Eat Your Heart Out, Donald Trump

I have been to Africa seven times and have visited 10 of its 38 countries. My companions on this Ugandan trip—all but one of them women (the sole male is the organizer so he doesn’t count)—have been as often as I, others more. None of them can lay a glove on me when it comes to being jaded. I spend a good deal of my game drive time asleep. This bothers Nancy. It is not enough that she drags me to Africa. She insists that I pay attention.

My women companions, on the other hand, are as alert as puppy dogs in a pet shop window. At the first sighting of an oribi, one of the women cries out, “Look. It’s an oribi.”

We stop. Out come the cameras. After an orgy of clicking, off we go. Three minutes later, we come upon another oribi.

“Oh, look. It’s an oribi,” exclaims another.

We stop. Out come the cameras. More clicking. Off we go. Five minutes pass.

“Oh, look. It’s an oribi.”

I feel as if I am watching Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray movie in which the hero wakes up each day to the same day.

Obviously the women are able to treat each sighting as if it were the first. That is a gift. I can’t do it. From where I sit, mostly dozing in the front seat of the land cruiser, if you have seen one oribi, you have seen them all.

That goes for elephants, cobs, saddle bill storks and, yes, all those incessantly busy little bee eaters with their black masks, yellow throats, green bodies and blue swallow tails.

That was an ill-tempered remark. I apologize. I wrote it at a time when I had not been sleeping all that well. I know why. It was the Lariam, the malaria pills that I took daily. Hallucinations are a possible side effect. I was hallucinating in my sleep. My dreams were very vivid. I remember one especially. I was in a grand mansion with a grandiose staircase that swirled up and out of sight. The balustrades were of white marble trimmed in blue, like the sky into which they disappeared. In the dream I am mounting the staircase, one step at a time, only I am not walking.

I am in a land cruiser.

I find it hard to stay awake in a moving vehicle whether I’m in Africa or eastern Massachusetts. Thanks to the game drives I can make up for some of my Lariam lost sleep.

On the afternoon of the mansion in the sky dream, our organizers gave us a choice of returning at 2pm or 4pm. Uncharacteristically, Nancy chose the earlier time. She felt that I was bored to death and wanted to save me from more of the same. I love her for that. But the plain truth is that I am quite happy to sit in the front seat of our land cruiser, drifting in and out of consciousness, awakened by someone’s shouting “Oh, look. It’s an oribi.” only to be lulled back into a half dream of my land cruiser climbing palace steps into an unknown sky.

When we reached camp that afternoon, it was dreadfully hot. Nancy convinced me to put on a bathing suit and join her in the pool. I was reluctant. My body is an old man’s body, pasty white and sagging. Still I didn’t want to say no after Nancy sacrificed two hours in the bush on my behalf. I am glad I didn’t. The pool was refreshing. A staff member brought me a Nile Special. I sat in the shallow end, half submerged like a rotting log, drinking this marvelous beer, beating the heat and thinking to myself, “Eat your heart out, Donald Trump.”

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Murchison Falls

We motor up the White Nile to Murchison Falls. Our boat, the Shoebill, is a narrow hulled riverboat, run by a 60 horsepower Evinrude engine. The riverbank is teeming with wildlife; hippos, crocodiles, including one reputed to be 60 years old. It is at least 22 feet long and has teeth the size of tent pegs. Birds abound. We see gray herons, purple herons, two goliath herons, pied kingfishers, fish eagles, black kites, abdim storks, hadada storks, sacred ibis, red throated bee eaters--very rare except around here--and one other. We motor to within a quarter of a mile of Murchison Falls; no closer. The currents at the foot of the falls are too treacherous. Our boatman noses the Shoebill up against a tiny island in the middle of the river. There, perched on a rock, are two rock pratincols. They are sleek birds, tiny, with beaks like stilettos. Their wings are black, their chests white. They have narrow bands of black across their eyes so that they look like a pair of Nike running shoes. According to the bird book these birds are typically found on rocks by fast moving bodies of water. Given the rate at which the water is running past this tiny island, the birds must think they have died and gone to bird heaven. What kind of speciation has transpired to place birds in a niche that says, "rocks with fast moving water?” Why are there no birds that prefer “rotting logs next to four lane highways?”

