Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World (25 page)

David says, “I also like that lions are very curious. The young ones especially.” He points to the lioness watching us. “See the black tip on her tail? That’s so when the mother is in the high grass, the cubs can still see it. They use that as a follow-me sign.” As we pull away, he adds, “Some days, you can drive all day and see nothing, and sometimes, you go out and see everything in just a few minutes.”

Luckily, it’s one of those days.

In front of us, wildebeest herds appear as dark spots on the horizon, shadows of passing clouds. Some are making their way across the plains at a steady rate, heads at attention rather than sloped into grass. Like the zebra, wildebeest travel in lines. It’s a behavior that gives them an advantage over predators. If they always moved in big groups, it would be easy to pick out the weakest of the herd since they would always be at the back. But, by traveling single file, everyone is given a fighting chance.

“When they move like that, they look like soldiers,” David says.

There are, among these herds, a lot of babies. All of them are roughly six months old. Female wildebeests synchronize their births each year in the Ngorongoro Crater area, south of here. No one is really sure why the animals come full circle from their northernmost migratory locale to give birth, but they suspect it has something to do with proteins in grasses or minerals in the Ngorongoro soil that provide for lactating mothers.

“There are so many wildebeest born during that time,” David says, “the lions won’t be able to finish them.”

A pair of Fischer’s lovebirds take flight, clearing our path. They appear green as emeralds glittering in sunlight, jewels tossed up by the earth itself. David points to open plains in the distance. “That’s where the wildebeest are headed.”

We’re moving toward a mobile tented camp run by &Beyond, an Arusha-based outfitter, when we come across a film crew that’s parked in the middle of the savanna, cameras erected on the roof of their vehicle. They’re filming an especially large herd.

I am in a nature documentary. Only, I’m not. The film in progress is going to capture the herds’ great numbers, but here’s what it will surely miss: The sound of the wildebeests’ crying is carrying from left to right. Then, right to left. It moves like tides. The air seems to tremble when the animals move. The ground actually shakes. Even IMAX theatres can only go so far.

The cameras are fixed on the herd in front of us. But behind us there is another. I can hear them—thousands of them—going about their business without a single set of human eyes witnessing their movements. And then there is that motionless plain to the east, as beautiful as hard lines of poetry punctuated with dark acacia, but lacking the action that makes for great television.

“People come all the time and ask why are the wildebeest not crossing the river,” David says, referring to the iconic images of wildebeest fording waterways full of hungry crocodiles. “They don’t understand that the film crews are not showing the migration—they’re showing part of it. The crossing is the most recognizable moment, but it’s only a part of what is happening. Here, we have the lions waiting instead of crocodiles. Here, the young wildebeest have not been tested. They have only just begun. They are just starting their lives. It’s their first time to move, to take that risk. Here, they are initiated.”

It’s early June. Last year, by this time, the herds were farther north. David looks out over the writhing mass of brown and black. The animals are kicking up dust, volcanic soil so fine it has gathered in the corners of my eyes. David sneezes. Last week, he was sick from extraordinary amounts of inhaled earth.

He looks at the herd the crew is filming and says, “The real question of the migration is this: Will the animals make it to the other side of Kenya? Will they be able to make it back here next year to do it all again?”

Wildebeest can live for twenty years, which means there are animals here that have been in migration since 1992. A few will die here, on these plains, tonight. But an overwhelming majority will make it through the Seronera area. They will find their way back, reliably, again and again.

We follow the road into a stand of trees. “We’re in the tsetse fly zone now,” he says, handing me a beaded, wooden stick with long strands of dark hair sprouting from one end. I follow his lead, letting the swatter slap my shoulder, like a bullwhip, to push the biting flies away.

When I accidentally slap myself in the face, it stings nearly as much as the skin-slicing mandibles of the tsetse. “What
is this made out of?” I ask, fingering the coarse, iron-like strands of the swatter.

“Wildebeest tail,” he says.

