Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World (29 page)

“This country is very poor and there are people who live in, how can I say, an under land,” Humphrey says. “They don’t have basic needs. They eat one meal a day. They do not have good shelter. They become poachers to provide protein for their families. But others poach for bush meat trade and trophies,” he says. “Those are people who do not pay attention to their animal instincts.”

Humphrey slides his notebook back onto the dashboard. He says, “There are businessmen that have everything and, still, they want even more. They don’t think about how they are affecting everyone else. But if they had the sixth sense, they wouldn’t do this. The animals, they don’t have education, but still everything is equal for them. They know what they need and that’s all they take. It’s like with the wildebeest. Sometimes the eldest wildebeest know the way. But the young ones, they use their instincts to move around. They still know what’s right. They get lost sometimes, but they find their way. It’s instinct. It’s in you. It’s in me.”

There’s a certain inversion to this sort of thinking. A challenging of what it means to be human. But animals are always doing that.

When Jane Goodall first went into a Tanzanian forest to begin her now-famous work with chimpanzees, a human was defined by tool-making abilities. When she reported to her mentor, Louis Leakey, that she had seen a chimp craft a tool from a leaf to fish insects out of the ground, he famously declared that this would require changing the definition of tool, the definition of man, or lead to an acceptance of chimpanzees as part of the human race.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve had a ranger tell me he’s seen a hippo nudge a drowning baby wildebeest to shore. Another once watched a lion lead a lost young elephant back to its herd. These animals have had no formal education. They have no church-learned morals. There seems to be no immediate personal gain for their risk. Given this, Humphrey is introducing the idea that animals might be more humane than humans.

This sort of acting-faster-than-intellect occurs in humans, too. People jump in front of buses to save strangers, into lakes to rescue children they’ve never seen before. In 1990, at the Detroit Zoo, a chimpanzee was pushed into water during a fight with fellow captives. His keeper did not try to save him. But a thirty-three-year-old truck driver from Cement City, Michigan, was there with his family. When he saw the chimp go down, he jumped into the water to save the animal, despite cries from the zookeeper that he would be killed. But the man was not killed. And the chimpanzee was saved.

Jane Goodall often tells this story in speeches. And she recounts that when the man, Rick Swope, was asked why he did such a dangerous thing, he said: “I happened to look into his eyes, and it was like looking into the eyes of a man. And the message was
Won’t anybody help me?
”

We seem to have accepted that self-preservation is a principle of human nature, yet there are moments when it dissolves in favor of spontaneous instincts that make one act in the interest of another’s life at the risk of one’s own. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believed moments like the one at the Detroit Zoo were moments of transcendence that gave a departure from the rational, returning individuals to the experience of
unus mundus
by inducing a temporary, visceral realization that you, and I, and the other are one.

My guides’ stories indicate that all sorts of species have this inexplicable, irrational sixth sense Humphrey’s been talking about. If animals do not have the ability to think in symbols and abstraction—considered to be what makes humans unique among animals—then the hippo cannot know that the wildebeest preserve the health of the grasses both species feed on. The lion cannot understand that it is genetically connected to the elephant.

But, still, they act.

Last week, if someone had told me that I was acting like an animal, I probably wouldn’t have taken it as a compliment. Today, I’m not so sure.

 • • • 

On my way to breakfast the next morning, my burgeoning courage is put to the test. When I step out of my tent, I encounter a family of baboons. These animals can run up to 40 mph. I have not jogged a day in my life.

One of the twenty or so baboons has a baby clinging to the fur of her back. At the sight of me, the infant swings downward, disappearing into the thick fur of the mother’s belly. A father jumps out of a bush fifteen feet from where I’m standing. Slowly, I back up, until I’m behind the banana-leaf structure sheltering my tent. Obscured. The family goes back to their business.

I wait. I wait until I’m too hungry to wait anymore. Monkeys might steal my bread and these baboons could take my very life, but I don’t want to be trapped. I hear a bird that sounds improbably like a wildcat above me. Something moves in the bush to my right. I am afraid. But no matter what happens, I cannot run.

