Nicole Hayes

Honors 345
Midterm Paper
November 4th, 2013

There is a conceit held by travellers with cameras, and it is this: that at the end of the trip,
you will take your pictures home and look at them when your memories fade, use them to bring
back the sights and sounds and smells of a land fifty, a hundred, five thousand miles away.
This conceit is overwhelmingly false.
You return home, you unpack, you force friends and relatives to sit still for what was
once a slideshow and is now ten people crammed around your 12 laptop, you make sure to label
the folder properly, and then you move on.
As a traveller, most of my trips followed this trajectory. I have folders full of a hundred,
four hundred, a thousand pictures from cities and countries around the world, and the only time I
open them is when I need references for swords or castles or armour.
Only one trip breaks this rule, only one folder do I open on a regular basis and stare at the
pictures within, trying to project myself back in time to the two weeks I spent in Africa.

Sitting at my computer, I struggle against less kind memories from places and times I
have no intention of revisiting. To distract myself, I open folders, clicking through a familiar
pattern, finally pulling up a picture. Because of my cameras vagaries, it is labelled Africa part 1
305. I know it better as the first one. The first picture, the first sighting, the first animal.
The first giraffe.

I can remember the occasion clearly. The tour group had just arrived at our hotel, which
backed up to a wildlife preserve, home to one of the only black rhino families in Zimbabwe. We
were milling around on the patio, waiting for the staff with our room keys. Bored, I had
wandered over to the railing and looked out across a grassy plain to a stand of trees.
The giraffe appeared from within the trees, moving long legs in tandem, head remaining
still. It stopped by a green-brown bush, raising its head to reach the new buds on the top. I knew
enough about giraffes to know what it was doing: a foot-long stretch of blackened purple tongue
was stretching out, wrapping around the branches, and tightening, stripping them of their
greenery.
Trying not to hyperventilate, I fumbled my camera out of its pouch and raised it
unsteadily to my eyes. It had finally hit me: I was in Africa, and that, not even a quarter mile
away, was a wild giraffe.
The picture itself is fuzzy and not well constructed; the camera focused on a low hanging
branch in the foreground rather than the giraffe, and the giraffe itself was slightly too distant for
clarity. Yet I kept the picture, treasuring it as the first sighting of an animal, and it is the first one
I turn to.
I close out of that window, and scroll through the pictures, clicking on one randomly.
This one also brings back memories, and I smile.
Its of golden brown dirt and green trees, a blue-green bonnet from some unseen vehicle
covering the lower half, pale blue sky edging in at the very top, another blue-green-beige Land
Cruiser in the background. The most important part, however, the focal piece is a two year old
black rhino calf, ears still too large for his head, head far too large for his body, face splotchily
illuminated by the sun.

Sub-Saharan Africa is currently home to two species of rhinoceros, the white rhino and
the black rhino. While white rhinos are more common overall, they are rarer in Zimbabwe;
however, both species face heavy poaching for their two foot horns. Because of this, the NGOs
which run this park have filed down the horns of their herd, making them less tempting. This
herd consisted of six individuals when I was there: one bull, two cows, and their three offspring,
one calved during each of the preceding years. The cow with only one calf was pregnant again.
Our tour group was divided into three Land Cruisers, over-sized Toyota versions of Jeeps,
and we were warned. Black rhinos are the third largest animals in Africa, after elephants and
white rhinos, and one of the most dangerous. They are short sighted, volatile, and defensive.
Fortunately, this group was also well adjusted to the Land Cruisers, and so long as we didnt
wave our arms or make a lot of noise, we were fine.
The adults in particular were comfortable around the vehicles, coming within ten feet of
them while searching for food. The two cows were more upset with each other than with the
Land Cruisers, staying on opposite sides of the one I was in, and I swivelled back and forth,
trying to take pictures. After a while, in which I lowered my camera and watched the rhinos
directly, one female walked between two of the Land Cruisers, headed for a different patch of
dry grass.
Her sole calf, the two year old, was unsure what to do. The gap between the Land
Cruisers was easily twenty feet, more than wide enough for his mother to fit through, but it was
plainly much closer than he was comfortable with. Head swaying from side to side, he stared at
the gap.
I heard a loud meow, and straightened, attention torn from the calf. There was not a cat to
be seen. Frowning, I waited. The meow came again, and this time, I located the source: the rhino,

