An African Photograph Safari Turns Into One Big Family Affair

“Giraffe!” called out Sammy, our Kenyan safari guide.

My family, ages 5 to 75, went into a frenzy. Arms and legs flailed about the minibus in a mad scramble for photographs, and curses rang out as each person accused another of blocking his shot or ruining his camera.

“Did you ever think that Nanny might want to take a picture too?” my sister Marilyn screamed at her teen-age daughter, Pam, who stepped on her grandmother’s lap while trying to get a shot from the open pop-top.

“Thanks for breaking my camera, George,” yelled brother-in-law Marty as he extricated his dented telephoto lens from the two-way sliding window he shared with my father.

Fifteen-year-old Dana’s elbow knocked my head in a struggle for possession of the camera equipment she owned jointly with her sister Pam. And my son Evan, the youngest family member, sat in the back seat wailing, “I can’t see anything. I can’t see anything at all!”

The lone giraffe was the first of thousands of animals we would see on our two-week tour of Kenya’s game reserves. It appeared shortly after we left the capital city of Nairobi, and the resulting mayhem confirmed my apprehensions about traveling sanely with our entire family--grandparents, middle-aged children and spouses, preschool and teen-age grandchildren.

The Mellowing Factor

Despite the rocky beginning, we eight diverse personalities eventually mellowed into a congenial group of travel companions (with occasional lapses), and the giraffe fiasco became one of the many memories we would hold in common.

The Trip, as we called it before, during and after, was my mother’s doing. Like many older Americans, Mom’s greatest pleasures are traveling abroad and being with her family, and her dream was to combine the two in a once-in-a-lifetime family outing. She decided to stake her savings to make her dream a reality and to give her offspring “something you will all remember me by.”

Planning the trip began a year prior to departure. Mom consulted the other family members about what country to visit and how to travel, but the responses were too varied for a consensus.

“Let’s go to China.” “ I’ve always wanted to take a French barge tour.” “Frank (my husband) won’t fly, how about a cruise?” “Can’t we see Disneyland?”

Unilateral Decision

She finally made a unilateral decision and chose a Kenyan safari tour. Her reasons:

--Family members probably would never get to Africa on their own and the exotic locale would be truly memorable.

--Watching and photographing wild animals would appeal to both children and adults.

--Traveling by minibus and staying in game lodges would keep everyone together and would not entail a lot of walking for the elderly and the very young.

--An organized tour, as opposed to independent travel, would eliminate family squabbles about what time to rise, where to go next and how long to stay in each place.

Mom was right. We were all fascinated seeing Africa’s wild game and rare birds, Kikuyu natives dressed in colorful cottons and lanky Masai decked out in beads from head to foot. We were also impressed by the landscape, which varied from endless red-clay savannas to rolling green hills, forested mountains and the snow-capped peaks of Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya. It was all so very different from our respective homes in New Jersey and Maine.

United in Spirit

And as Mom predicted, the family became as united in spirit by a sense of adventure as we were united physically by the confines of our safari bus and the seclusion of the game lodges. Each of us subdued personal preferences and willingly accepted the edicts of Sammy, our soft-spoken but firm guide--even when he mandated rising at 6 a.m.

With Sammy setting an up-and-at-’em pace, we covered 3,000 miles (mostly on rough dirt roads) including daily “game drives” in the early morning and late afternoon when the animals are most active. The tour was not too tiring, however, because it involved little walking and the middle of each day could be devoted to leisurely lunches followed by swimming, sunbathing or naps.

I had feared that safari life might be repetitious and would therefore become boring, but something special happened every day. We watched lion cubs play rough-and-tumble at Amboseli, saw crocodiles feeding in Samburu and rode horses through the hills near the Mount Kenya Safari Club. We were also privileged to see very rare animals such as the reticulated giraffe and the pin-striped Grevy zebra.

The family also discovered its own entertainment: Evan’s yelp of surprise when a monkey stole an egg off the breakfast table; Dana’s midnight plea at Salt Lick Lodge, “May I use your bathroom, there’s a big beetle in ours?” and Dad’s consistent misidentification of all hoofed animals as impalas and all dead trees as giraffes.

