TRAVELING IN STYLE : THE MANGLED MARTINI, AND OTHER SAFARI SCANDALS

It was when I learned that the Kikuyu bartender had put sweet vermouth instead of dry vermouth into my martini that I decided what American tourism needed was a realistic compendium of survival equipment necessary for a civilized African safari. To begin with, bring your own vermouth.

I was seated on a canvas chair in Meru National Park, across the river from a family of baboons that were screaming and flashing their red behinds at me, when the sweetness of the mixture struck my taste buds.

I can accept many discomforts during the cocktail hour, including but not limited to baboons that scream and flash their crimson posteriors, because they aren’t too different, in that respect, from people in singles bars and girlie shows.

But a sweet martini is true obscenity, and I decided then and there that something ought to be done about the fringe problem of social survival in Africa.

It was our first night in Kenya. We had taken a long and tedious flight to Africa by way of Amsterdam and then had vibrated over miles of rippled roads in an ancient Land Rover to reach our camp, and I was in no mood for anything sweet.

“When do we hit the main highway?” I recall shouting to our driver as I bounced through the open roof of the vehicle. It happened every time we hit a rut, which was often. Rut-bounce, rut-bounce, rut-bounce. I felt like something out of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, bobbing down the road and over the horizon.

“This is the main highway,” the driver shouted back, grinning and twisting the wheel sharply to avoid what looked like the Olduvai Gorge. “Wait’ll we get on the riverbed; then you’ll see something.”

He said it proudly, as though a test of manhood were involved. No wonder Hemingway loved Africa.

“I never thought I’d miss the Hollywood Freeway,” I said to my wife, who somehow never seemed to be jostled.

“Try not to be tense,” she said.

By the time we reached Patrick’s Camp, our destination in Meru, my already-strained good nature had dissolved to the temperament of a water buffalo, one of which, I learned later, had killed a travel agent the day before our arrival. My mood exactly.

I was in a little better frame of mind after a hot shower and even managed a twisted smile when a martini was placed in my hand, despite the screaming and red-mooning of the wild baboons.

But then I tasted the martini. To expect a dry martini and get a sweet martini is a shock to the human system not unlike kidney failure or a bullet in the brain. It is accompanied by severe nausea, a sudden drop in blood pressure and an overwhelming sense of betrayal.

“What the hell!” I exclaimed, when the synaptic connection was made. “They’ve poisoned me!”

“What’re you talking about?” my wife asked.

“They’ve given me a strawberry martini.”

I took my complaint to the African who had mixed the drinks. As far as I know, there is no Swahili equivalent of the phrase dry martini, but my Berlitz guide book did offer a sentence indicating I didn’t like sweet things.

“Sitaki kitu chochote kilicho kitamu mno ,” I said.

He looked at me suspiciously.

“Maybe I pronounced the words wrong,” I said to my wife.

“Careful,” she whispered, “you may be promising to steal his sister.”

I began again, only this time louder. It is well known that shouting helps foreigners understand what’s being said: “SITAKI KITU CHOC. . .”

“Don’t yell, mister,” he said in English. “What is it you want?” His speech was impeccable.

I explained that a martini ought not to be sweet. He replied that sweet vermouth was all he had. No one had told him specifically what kind of vermouth to buy. But since Americans ate so much ice cream, he assumed sweet vermouth would be the obvious preference.

I willingly admit that the absence of dry vermouth should not be counted among the world’s more serious discomforts, but it did lead me to consider composing a list of essentials not usually mentioned by organizations that arrange tours to Africa.

Not once, for instance, did anyone at Born Free Safaris even hint at the possibility that someone might try preparing a dry martini with sweet vermouth.

The most I got from Born Free, as I recall, was passing mention that part of the fun of traveling in Africa was the unexpected. I took that to mean rhinos might skewer a tour guide, not that African bartenders wouldn’t know a martini from cherries jubilee.