 • • • 

The &Beyond campsite is surprisingly plain. There is a wooden post bearing a bleached bull skull. Beyond that, there’s a communal tent with plush couches and chairs. The entire place has only ten guest accommodations—tents hidden in small clearings separated by pools of tall grass. “This is Osman,” a camp manager tells me in greeting, gesturing toward a mocha-skinned man wearing an &Beyond-issued khaki fleece. “He’ll be attending you.”

“I’ve never been attended in my life,” I say, trying to make light of how uncomfortable this sort of attention is making me.

The manager smiles. “We will do everything we can to make your stay here a good one.”

“And I’ll do everything I can to be a good guest,” I say.

This provokes a huge eruption of laughter from a group of loitering porters and butlers, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. “I see you will fit with the &Beyond way of doing things. We take care of each other,” the manager says.

This I believe to be true, but I am on my own for dinner. And, if I thought it was uncomfortable sitting at a table by myself in the Arctic Circle, it’s only because I’d never had the pleasure of being seated at a candle-lit table with only distance, easily measurable in feet, between me and a lion who is roaring at the sky. It doesn’t help that David has told me that night is the best time for hunting because the air is denser. Smells and even sounds travel much farther at night.

I eat quickly to join the camp’s roughly fifteen other guests in the tented lounge. They fall into talk of bank mergers and clothing lines, the cuteness of Lacoste’s alligator logo. Bored beyond measure, I excuse myself and walk over to the campfire—which is in safe solo walking range, as no guest is allowed to wander alone at night—where Osman is sitting with another butler.

There, I have the unsettling realization that Osman is waiting to escort me to my tent. But the awkwardness of this fades after it becomes clear he doesn’t have anywhere else to go, other than the small tent he shares with several other butlers. I believe him when he assures me that he’d rather be here.

The young employee sitting next to Osman has been staring at me since I sat down, in a way that tells me guests joining butlers by the fire isn’t a commonplace thing. Solo travelers are rare. Finally, he asks me, “Is this place very famous in the United States?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “There are people that have never heard of Tanzania that know about the Serengeti.” It is, I explain, one of the most famous places in all of Africa.

“No.
Really
?” The butler settles more deeply into his canvas folding chair. Beyond us, the silhouettes of flat-top trees are visible in moonlight. “So,” he says, “this place is to you like New York City is to me. That’s where I would like to go in your country,” he says. “It is the most famous place in the United States. There is also Las Vegas. I’d like to go to Las Vegas.”

He lowers his voice to a whisper and leans in to me, as if sharing a secret: “They say people there marry at night and divorce in the morning!”

Osman says, “They also say what you do in Vegas stays in Vegas. That means if you marry in Vegas, it’s like you never got married!”

His friend laughs. “Oh, I’d love to go. I’d love to see big movement of cars! Big buildings!” As he speaks, the fire stirs. A log falls to the ground. Flames spit and hiss like snakes.

Osman tells me he grew up in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, so I ask if he’s ever climbed it.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’ve climbed it fifteen times.”

I stumble to share my bewildered admiration—
fifteen times
—but Osman just shrugs. He has been a porter on Kilimanjaro. Now he’s a butler in the bush. Around here, those jobs have the wow factor of saying you once worked a summer at Applebee’s.

Earlier, when we met, Osman told me he’d like to become a businessman. But now he is feeling open. He tells me that his real dream, his big dream, is to become a pilot. “But I am embarrassed of this,” he says, “because I gave up on it. A friend told me it was hard. And now, I am too old to try.”

He is twenty-six.

When we reach my tent, Osman loiters for a minute and says, “I like the idea of your book.”

“Thanks, the book—just being here—is me living out
my
dream.”

He’s quiet for a minute. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why did you come alone?”

I want to cry, again. Traveling alone is one thing. Traveling alone when you’re sleeping solo in the heart of the Serengeti—within the scent-space of lions—is another. In my comparative wealth, I am embarrassed to admit the truth, that I am the only member my family could afford to send, and just barely, because of a professional opportunity and windfall discount. But I do.

He nods. This he understands. His cycle is to work six weeks on, two weeks off. When he goes home to Arusha, he lives in a one-room apartment shared with several friends. When he can, he visits his mother’s house so he can help care for his younger siblings.

