The Salubrious Selous

Wholesomeness requires us to see the truth - the whole truth. When pieces are missing nothing can be wholesome, and while the world continues to suffer as we pollute it and shoot it, blast it and gas it, ravage it and rape it, we need to seek out and secure some of its secrets. The Selous for many is still a secret, but even it is in danger of losing some of its innocence. It's inhabitants are murdered for the lure of the dollar and its soul has been scythed in two by a slicing construction which can only be described as destructive. Why is it that a road so devastating as this is described as a construction? It is a destruction - a blatant destruction to our precious planet. The dollar leaves its scars.

We need to practice salubriousness.

Not as tourists or even travellers, but as Pilgrims. The difference being the extent to which one is involved in the experience. The depth to which we immerse ourselves in the relationship between all we sense, all we imagine, and all we are, is what distinguishes us as pilgrims. Pilgrims experience things differently - where a crocodile is not just a crocodile, but is an event which remind one of the old lifting Citroen cars which although desperately ugly, have a uniqueness and a stately grace all of their own. Pilgrims engage in a "trance dance" under the light of a maximum moon, and mix mud with mischievous minds to not just touch this magnificent earth, but to wear it proudly as a paint of purpose. Tourists have trouble taking off their socks and shoes, Pilgrims bathe their souls in hot sulphurous springs watched by a glide-by hyaena, and then drink G&T's in the rain. A game drive becomes a team build, and a fallen feather from an African Fish Eagle does not go unnoticed. Instead it becomes a journey in itself as it is lovingly plucked off the bank of the Rafiji River to be added to a hat best described as an artefact. Why? Well, it is a work of art given shape by a woman, and is undoubtedly an object of archaeological interest.

Pilgrims realise that a hat is not a hat is not a hat, and neither is a love story.

To hear a love story from the man in love, under an African night sky punctuated by the whooping cackles of nearby hyaena is to be engrossed in the power of possibility. That a woman from Huddersfield in the UK, with a masters degree and a father schooled in Medicine has fallen for Africa and all this man has to offer is a triumph to the Pilgrim and a threat to the tourist. What he has to offer may not be easily seen - he comes from the unsophisticated sticks, and yet a deeper intimacy and a listening ear reveals a truly salubrious soul. Although no Doctor, he is a Doolittle as he converses with Nature, and in that conversation he does much.

Emile doesn't have to travel to journey, though the picture he painted of his "first-time-for-everything" travel to London would be worth recording! His journey takes people with him and he leaves them with something they never had before.
Suzi, look after this gem of human tanzanite.

To the Pilgrim, Baobabs are not just intriguing trees or upside down root systems, they are an 800 year home to the Broadbill Rollers and the bees, and if you gaze into a Terminalia Spinoza, a Pearl Spotted Owlet stares back. Tourists don't know when a Pygmy Kingfisher flits into their lives, but when they see it for all its perfect beauty, they are not the same, and perhaps we all still learn that an impala is not an impala - some are being hunted by leopard. The same too with us all. Some are haunted by demons and others guided by angels, and that fine line can change whether in New York, Bali, Maryland or Soweto.
But, as Annie Dillard reminds us:

"Beauty and Grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

The Selous was a dream which became a reality. We tried hard to be there, and we were there to experience beauty and grace. And what more beautiful and more graceful than a leopard in remotest Africa on our last morning. We return from paradise as birders, trackers, rangers, singers, dancers, mothers, mud painters and fathers to be, and most certainly as cat people.

As synchronicity would have it, I was reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver, and came across this very passage:
"People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calender. Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully. Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own."
That leopard had golden eyes, not bronze. What a sense of acceptance, acknowledgement and pure appreciation lies in the memory of its glare. If those were eyes burning with life, then the eyes that bid us farewell were burning with love, and they belonged to Emile.

Emile has had a long term fascination with mathematics and one of the phrases that continue to intrigue, even amuse him is ".…If all factors remain constant…."

We hope with all our hearts that those factors are love, passion and all things salubrious.

*(Selous Game Reserve is Africa’s largest protected wildlife reserve and covers more than 5% of Tanzania’s total area)