Here, fear isn’t abstraction, like worries about mortgage payments and pesticides on produce. It’s tangible, observable, snarls and bared teeth. Here, fear leads to bloodshed. And fighting fear only creates more of it. Panic spreads. So, I let my unease settle into my bones. I take the marrow of it into my heart and imagine it stronger. I need not fear these animals if they do not give me a sign that I should, and I have to trust myself animal enough to read their signals.

I know I’m having a pretty plush experience out here—tracing the steps of many a tourist before me while wiping my hands with moist towelettes—but I’m suddenly feeling pretty adventurous. The nonhuman world has become the more-than-human world. And I’m feeling somehow more connected to my gut instincts. When there are no bars, glass, how-to guides, or helpful bush guides at hand, all that’s left is individual, internal instinct responding to external signal.

I move forward slowly, steps measured and slow. A few baboons notice and move along. Others stay. They are all less than ten feet away. Two steps back. One step forward. It’s the motion of the migration, how a bow is drawn to send forth an arrow. I make this motion repeatedly, for fifteen minutes, until a porter passes on a parallel trail—unaware or unshaken—and the remaining baboons scatter.

On the camp’s main deck, I’m joined by Humphrey and a group of middle-aged South Africans speaking Afrikaans and toting cameras the size of an Olympian’s calves. The two men in the group, trucker magnates, have pot bellies peeking from under their T-shirts. Their wives’ fingers drip with jewels.

“Why are they doing that?” the taller of the two women, Hestermarie, asks Humphrey of the hippo pod beyond camp. She’s pointing to a hippo flipping its tail like a helicopter blade, spraying water. Hestermarie and her husband, Johan, own their own wildlife preserve—as do the couple they’re traveling with. They’ve amassed quite a bit of knowledge along with land over the years. But they’ve never really spent much time with hippos. They’ve never noticed this behavior before.

“There is a story about why they do that,” says Humphrey. “They made a deal with the lion.”

“A lion?”

Humphrey confirms with a nod. The story explains that, long ago, a hippo wanted to spend its days in the water. So, it asked a lion if that would be all right. The lion was not sure, saying, “If you are in the water, you will eat all the fish and take from others.” The hippo promised that—in order to prove it was not eating fish—it would swish its tail whenever it put dung in the water so the lion could see there were no fish bones. Over the years, hippos have abided by this promise, using their honorable sixth sense to not take more than they need. So, in cool, baptismal waters they have been allowed to stay.

“Are there stories like that about wildebeest?” I ask. “Do you know any myths connected to the migration?”

“I only know of one,” says Humphrey. “A grandfather told it to me. The wildebeest was the last animal to be created by God. And when the wildebeest was created, it was made from the spare parts of other animals. The different parts that remained after the rest of the world was made. It has the flat face of the grasshopper, the stripes of the zebra, the tail of the horse, the horns of the buffalo. And the wildebeest has hind legs that are shorter than the front, like a hyena. That lets them leap. Because they were created last, all these parts were just joined together.”

“Nothing left for waste,” I say.

“Yes,” Humphrey says. “This story is not written up. It is only told around the campfire.”

When we approach the safari vehicle—which is completely open on the sides—I notice its canvas roof has been removed at the request of my safari mates. When we’re in, they point to the vehicle’s fixed windshield and bemoan that it can’t be lowered in this model. They’d prefer to have nothing between them and the bush. Still, the glass doesn’t stop Humphrey from a sighting. He points excitedly.

“What is it?” Hestermarie asks.

“You don’t see the zebra?” he says. “Open your eyes very wide and you will see them. It’s really a very big dazzle. There is a lone wildebeest among them. He’s using them for their eyes.”

We stop in front of the dazzle. It is a sign from nature, telling this lone wildebeest that the rest of his family is coming. He is, Humphrey suspects, one of the few stragglers from last year’s migration. “Sometimes,” he says, “there are animals that get sick and have to stay. Some others go off on their own and they get left behind.”

“Will this wildebeest rejoin the herds on their way back through?” I ask Humphrey.

“Probably,” he says. “He might have just needed a rest.”

Unexpectedly, the wildebeest sticks out its tongue and blows:
Thh, thh.

