It’s a funny thing, bonding over shared history with someone from another culture. I was in
Namibia, on my first safari. It happened to be the fourth of July and I asked my Boer PH if we
could celebrate. His people fought two wars of independence(according to him) against the
crown, a hundred years after we threw off the colonial yoke and he was more than happy to
celebrate.
With the cruiser loaded with firewood and beer we had headed to the sand dunes overlooking
the farm. We built a big fire, cracked open some beers and I sat there, reflecting on how I
arrived.
A few months prior I had put my job on hold, sold just about everything I owned except a rifle
and some courteney boots, bought a plane ticket and planned my first safari. This was before I
knew anyone in the outdoor industry. I was 24 years old and thought I knew everything about
the world. I booked a hunt with a guy I had never met at a show, just emailed a few times and
knew one person that hunted with him about a decade prior.
As I stared at the dancing flames, licking the tightly wound desert scrub trees we tossed on the
fire, I truly felt alive. I was deep in thought, captivated by the fire and the beer hitting my system
when I was jolted back to reality.
“Hand me my fucking binos!” the PH shouted at me.
The binos were hanging on the cruiser. Startled, I grabbed them as he snatched them in a hurried motion and immediately turned his attention to the main road leading to the farm. On the road was a large truck with about 15 men in the back, headed to his house where his wife and daughter were.
“Get in the fucking cruiser!”
I jumped in the passenger seat and we took off. Driving through the dunes we hit every anteater
hole in the country on the way back to his house. He stumbled with his phone, I could hear him
beg his wife to grab the shotgun and get their daughter to the safe room. He tossed me out of the passenger seat and instructed me to grab my 300 win mag in my room and head for the rocks outside the perimeter of the farm yard. Shaking at this point, my hands were trembling so bad I could barely unlock the locks on the case. With the rifle in hand and some rounds in my pocket I started for the door. Thumbing four cartridges into the magazine I turned my scope to the lowest magnification setting, grabbed my day pack and headed for the rocks as instructed.
About 3 minutes went by in complete silence. These minutes felt like an eternity as I ran through
every scenario in my mind that I could. None of the outcomes in my head ended well. I did not
want to die, and I certainly did not want to end up on CNN in an African jail.
I slowed my breathing, checked the chamber of my rifle and started to hear the big truck pull up.
There was a lot of screaming in a language I could not place. Though I could not understand a
word of what was being said, the tension of what I heard kept escalating. Then as quickly as all of this had started, silence. Do I run? Where would I go? Where was the nearest farm? Do I try to talk to these people? Absolutely not.
As I stood behind that rock going over every bad scenario in my head, I saw the daughter of my
PH run around the corner of the rocks. I followed her back to the farm house. My PH told me to put my gun away, it was safe. The men who arrived were actually a work crew the PH had hired to pour a concrete slab for a new warehouse he was building. They were two months late, showed up unannounced and were not in the best mood upon arrival.
My PH looked at me, took a deep breath and said, TIA.
This is Africa.