Dorothy Ross’s winning personal essay takes her readers to Africa and a photo safari involving more action than the writer had bargained for. The details the author chooses put us right into the situation with directness and good humor, attributes of good writing.

Bagging Africa’s Big Five
by Dorothy Ross

Thirty-six hours after leaving San Francisco, my niece and I arrived at the lodge, near South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Roger, the manager and head guide, showed us to our cottage. He was dressed in a slightly disheveled, olive drab uniform of shorts and military-style shirt, with a large pistol in a leather holster on his belt. The lodge was a collection of bed-and-bath cottages strung like beads along a meandering boardwalk. Roger explained that we must keep to the raised wooden walkways at all times to avoid chance encounters with snakes and alligators. What’s more, he would escort us back to our cottage each evening to protect us from night-prowling predators. 

We refreshed ourselves and joined the other guests in the round, open-sided, dining boma for sundowners (Africa’s equivalent of cocktails) and a delicious dinner that I later learned was impala stew.  After the meal, Roger led us to low benches around a large, open fire pit. Smoldering ironwood glowered in the dark, keeping the mosquitoes away. Zulu employees sat on a knoll behind us, chanting in their lyrical language. A couple of young boys kept time with the singers, beating on drums almost as tall as themselves. Jenny, Roger’s wife, brought us mugs of hot rooibos, a local specialty. I closed my eyes, inhaled the sweet floral scent of my drink, and relaxed into the rhythms of Africa.

Jenny and Roger walked us back to our cottage that first night. While he checked that nothing was crawling around in the bathroom, she showed us how to use the great swaths of mosquito netting.

At dawn, when the birds started vocalizing, it took me a minute to realize that I was actually in Africa. Squawks and whistles filled the air. The birds sounded as though they were tuning up, rehearsing for a big show. Their warm-up was interrupted by a grouchy roar that seemed to say, “Knock it off!”  The lion was still sleepy.

By the time the breakfast gong sounded, the big cat had moved away from the compound, leaving a trail of paw prints around the dining boma. Roger said the game animals were unusually active, so we stood a good chance of bagging Africa’s Big Five—on film. He took us on twice-daily forays in his four-wheel drive, looking for wildlife to photograph. The morning ride began at seven o’clock, when the animals were most active. Giraffes and kudu were abundant. Zebras and their companion wildebeests were common.

From the porch of our cottage, we could sometimes see elephant families drinking from the water hole at the edge of the property. Very early one morning, a young elephant mistook the lodge pool for a water hole. He stumbled into the tank and couldn’t get out. Roger and a couple of the ‘boys’ prodded and coaxed the little Dumbo until he reached the steps. His pachyderm family congregated just outside the compound, observing the rescue efforts. As soon as the youngster struggled out of the concrete water hole, he lumbered over to the adults. They surrounded him and smothered him with affectionate trunk embraces.

I’m sure I sound like a granny playing favorites, but I was charmed by Africa’s elephants. When they weren’t silently posing for animal crackers, they communicated via an assortment of trumpet and bassoon toots. And when they waded in the marsh, pulling out papyrus with their trunks, they looked like kids gathering cattails.

Thanks to Roger’s expert tracking, Kathy and I photographed four of Africa’s biggies—the elephant, of course, and the rhino, the lion and the leopard. Only the Cape buffalo eluded our lenses. With just one day remaining before our scheduled departure, we had yet to see a buffalo.

Then the mademoiselle arrived. Claudette, who represented a Parisian travel agency, was escorting an exclusive private tour. She demanded that Roger arrange a walking safari for her guests, as advertised on the lodge website. Roger tried to reason with her. He explained that because her group had arrived in mid-November, springtime in sub-Saharan Africa, they had missed the trekking season by at least a month. “This is mating time,” he said. “The big boys are restless and testy.”

“I’m not talking about an overnight safari,” Claudette replied, “just a short hike to give my clients the feel of walking in the bush.”

Roger tried again. “The trees have already leafed out, Miss. You can’t see the animals approaching. It’s too dangerous for bushwhacking—unless you can outrun a lion.” The mademoiselle could not be dissuaded. Claudette ranted and Roger relented. He agreed to take her group on a morning walk, and he invited Kathy and me to join them. Eight of us crowded into Roger’s Land Rover at dawn the next day and headed out. Except for Roger with his crumpled fatigues, we were all dressed alike. The lodge literature had cautioned against brightly colored clothing that could excite the game animals, so we were outfitted in new tan safari clothes, cameras slung about our necks. We looked like a scout troop intent on earning merit badges.