I must be eyeing the animal suspiciously, because Johan says: “You know, he’s just saying hello.” Then, Johan sticks out his tongue and blows it like a kazoo, spittle spraying all over me.

Thh. Thh.
The wildebeest responds, unexpectedly.

“You’re talking to him!” I say.

Johan expands his eyes, curious about my surprise. “You can talk to him, too,” he says, with a gentleness that catches me off guard. “It’s okay.”

I’ve heard stories of people getting out of their cars in national parks trying to pet elk, and I don’t want to be taken for an elk petter. I don’t want to interfere with the natural order of things. But to pretend that I am not here, that I’m not part of this, seems wrong, too.

I twist in my seat. I stick my tongue out.
Thh.

I feel silly, like a jester. The zebra do not lift their heads—as if they know I’m not talking to them in their dog-bark-braying language—but the wildebeest looks.

Thh
,
he calls.

We have a little conversation—rounded vowels and tongue-in-cheek—and the exchange thrills me beyond measure, even though it has the cadence of two whoopee cushions deflating in turn. Johan turns back around in his seat to ask Humphrey: “What do you call the cheetah in your language?”

“
Duma
,” Humphrey says. “In yours?”

“
Jagluiperd
,” Johan says. “I think it’s amazing. You can take one animal—the same animal—and there are all these names in all the different languages!” In Tanzania alone, the wildebeest has multiple monikers—the most common being wildebeest, gnu, and
nyumbu
.

The wildebeest spits as we leave. The rumbling of our animated engine inspires a jacana to take to the sky. “See how much better it is to see the birds with the top off,” Johan says, turning to me. “When you don’t have a roof over your head, you can see everything!”

“When we see a jacana,” Humphrey says, “we begin to look for the buffalo. We move the opposite direction. Buffalo are dangerous and aggressive.”

“We follow it when we are hunting buffalo,” says Johan. “It leads us to the animal we’re looking for. We call the jacana the Jesus bird because it can walk on water.”

“I’ve never heard that before,” Humphrey says, amazed.

This group of South African guests camps in the bush almost every weekend. But, for all their adventures, they’ve never seen the migration. It’s why they came. And, unless they travel to the region I’ve just left, they’re going to miss it. The bush is like that. And they know it. And they accept it. They trust that, with a little effort, they, too, will ultimately be able to bear witness to the honk-and-walk of the migration that—as far as human history can see—has no clear beginning and, if humans wise up to their sixth sense, no end.

But, for now, their main concern is having a cocktail.

We disembark in an area of short grass chosen for safety, and Humphrey unpacks liquor bottles and tins of dried fruit. As he works, Johan comes up to ask about a picture of a religious leader he saw hanging among reigning politicians in an office back in Arusha.

“A lot of missionaries come into Tanzania,” Humphrey says. “They start to put churches all over the areas. There are people born here that will die of old age without ever seeing the city. The world is one village now, but still, there are people living here that only believe in the sun and the trees.”

According to theologian Thomas Berry, ancient Christianity believed in the sun and trees, too. The church once accepted that there were two valid texts available to followers—the scripture of the natural world and the scripture of the Bible. Berry writes: “The Psalms do indeed tell us that the mountains and the birds praise God. But do we have to read the Scriptures to experience that? Why are we not getting our religious insight from our experience of the trees, our experience of the mountains, our experience of the rivers, of the sea and the winds? Why are we not responding religiously to these realities?”

But some people are. I don’t know what Lutheran bishop Frederick Shoo, known as Tanzania’s “Tree Bishop,” would say about someone naming their child Hyena, but—in his own way—he’s trying to reconcile the text of his holy book and the scripture of nature. Within the last hundred years, 92 percent of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers have disappeared. The snows of Kilimanjaro—which I’ve glimpsed through clouds—may be memories by the time Archer turns ten. And, if they are, meltwater rivers relied upon by millions of people for their very lives will be gone.

So, the Tree Bishop is mobilizing congregants by including tree-planting ceremonies in funerals, baptisms, and weddings. He is connecting the nondogmatic, sustaining scripture of nature and the respected literature of his tradition through visceral, earthly ritual. These actions clear the very air, cool streams with shade, give soil roots to hold fast to.