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Date: June 4, 2004
It’s hot. I can’t tell how hot because
someone stole my thermometer, but it is too hot! Yesterday, I suffered
a minor case of heat exhaustion or salt depletion and had an itsy-bitsy
confrontation with the Tanzanian army that ended with having a roll
of film confiscated. Today, I had an embarrassing moment when I
helped myself to a soda. I grabbed the reservoir for bottle caps,
thinking it was the handle, and ripped it off the machine and bottle
caps tinkled on the ground like metal raindrops. Locals laugh endlessly
at me. The tropics disappeared and once again Africa looks like
what I think Africa should look like: sweeping plains full of thorny
trees dwarfed by monumental skies. I saw two troops of baboons on
the side of the road and one couple made sweet monkey love twice.
Until today I haven’t seen any animals in Tanzania (except
for some interesting road kill, including a gigantic, antelope-eating
rock python). Tomorrow, the locals guarantee there will be lions
lying on the road as I pass through Mikumi National Park. Bicyclists
are prohibited in almost all parks because the animals in Africa
are the most dangerous in the world, because, I theorize, they co-evolved
with mankind and the locals punish the animals whenever they intrude
on crops or cattle. You don’t need to be an elephant to remember
being beaten. On the ground, the cape buffalo is supposed to be
the most dangerous, charging anything that moves; and in the water,
hippopotamus kill more people than crocodiles. These can be avoided.
The most dangerous animal is probably the lion. It is known to hunt
people for food, though usually it is only the old and crippled
lions. Simanga, who has hunted lions, says, “Lions have a
lot of magic. They know what you are thinking.” So tomorrow
I plan to bicycle thinking happy thoughts, a forced meditation exercise.
(Those Buddhist students, locked in a room staring at a candle pretending
they don’t exist, are a bunch of wimps.) And if that doesn’t
work, I’m hoping my white skin befuddles them long enough
for me to grab my machete.
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