his ears flipped in the direction of his mother, mouth open plaintively. He wasnt small, even in
comparison to his mother; about three-quarters of her size, he probably weighed well over a
thousand pounds. And in distress, he sounded like a small cat.
Finally his mother came around the front of our Land Cruiser. His ears perked up and he
trotted towards her. At that point I snapped the picture now open on my computer. Still smiling, I
move on.
The next picture I stop on is the first of me, taken by another in the tour group. I was
smiling broadly, wearing cargo pants, a warm thick jacket, and a floppy outback hat, from a
previous trip to Australia. I was also sitting on the foreleg of an African bull elephant.
One of the options on the trip was to pay extra and go on an elephant ride; I, a devout
animal lover and inbound college student, recognizing that this was the last time in the next
decade where spare change and free time were likely to coincide, leaped at the chance. It meant
waking up at six am and riding out in the open-topped Land Cruisers, but I would brave much
more for the chance to ride an elephant.
Common knowledge said that African bulls were untameable, that they were too
aggressive to ride safely. Circuses used Asian elephants because of their smaller size and
placidity, taming them with whips and chains. No surprise that the larger and stronger African
bulls rebelled at the treatment, killing their handlers.
It wasnt until the advent of dog training schools and horse whisperers that anyone
thought to change the method, rather than the animal. Trained now with food rewards and gentle
manipulation, the elephants in this park are semi-wild: they live and feed on their own, but can
be called in to give rides to tourists such as us.

I rode Doma, a thirty-nine year old bull, completely placid and willing to follow the
others with one exception: elephants, like horses, view any path large enough for them as a good
one to follow, and do not care for the safety of those on top. I learned quickly to sway out of the
way of low hanging tree branches. He also took every opportunity to eat, but, unlike a horse, he
didnt eat grass. Instead he would wrap his trunk around smallish trees and pull, ending up with a
trunkful of torn branches and leaves before putting the whole lot in his mouth and chewing for a
minute. This occurred no matter where the tree was in regards to the path.
When the ride was over, I climbed down, walking slightly bow-legged. I then had the
opportunity for pictures. Doma knelt down, and I sat on his foreleg. His skin was cracked and
wrinkled; it seemed to be formed entirely of large thick calluses, with deep cracks where it
folded and stretched. Short prickly hairs rubbed against my hand where I touched him, and I had
to contain my glee. The highlight, however, came just as a picture was snapped: Doma,
convinced I had treats, nudged me in the shoulder with his trunk, the finger-like endings opening
and closing anxiously. Karl, the handler, smiled, handing me a stubby cylinder of alfalfa held
together with molasses. Doma followed the scent with his trunk, bumping eagerly into my hand,
damp fingers grasping at mine. I gave up the treat and he grabbed it with his trunk, twisting it
away to shove it in his mouth.
I laughed. The camera flashed.
Still smiling, I move on, clicking on one at random. Its of a blank and barren landscape.
At least, thats my first impression. The closest thing to the camera is a fallen tree, branches
twisted in death as they must have been in life, reaching through the brush for the sky and for the
camera equally. The brush is very nearly as dead, much of it reduced to sticks by the climate and
the wildlife. Only one lone bush has poked its way through the tree to stretch green leaves