The primary purpose of the trip was animal viewing, but travel between game parks enabled us to see Kenyan farms, villages and towns. Our favorite towns were a simple row of connecting pastel stucco buildings, which Evan said “look like they are cut out of cardboard.” Invariably one of the buildings sported a sign saying “Day and Night Club” or “Hard Life Bar.”

Mom’s Plans Thwarted

Mom had hoped that crossing the Equator together would call for a family celebration or at least a group photograph. Her plans were thwarted by the Equator’s settlement of thatched roofed souvenir stalls, which proved too enticing to my sister. A compulsive shopper, Marilyn’s department store co-workers appropriately nicknamed her “The Bionic Buyer.” True to her calling, she disappeared into the depths of the souvenir stalls and all efforts to rally her to the family photo failed.

Only on the departure call of the minibus engine did she emerge--arms laden with purchases and eyes glowing with delight.

“Look, I got eight rhino letter openers for only 30 shillings, these carved napkin rings for 10 and this . . .” on and on she rambled with greater enthusiasm than she had shown for the real elephants and lions.

Our best buy of the trip award, however, went to Marilyn’s husband, Marty. While photographing the waterfalls, he maneuvered his camera to get an iridescent blue lizard in the foreground. As he was leaving, a Kenyan ran up to him, lizard in hand, demanding 25 shillings.

“Of all the nerve, 25 shillings to photograph a lizard,” Marty said in an an annoyed tone. “Here, take 10 and get out of here.”

The man took the money, handed the lizard to Marty and left.

“But I don’t want . . . “ Marty meekly protested as he let the lizard drop to freedom.

Even the low points of the trip turned out to be highlights when recalled with a sense of humor. A visit to a Masai village was a rip-off as the long-toothed, grinning chief demanded $35 before leading us inside the circle of loaf-shaped earthen huts linked by barriers of thorn bushes to keep predators away from livestock and humans.

‘Attack’ of the Masai

While we stood sandal-deep in cattle dung, hordes of Masai came at us waving spears and beaded bracelets for sale.

I tried desperately to take some photographs of “typical Masai village life” but my camera was in perpetual motion as a hundred hands slapped beaded bracelets on my arms and spear heads flashed within inches of the lens. My 5-year-old son clung to my legs in terror.

The other family members were equally engulfed by bead-sellers. Over a sea of bald brown heads, I saw my father’s arms, covered from wrist to elbow with bracelets, reaching for the sky. In a panic, he absurdly called out to my mother, “Ruth, can you use any of these?”

When we got out of the village we were richer by several spears and bracelets, and by numerous stories about encounters in the enclosure. We were also eager to regain the serenity of animal viewing.

The final leg of our safari was a two-day stay in the Masai Mara National Reserve where we had some of our most exciting game watching including an angry bull elephant pulling up eight-foot trees and a battle between a pair of male topi.

The family was unusually quiet on the long drive back to Nairobi from Masai Mara. We hated to see the trip end and wanted to absorb our final impressions. I thought about my personal experiences on the trip and realized how much they had been enhanced by being with my family.

Mental Snapshots

As important as my recollections of spectacular scenery and exotic animals are, the mental snapshots I have of my son shyly trying to speak a few words of Swahili with a small Kikuyu boy; my teen-age nieces fiercely bargaining over a carved elephant, then tenderheartedly giving the change to a maimed beggar; the look of adventure on my desk-job brother-in-law’s face as he stood in the pop-top minibus scanning the landscape for lions, and most of all, my mother’s pleasure as she took in every nuance of her family’s enjoyment, knowing she had made it all possible.

The unifying effect of the Trip did not end, nor had it begun, with the 20-hour flights between Nairobi and New York. Months beforehand the family shared in preparations of what to take and how to dress, and Christmas and birthday presents of cameras, soft luggage and safari type clothes were purchased with thoughts of the pending journey.

Once home, we eagerly pored over each other’s photographs, admired our assortment of souvenirs and swapped stories as we relived the trip. No doubt the tales will be told and retold among ourselves, to friends and perhaps will be passed on as family folklore to future generations.