Where There Are No Worries
Came back home feeling small, not that I’m complaining. Being full of oneself comes naturally in a society as individualistic as ours. Travel is about the only tonic that can bring down the swelling.
More stenographer than author as I write this, taking dictation, transcribing thoughts that formed more than a third of the world’s circumference away, after journeying 8,300 miles, awestruck and humbled upon arrival at the destination, how enormous it is, how positively miniscule I am by comparison. No one encountered there seemed to give even a moment’s thought to the cares and concerns and dramas that you and I find so vitally important. My home, my life, so consequential to me, irrelevant to them.
I’ve spent some 850 days in Africa, give or take a few, still feel I know little of it. I suspect I could spend 850 lifetimes there and not know half its grandeur or a tenth of its secrets. This visit brought my travel party of six to a part of the continent previously unfamiliar to me. Started in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, crossed a vast expanse curiously named for words in a local dialect that, when combined, translate as “warthog river.” Saw far more zebras, giraffes and elephants than warthogs. The map shows a river. What I saw cutting across the parched savannah barely qualifies as a brook.
On we went, climbing, steadily gaining elevation, the brown landscape turning green. Stopped in a village called Mto wa Mbu, meaning “river of mosquitoes,” where not a single mosquito was spotted, though granted we were there in full daylight. An abundance of water makes sprawling rice and banana plantations possible, giving rise to a bustling market where hordes of merchants hawk their wares.
Next, we snaked up a narrow, winding mountain road that cuts through the dense foliage of the cloud forest blanketing the rim of a great crater. First a troop of baboons crossed in front of us, then a leopard. At sunrise the next day, the massive caldera—that cauldron-shaped hollow left where the mountaintop was blown to bits by volcanic explosion—was filled with billowy clouds.
As morning’s first rays peeked through the fog, my mind flashed back to early childhood when I made the mistake of imagining out loud what heaven might look like, in front of grown-ups, who unsparingly mocked my description of lodging suspended in mid-air above the clouds. From the rim of that caldera, it sure looked like the secluded spot where we bunked for the night was indeed floating on clouds.
The cloud cover lifted as the sun rose in the sky, revealing a caldera floor teeming with wildlife—grazing gazelles, antelope and zebras, roaming rhinos, the statuesque giraffe, prowling hyenas, you name it—and dotted with bomas, clusters of circular thatched dwellings surrounding a central paddock where cows, goats and sheep are kept when they are not out foraging under a herder’s watchful eye. Man and beast wild and domestic coexist harmoniously here.
We proceeded on to the mystical gorge at Oldupai, the cradle of humankind, where fossilized remains indicate the earliest predecessors of our human species walked upright 3 million years ago. Putting the current moment in vivid perspective, making it pitifully small.
Not far from Oldupai is what the Maasai call the “endless plain.” Belongs to multitudes of free lions, cheetahs, zebras and their faithful migration companions the wildebeest. Cape buffalo, deer-like topi, impala, elephants, hippos, ostriches, a dizzying array of birds. The people who call this their homeland do not seek dominion over their feral neighbors but rather desire to live in unity with them.
This part of Africa features mind-blowing diversity of animal life and breathtaking scenery, adorned elegantly, one tree resembling a parasol, another a chandelier. But the area’s most remarkable characteristic has to be the people, seemingly all of whom wear a smile as broad as the Serengeti. It’s clear they have a deep reverence for the animals and the land and are fiercely proud of how they’ve managed to live in peace in a region spanning only a few hundred miles but boasting more than 120 distinct ethnic groups. Seems everyone we met was eager to teach us a few words of their language. Not their native tribal tongue, mind you, but the common language—Swahili—that knits them together into a cohesive society.
Life can pack a wallop here, but they are masters of rolling with a punch. When things go sideways, as they often do, or when conflict arises, as inevitably happens from time to time, they are quick to say “hakuna matata.” No worries.
The roads we traveled were nearly all unmarked. The main routes were mostly gravel, a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling washboard. The Chaga man who accompanied us took the spinal compression in stride. “African massage,” he’d announce with a mischievous grin before we veered down some deeply rutted and cratered dirt path, raising a choking dust unless a rainstorm had turned it to mud, a vehicle-devouring puree. “Hakuna matata” would again pass his lips, for the umpteenth time.
They know trouble and hardship, but not worry. It’s this unflappability and resilience that defines them. It’s these traits much more than the endless plain that loom so very large and left me feeling rather small. As much as I heard them say hakuna matata, more times than I care to count, I heard another word even more frequently: karibu. That’s ka-REE-boo, not CARE-a-boo. Means welcome. They use the word in response to an offering of thanks, their way of saying “my pleasure, don’t mention it.” And they say karibu when without hesitation they invite you to make yourself at home.
They know little of America, care not a whit about the things we obsess over. As individualistic as our culture is, theirs is every bit as communal. When they say welcome, they mean it. I’m not sure we can say the same.