Out of Africa

WORDS: Chris Nyst -nystlegal.com.au/blog PHOTOGRAPHY Mariola Grobelska @unsplash.com

A wry, wide-eyed look at the wild heart of the continent

My urbane, British son-in-law is fond of observing that Australia is a country full of all kinds of creatures that can kill you stone dead on contact. He’s talking about our many and much-publicised venomous spiders and snakes, of course, and I suppose what he says is true enough. Certainly, most of our native critters are a whole lot more lethal than any of those soft and cuddly squirrels, deer and bunny rabbits the Poms try to pass off as wildlife.

But my recent first-time-ever trip to sub-Saharan Africa clearly convinced me that, on that continent, they take to the concept of wild animals to a whole other level. Over there, the fauna aren’t content to just kill you. They insist on literally eating you to death.

The point was vigorously underscored by the locals in all of the rural areas I visited in Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The strict rule in those precincts was, regardless of what kind of fitness freak you are, or how keen you may be to get your steps in every day, you don’t walk anywhere outside the protected confines of your compound unless accompanied by an armed escort.

Of course, I was already well aware it wasn’t wise to put one’s head inside a lion’s mouth, or to otherwise mess with any of the so-called ‘big cats’ for that matter. They growl and roar, and bare their teeth, and generally manage to look positively and unmistakably ferocious.

But who knew that those fat, hairless, harmless-looking hippos routinely flip their lid at any human being who happens to venture even a trifle too close for their comfort, can run like Usain Bolt when they’re all fired up, kill on average about 500 people a year, and are considered one of the deadliest animals on the African continent?

And what about those ponderous, gentle giants with the big, floppy ears, ivory tusks and long swinging trunks? Sure, I saw Walt Disney’s Dumbo when I was a kid, just like everyone else, so I know a Momma elephant can get a little stroppy if you call her baby Big-ears. But it turns out that’s just the tip of the ice-berg.

While generally considered pretty placid, just like Momma Dumbo if an African elephant feels threatened, especially when protecting calves, or if they’re sick or injured, or even just a little bit hormonal, they are known to attack. And, given they can grow to be more than three meters tall and weigh upwards of ten tonnes, when they do anyone in front of them is likely to end up with a serious problem. Throughout Africa, an estimated three to five hundred people are killed by elephants every year.

What’s more is, the standard anti-elephant-attack advice routinely trotted out to tourists on safari is “(a) stay calm”, and “(b) never run”, which some may find a tad less than entirely reassuring, particularly when it is so often incongruously coupled with the further helpful hint “(c) but if you do have to run, make sure you run in a zig-zag line”.

Wise counsel I’m sure, but I wonder whether, when one is being aggressively pursued by a rampaging, 10-tonne, deranged pachyderm, it may be a little difficult keeping such sage suggestions top-of-mind.

In any event, there’s some even more sobering news to swallow. Despite how lethal those big scary guys can be, the safari guides I spoke to unanimously agreed that the most dangerous beasts of all out there in the African bushland are not the big cats, the elephants, or even those fleet-footed, homicidal hippos. The most fearsome and formidable of all, according to the locals, are the water buffalo which, when you see them peacefully meandering almost everywhere around the country, are mostly doing nothing much more threatening than just eating grass and looking like a bunch of Brown’s Cows, waiting patiently for milking time.

But, so they say, the African Cape Buffalo, unlike the big cats, elephants and hippos, are not only highly defensive and potentially aggressive creatures, but they can be dangerously unpredictable as well. To the locals in Africa, they’re known as the “Black Death,” and not without cause.

If a buffalo feels threatened, it reportedly gives its perceived enemy absolutely no warning whatsoever before charging at them. And when they charge, by all accounts they follow their target doggedly until they get them, good and proper. So the end result is never particularly pretty. Their attacks are notoriously brutal, involving savage goring, trampling, and relentless ongoing assault long after initial contact.

So, do such seriously wild beasts make the African wilderness a no-go zone? Is it all too terrifying and unsafe? In my experience, no. In fact, quite the opposite. There is a natural beauty and undeniable magnificence about Africa that makes it a must-see experience.

The popular American novelist Jodi Picoult rather poetically writes “When you are in Africa, you feel primordial, rocked in the cradle of the world…You watch the slow lope of a lioness and forget to breathe.” Others claim the pure wonder and marvel of the African wilderness defies any adequate description.

But perhaps the celebrated Danish author, Karen Blixen, who lived in rural East Africa between 1913 and 1931, put it best and most succinctly in her 1937 memoir, Out of Africa, when she described her time there by simply observing “Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility.”

Follow or subscribe to Chris Nyst’s regular blog online: click here: www.nystlegal.com.au/blog