We had left the main road and were bouncing along a dirt track when Roger brought the Rover to a stop and jumped to the ground. “I’m going to check this area,” he said, pointing to a large grassy meadow bordered by tall shrubs. “Stay in the vehicle!”

Roger was back shortly. He had spotted something he wanted to show us. We tramped through the tall grass single file, with our guide at the head of the column, his rifle over his shoulder. In just a few minutes, Roger paused and indicated with a sweep of his free arm that there was something up ahead. This was what he had brought us to see—a herd of Cape buffalo less than a football field away!

Roger explained that we would make a wide arc around the herd, which he estimated at about a hundred head of buffalo. He instructed us to stow our cameras, “Lest the clicking spook them into a stampede.” He promised that we could take pictures when we were safely on the rise in the distance, where a dozen or more zebras were grazing.

I had read that hunters feared the Cape buffalo because of the bison’s tendency to stampede when alarmed. That was hard to imagine because the liver-colored animals in the meadow looked like benign, domestic cattle, only larger—a lot larger. The males weighed as much as a ton. The most unusual and endearing aspect of a Cape buffalo’s appearance is the headdress. From the skullcap base, the horns diverge, bend down, and then curve up in a fat curl, reminding me of the bouffant flip hairdo I tried so hard to achieve in high school.

We’d only gone a short way, perhaps the length of a city block, when Roger froze and pointed to his right. A second buffalo herd was advancing out of the brush. The animals had been so well camouflaged by tall reeds and shrubby bushes that we didn’t see them until they trudged into the meadow, trampling everything in front of them. There weren’t many buffalo in this herd, but they were all very large. In the cool morning air, they breathed dragon-like clouds of smoke. We later learned from Roger that the small group consisted of bachelors, intent on wooing females away from the main herd. They were prepared to fight the bulls for that privilege, and they wouldn’t hesitate to crush anyone or anything that got in their way.

The late arrivals didn’t join the other buffaloes. They walked around behind us, cutting off our path back to the vehicle. We had no choice but to continue towards the zebras on the hillock. I’m no judge of distance, and I’ve never thrown a pigskin, but I’d say we were several football fields from the zebras. I had no idea what we would do when we reached them, or, indeed, what the zebras might do. Do zebras stampede?

We looked to our leader. Raising his rifle high above his head, Roger directed, in an urgent stage whisper, “Walk straight toward the zebras. Keep one hand on the bloke in front of you. Don’t make any noise—and do not look at the buffalo!”

My right hand on Kathy’s shoulder, I followed in her footsteps, barely breathing. Claudette, next in line, clasped my left elbow in a vise grip, all the while muttering, “Mon Dieu. Mon Dieu.” The more we tried to be quiet, the more noise we made, stumbling on dry twigs.

Warily shifting my downcast eyes to the right, I could see black-hoofed feet and great horned heads. Thankfully, the beasts in the large herd seemed more interested in their grassy breakfast than in human intruders. I could hear the stomping feet and the heavy breathing of the bachelors off to my left. I was too scared to look their way. Surrounded as we were by enormous bovines, we often stepped in buffalo chips. The smell of those droppings and the earthy scent of the animals themselves mingled with our own nervous sweat to create a heavy musky odor.

Stepping gingerly over fallen branches and moving as quickly as we dared, we must have looked like a giant centipede crossing the meadow. I’d seen enough western movies to have an idea of the thunderous mayhem of a buffalo stampede. Was there a way to survive it?

When we finally neared the rise where the zebras grazed those animals moved off allowing us to pass. They then resumed their places, forming a black-and-white screen between us and the buffalo. The zebras seemed as tame as stabled horses. We scurried down the back side of the hill. Our vehicle had been less than ten minutes away all that time, but with the dragon-breathing bachelors standing in the way, it might just as well have been parked back at the lodge. We only found out later that the mating season for Zebras had started, and we had chanced a run-in with an amorous male. That night Roger told us he might have stopped one angry zebra with a bullet from his rifle, but the gun would have been as useless as a slingshot against a  herd of stampeding buffalo.

That close encounter with danger was oddly exhilarating. I’ve never felt more alive than when I was surrounded by hundreds of menacing animals. For weeks after I returned home, I was bored with my predictable life. And then I started thinking about my next adventure. I am not sure if my niece will want to go sky-diving.