Into the Heart of Africa for One Last Safari

Last night I awoke about 2am to an elephant eating a tree right outside my window. I at first thought it was my friend, Zoe, crumpling newspaper in the kitchen, for that's exactly what it sounded like. Then, as I came to, I realized that I could hear heavy breathing and the sound of tree branches breaking. I looked out the window of my chalet--which is really just a hole with a screen over it--and there was an elephant looking back at me, eating a tree just 10ft away. I've seen elephants before, but this was by far and away the closest I've been. Hearing them from up close, as opposed to just viewing them from the car, gives you a sense for how huge these creatures are. They eat up to 260 kilograms of food a day (that's over 500 lbs!), so spend most of the day eating leaves and bushes and small trees. They can be quite destructive, actually.

Then today on an early morning game drive we saw a leopard. It's a rare thing, as they are wily creatures that are incredibly hard to find given their ability to camoflauge themselves. She was slowly approaching a herd of impala, and we thought initially that we might see a kill, or at least an attempted kill. But, after a few minutes of observation, she just rolled over on her side and chilled for a while. It was still great to see one nonetheless.

I'm now at a safari camp in South Luangwa National Park, in northeastern Zambia. I'd had enough of the EXTREME! activities on offer in Livingstone, so it was time to push on. Besides, as fun as seeing Victoria Falls and bungee jumping was, it's not 'really' Africa there. So rather than enduring three grueling days on a bus to get here, we opted to catch a flight. That still involved two planes, six official forms (all in triplicate--Africans seem to LOVE carbon copy forms), a few hours of delay, and the better part of a day to get here. Upon arriving in camp though we were treated to giraffe and elephant wandering through it. Unlike Etosha National Park in Namibia, there are no fences here so the animals wander through freely. To go from your chalet to the restaurant area, you must be accompanied by a guard. I thought this was a lot of posturing, but we rounded a corner this morning and there was an elephant blocking our path. I was glad the guard was with us.

Last night we went on a night drive, and we'll do so again tonight. Tomorrow is the walking safari that I've so been looking forward to, then the next day I'll begin to make my way over to Malawi. First a bus to Chipata, a night in Chipata, then I'll cross over the border the next day and make it to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi.

The drive in from the airport yesterday afternoon was a troubling one for me. The road is incredibly good (well, relatively incredibly good) and paved, surely the best road in the entire region. The entire purpose of the road is to ferry tourists from the airport to the really high-end game lodges inside the park, and the only other cars that you see on the road are 4x4s with tourists in them. All of the Zambians you see are walking along the road, many of them barefoot. I was struck how the best infrastructure in the region existed solely to service tourists who don't live in the region. There's often a ton of development around these tourist 'hot spots', so it's entirely possible that you can go from site to site in Africa and never really get a sense for what it's like for the people who live here. Yesterday I was really struck by the juxtaposition--the super-expensive 4x4s full of tourists and the locals without shoes. I realize that tourism is a key driver of the economy for Zambia as a whole and for this local economy in particular, but it's hard not to be affected by the poverty given the standard of living we all enjoy back home.

Yesterday summed up perfectly what my experience in Africa has been like so far: incredible awe of Africa's natural beauty and the freak show of nature that exists here; and, a troubled, disturbed feeling at the poverty that exists alongside it. Between now and Zanzibar I'll be taking only public transport--local buses, taxis, a ferry up Lake Malawi (hopefully) and then a train through southern Tanzania to Dar es Salaam. And I'll be entering one of the poorest countries in Africa, Malawi, where GDP per capita is a mere $600 (compared to $44,000 in the U.S.), the infant mortality rate is nearly 10%, and where life expectancy at birth is 43 years.