There is also the problem of cigars. I do not smoke cigars regularly anymore, due to a worldwide Pavlovian response of coughing and hand-waving whenever anyone lights up.

Every once in awhile, however, I feel like relaxing with a nice panatela. But not only did I fail to find a cigar anywhere in either Kenya or Tanzania, but I also even had difficulty communicating what a cigar was. Not everyone spoke English as well as my Kikuyu friend.

A merchant near Nakuru who said see-gar ever time I said cigar, kept bringing me the polished teak head of what appeared to be an Africa warrior which, while it may have been a Masai god of good smokes called See-Gar, was not the instrument itself.

“Cigar,” I said, attempting to illustrate through gestures exactly what a cigar was and what it was used for.

“Ci-gar,” he said proudly, having conquered the word.

“He thinks you’re teaching him English,” my wife said. “Compliment him.”

“Very nice,” I said. “Now bring me see-gar.”

“Cigar!” he said.

“Right,” I said. “Where?”

“Sure!” he said, without moving.

I gave up on cigars.

I want it known, while I may seem like a chronic complainer, I was not the only one who found something to include in a list of necessities for a comfortable African safari.

Take the brown water.

We arrived at Lake Manyara Lodge in Tanzania after another bone-jarring ride over roads that had not been improved since the days of Africanthropus, who was thought to have lived in the Pleistocene epoch, just after the Ice Age.

“What I need is a bath,” my wife said.

She disappeared, and in a few moments I could hear the bathwater running, followed shortly thereafter by her voice: “It’s brown!” I looked in. Indeed, the bathwater was brown.

“I’ll add it to my list,” I said. “Bring bleach on safari.”

Another suggestion to keep in mind while visiting Africa is to avoid traveling with anyone named Bud and Molly who come from--I mean who hail from--places like Bakersfield, Calif., and Allentown, Pa., and who have been to Africa at least twice before.

They assume a knowledge of the environment greater than that of the natives themselves and revel in correcting the tiniest mistake made by others in their tour group.

For instance, I know perfectly well that a bunch of damned lions are known as a pride. They are also, however, a group , as far as I am concerned, when they are ambling across the plains together, and I don’t need Bud and Molly to explain otherwise.

“How amusing,” Molly said, “that you should call them a group.”

That night 15 lions entered our camp, which worried the hell out of safari leader Patrick Pape, partly because the Masai guards who were supposed to be protecting us from wild creatures ran off and never came back when Simba cornered them in the mess tent.

My wife was the first to see the 300-pound beasts prowling about. She informed Patrick, who wanted to keep it quiet to avoid alarming the other members of our safari.

A dilemma arose, however, when Molly, who with Bud occupied the tent next to us, announced to her husband that she had to use, as she said, “the potty.”

Our tents were close enough so that we could hear almost everything said, including Molly’s desire to visit the toilet which, as luck would have it, was in a canvas outhouse back where the lions were roaming.

Molly and Bud, by the way, didn’t know the lions were out there.

“What’ll we do?” my wife asked, worried that Molly would walk right into the creatures.

“Well,” I said, “we’ll just have to hope for the best, whatever that may be. Patrick asked us specifically not to tell anyone.”

“I’m sure Patrick didn’t count on the possibility of anyone being eaten.”

I shrugged. “I vote for remaining silent and letting Molly play the percentages. Chances are . . . .”

“Either you tell her there are lions out there or I will.”

“OK,” I said. I opened the tent flap and shouted: “Be careful, Molly, there’s a colony of lions out there, and if you should stumble onto one, God help you!”

We could hear their grumbles of disbelief, but just about then a lion roared loudly not 10 feet away.

I don’t know what she did, but Molly didn’t leave the tent that night.

For all of those small discomforts, however, I am compelled to say that a visit to Africa is a memorable experience. I think back with nostalgia even to the rutted roads and to the screaming baboons and their red behinds.

My wife does too. I heard her say just the other day, “I could get used to brown water if I had to.”

Hell, I was even beginning to like the sweet martinis.