“I feel like I am always struggling,” he says. And he doesn’t mean struggling to be able to go to the grocery store without having to use his credit card. He means struggling to make sure his brother has adequate protection so he will not die from malaria. That his mother has access to water that will not lead to dysentery.

I don’t know what to say, but I feel like I should say something. Before I can, Osman turns to me and says, “I want to tell you, my name isn’t really Osman. It’s Athman.” He pronounces the
Ath
by putting his tongue hard against his teeth. I strain to make out his plastic name tag in the dark.

He pinches the slender piece of plastic between his fingers, as if he’d momentarily forgotten he was wearing it. “It was guests that gave me my name, mostly Americans.” During his time as a porter on Kilimanjaro, he found that Americans had trouble pronouncing Athman. “They always said Osman,” he tells me. “So that is who I became.”

“But Athman is a nice name,” I say, uneasy about the appropriation.

“Please, call me Osman,” he says. “It’s how everyone knows me here. If you asked for Athman, no one would know who you were talking about. I’m Athman only to my family. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I do not tell this to anyone.”

I’m touched by his sharing of ideas and quiet, complicated identities. I think of the Naval Academy student I sat next to on my connecting flight from Amsterdam to Arusha. The cadet was coming to Tanzania because he had received a $100,000 grant from the U.S. government so he and a group of fellow Navy SEAL hopefuls could climb Kilimanjaro. It was considered elite military training. They would be accompanied by local porters.

“You know, Osman,” I say, “there are people who make it their life goal to climb Kilimanjaro. They train for months, they buy fancy outdoor outfits, they travel for days to get here. And do you know what most of them are probably thinking when they land at the airport?”

Osman shakes his head. It’s something he’s been mystified about for years. All those seekers, focused on the top of the mountain. He’s always thought them foolhardy for making such a calculated struggle in a world already so difficult to manage.

“They’re thinking: If I can climb Kilimanjaro I can do anything I set my mind to. They return home feeling bold, courageous. You’ve climbed that mountain fifteen times, and you did it carrying everybody else’s stuff on your back. That’s amazing!”

“You are right,” he says quietly.

“I don’t know what will happen in your life, but you have climbed Kilimanjaro
fifteen times
! I bet every time you went up that mountain, you were helping someone else realize
their
dream. That makes me believe you’re going to be okay. Maybe you will even fly one day.”

“You are right!” he says, louder now. “What you say is important for me. I will remember this!” Osman puts a hand to his heart. “I think God gave you a secret,” he says. “It is a beautiful thing.”

 • • • 

When the sun rises, I shower in river water that’s been warmed over a wood fire, delivered in a bag. I dress in DEET-soaked clothing and follow lampposts back to the main lounge tent. Their metal rods are bent like the hind legs of leaping gazelle. The sky blushes pink.

“There are lions close to the tents,” David says when he arrives.

He brings the Land Cruiser around and points to an impression in the grass. “A male and a female were lying here,” he says.

The grass is so high it’s poking into my arm, which I have been resting on the vehicle’s edge. I pull it to my torso when David points to a low-lying bush ten feet from where I sit and says: “The lions are hiding in there. They are kind of afraid.”

The lions. Are afraid. Of us.

“We will find more lions,” David says, afraid of disappointing me. “They are everywhere.” He points to our left. “Vultures. That means there is a lion near. They are waiting for their turn to eat. We will go there.”

We take a left onto a road that consists of two tire tracks of beaten grass. “I can smell wildebeest,” he says. “They were here yesterday.” I inhale deeply, and I’m pleasantly surprised when the scent reminds me of my maternal grandfather’s barn, which was always full of goats and sweet hay.

As we cross a small creek, tires splash mud onto the vehicle. There, on the other side, in a lion-colored field, stands a huge male. I’m surprised by the greeting, and I can’t imagine how the wildebeest must have felt encountering the same scene yesterday. But David hardly notices, because there are two more large lions—a male and a female—right in front of us. They’re lying in the middle of the road, using the slight, car-pressed indentions as ready-made beds.