There is a composite satellite photograph of the Earth at night. You can see the outlines of all the continents. Strikingly, you see what parts of the world are lit up. This map, more than any novel I have ever read, points up the aptness of the phrase "darkest Africa." The continent is virtually a blackout, save for a few spots around the edges and one great exception: at the top of the continent, like a rip in a blackout curtain, is the River Nile. It extends from the Nile Delta at the Mediterranean all the way through the center of Egypt. If this map shows the aptness of the phrase "darkest Africa," it does likewise for “White Nile.” At the southernmost boundary of Egypt, the strip of light comes to an end. The river, of course, does not. The difference is that in Egypt the Nile primarily services people while in Africa it primarily services animals. Only people need light.

This afternoon we drive to the top of Murchison Falls. There is still enough of the day left to watch the Nile being forced into a narrow gorge, 70 meters across, and then twist, writhe, crash and tumble 45 meters to the river below. This is the greatest amount of water rushing through a small channel of any place in the world. It makes me think of the Bernoulli Principle, which states that any volume pushed through a narrow opening increases in velocity. That is why the water is moving so fast here. Substitute air for water and the larynx for the gorge at Murchison Falls and you have an explanation for how human beings are able to speak. The Bernoulli Principle is what makes the vocal folds open and shut a 100 times a second, faster in women because their folds are typically shorter. The roar of the river through the gorge is literally the river’s voice.

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The Shoebill's Pace

Entebbe has an orphanage built for animals that would not otherwise have made it in the wild: two black rhinos, a 15-year-old lion, a crocodile that, for my taste, could have been left to perish, a clump of chimpanzees. It also has an aviary filled with weaverbirds. One looks like a flying orange. It is quite rare, seen only here. It has tied four stalks together with an intricate set of knots. This is the platform from which it works. As we watch, it goes about the business of constructing a dome around the platform. First, it flies off to find a strand of green grass. Then it flies back and ties a knot around the stalk with its beak. This is a remarkable bit of genetic programming. If one wanted to make an argument for intelligent design, the weaverbird would be as good a place as any to start.


The shoebill is another of the birds in the orphanage’s aviary. These prehistoric birds are studies in immobility. When I first saw them, I thought I was looking at gray stone statuary, given their dumb imperturbability, their unflinching stare, their extra eyelid that comes down like an indolent window shade shutting. It stands totally immobile, without so much as a quiver for minutes on end. Then it takes a stride forward. It stops. That seems to be its life.

Our hotel turns over at the shoebill’s pace. The wait staff approaches our table in slow motion. They take down the order in slow motion and judging by the time we have to wait for dinner, the kitchen plays at the same tempo. I don't write this critically. I rather like this slow motion way of life. You see it in the streets of Entebbe as well. A man on a bicycle is carrying four empty plastic containers. He stops to fill them with water. The stoppers are sweet potatoes. He carefully unplugs each container, lays the vegetables on the ground, unties the containers and proceeds to fill them from a stream. Everything occurs in half time, as if he were counting to himself very slowly, one, two, three, four.

Our room has an unimpeded view of Lake Victoria three hundred yards away. Just below us is a ring of palms that marks the forward boundary of the hotel. Their fronds are made of tubing filled with a gas that lights up into a day-glo green at night. The edges of the fronds twinkle. I am a sucker for kitsch. I love the fake palms beside Lake Victoria. Just behind the palms is a small oval shaped plot of ground. There are four letters embedded in the grass: Z I B A. Perhaps they are an acronym or a motto: zealotry is bad for Africa.

The next morning a plaque beside the entrance explains everything. Karim Hirji built the hotel. His wife—her name was Ziba—was his constant adviser. She died before the hotel was finished. It is a sad dedication. It makes the hotel seem more intimate, like a bed and breakfast.

Last night Nancy picked up the telephone and asked for an extra towel. Almost immediately there was a knock at the door. We hadn’t expected so speedy a response. We opened the door to the head of housekeeping. She hadn’t brought the extra towel. She wanted to know why we wanted one. Nancy said she always used two towels at home, one for her body and one for her hair. The head of housekeeping shook her head in disbelief and left. Nancy’s argument had failed to convince her.

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