lion to his spot under the tree, just close enough
to be seen, or had encouraged the elephants to come near our lunch spot
to eat. That tree branch placed just there, that acacia tree providing
just the right nesting place for the tawny eagle, the sandy riverbank
perfectly suited for a crocodile’s afternoon snooze.
After about 24 hours and 15 giraffes, 10 elephants and a mother and
infant black rhino (highly endangered throughout Africa, due to the
market and its horn serving as a medicinal potion or a dagger handle
in China, Taiwan, and Yemen), I got used to seeing the animals: a very
green parrot in a leafless tree; vervet monkeys grooming each other
aggressively by a water hole, smaller and quicker than I expected; zebra
gathering by the road — each pattern unique — and watching
their skins blend into the surroundings as the sun fell lower in the
sky; a tawny eagle, finishing a meal. The most American of birds, he
was absolutely exotic to me, never having seen one in the landscape
of my own continent. Animals appeared and didn’t; often we drove
for miles without spotting any fauna and our eyes got lazy. In the early
morning a harried-looking hyena ran across the road and into the low
bushes; more elephants sheltered below the trees, moving slowly to make
sure the small ones (just visible through binoculars) stayed with the
rest of the family; and about eight buffalo munched on buds just beside
the road. A baboon jumped on the van’s window, his dark, wizened
face looking into mine before rejoining his compatriots, including several
mothers with nursing infants.
I was not jaded by experiencing these things, just more secure in knowing
and seeing that they were real and free and just being (who and what
they are).
For two nights our camp bordered the Sabie River (still full of water,
unlike the riverbeds we saw — empty). I could hear the roar of
hippos as they became more boisterous in the evening. The sky was dark,
and the unfamiliar Southern hemisphere stars bright until the moon appeared;
the bugs were loud all night. In the afternoons, elephants roamed the
opposite riverbank, feeding on trees and buds and the dry grass.
The “camp,” as our guide Chris called it, was casual, pleasant
and not too obtrusive to the landscape. It too, however, had elements
of unreality. Strips of dried ostrich were packed in plastic bags and
on sale in the camp shop for snacking. The five course dinner in the
timbered Great Hall-type restaurant featured “game” each
evening. Tuesday was kudu kebab, but not the same kudu we had gaped
at and photographed earlier that day. One of my Canadian tourmates indulged.
I gulped and enjoyed my overboiled vegetable plate. Roast leg of warthog
was the centerpiece Wednesday (s/he is a tourist sight when living).
I ate alone and savored my rice and canned asparagus. Vegetarianism,
it seems, is not big yet in Kruger Park. Chris assured us that none
of the dinner fare came from Kruger — the kudu and warthog and
buffalo and other entrées were raised on private game farms bordering
the park.
The other oddity that hit: every tourist was white (South African, European
and me, the only American I saw), while every service person was black
— the cabin cleaning staff, the waiters, the guards at the
gate, the cashiers. Just about every manager was white and kitted out
in brown shorts and a shirt. Relations between the races seemed cordial,
but the color divide was eerie, like a Eugene Terreblanche script for
the new South Africa made real. Most of the rangers are black, although
the chief ranger staff is predominantly white. Chris said many of the
young black men were coming up and would soon become rangers of higher
rank, running the park someday. She said this in good faith and I believed
her.
Our last morning in the Park we looked for a pride of lions, as we had
each morning. They did not cross our path. A starling and a cormorant
did; we also saw a tsessebe antelope (rare, Chris said) and an acacia
tree. We left through the Kruger gate, past a huge statue of the founder,
a Boer who had had 16 children. Soon after leaving the Park, the landscape
changed into fruit groves and cultivated fields. By the roadside young
men sold carved wood animals but we didn’t stop until we got to
the Golden Egg restaurant and rest-stop an hour from Johannesburg. I
sat on a bench and had tea. Kruger Park seemed far away.
Two days later I went to Soweto with a friend who had grown up there.
We sat in her mother’s house and drank Coke and she explained
that the house was hot in summer and cold in winter because the roof,
like most in Soweto, was made of asbestos. Soweto had almost no trees.
The apartheid government chopped them all down before they built any
shacks or bungalows. Trees, they reckoned, provide shade, succor, life
— and a place to hide.
When I think of South Africa, I think of hippos barking or braying or
singing in the twilight; of the extraordinary transformation taking
place in that country; and gather hope from the fact that, within the
desiccated sprawl of Soweto, President Mandela’s house is surrounded
by tall trees.
Mia MacDonald is a long-time animal activist and
writer. She lives in Brooklyn.
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