outward. The others are dead, or apparently so, bare of leaves and of branches. The ground itself
is covered in grasses trampled flat, blades a dull golden-green, and none standing higher than a
few inches. Beneath the grass is tan sandy dirt marked with tracks and scattered branches.
My eyes flicker from the dirt up, to the middleground of the picture. Scattered bushes
litter the ground, interspersed with long grasses that have beaten the odds and are displaying
vibrant green leaves. One tree still stands, its branches bare.
It isnt until I look at the background, about midway up the picture, that I see life. The
trees here are thickly clustered, still with all their leaves, and painting my entire impression with
green. Even so, I can still catch glimpses of the ground through the branches. In this area of
Africa, there is no undergrowth: the size and frequency of the wildlife see to that. It is in stark
contrast to my home in the Pacific Northwest, where ferns, brambles, and mossy stumps occupy
any area not already cut off from sunlight by closely packed tree branches. Home has no open
plains, no animal trails fifteen feet wide, no dead trees not already covered in greenery of another
sort.
The sight left me uncomfortable when I took the picture, and it leaves me uncomfortable
now. This is not what a wild place should look like, my unconscious mind insists, wild places are
green and alive, not golden and dead.
Finally though, finally I look just above the middle line of the picture and I can feel
myself relax. The Chobe River is visible in patches, blue water interspersed with vibrant green
rushes. My memory rushes back of being on a boat in the middle of that river, staring out at the
rushes which that sink down into the sandbar four feet below and rise up ten feet out of the water.
Its not hard to visualize myself sitting in the Land Cruiser, staring at this land that is so
anathema to everything I thought I knew, a landscape barren on the surface, yet brimming with

life underneath, a land inexplicably alien to my mind and home to millions of animals, a place
where I will always be slightly on edge, minutely off-balance, and also a place where I can see
myself spending months on end just learning about what lives there. There is very little about the
Chobe River that bears any resemblance to the Pacific Northwest, and yet, there is something in
it that calls to me.
After snapping the picture, I had turned at the direction of Tania, our tour guide. Behind
us, coming out of the bushes, was one of the reasons I could see myself staying here. A sable
strutted forth, horns arcing proudly over her glossy dark-brown back, one ear flicked towards the
Land Cruiser. Sables, Tania explained, are every bit as rare and reclusive as leopards, themselves
one of the animals most eagerly sought after by tourists, but unlike leopards, sables dont have
the habit of sneaking up behind you and ripping your intestines out. Leopards are sought out
because they are considered one of the Big Five, the five largest and most dangerous animals
to hunt on foot. Sables arent, but they are just as beautiful and miraculous to see, muscles
rippling under black-brown fur, striking white bands breaking up the shape of their face to
confuse predators. The female I was watching trotted out of sight, tail swishing.
Relaxed, I click on one last photo. Its of an impala, on our last day there. Hes standing
in perfect profile to the camera, only a slight tilt to his head ruining the illusion that he is actually
2-D. I remember taking this one as well, thrilled to have such a brilliant shot. Impala run in herds
of mostly hornless females with a single male in charge. The role of leader is so demanding,
however, that the males work themselves into exhaustion within a few weeks, and are quickly
replaced. The clever males hang around the herd until the females go into heat and then make a
push for leadership. This male was one such, not actively guarding so much as keeping a wary
eye out for predators. His horns, with one complete twist in them, marked him as a full adult, and

he looked healthy, firm muscles on fore and hindquarters, strong black lines along his hips,
ankles, and hind end showing his scent glands. Impala are notorious for three vertical black lines
on their rumps that form an m; the drivers called them fast food, referring both to the
McDonalds M and to an impalas ability to outrun even a cheetah over a distance.
The other memories are gone as I close the folder, replaced by ones from Africa, and for
the first time in my life, Im thankful I took so many pictures. In an instant I can turn to the clean
air and open plains of a world infinitely far from the terror I try so hard to avoid. It is a form of
escapism, and one I revel in because it keeps me sane, the memories of animals akin and
dissimilar to those familiar at home, the sight of a hundred elephants in one hour, of a pride of
lions with their kill, of baboons and their children, all of those letting me remember that the
world is wondrous .