It's 7:15 a.m. The sky is still pitch-black. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm in Bellona, the nightmarish, eternally overcast city from Samuel R. Delany's novel Dhalgren. In one hour, I shall be boarding a China Eastern flight to Shanghai (Pudong). After a five-hour layover, I'll jump another jet plane for San Francisco, where my parents will pick me up and take me back to their new place near Sacramento. After a few days with them, I'll drive down to Las Vegas on the 13th of January to reunite with Miss H after four long months...and have a job interview with a tech start-up the very next day.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, I depart Korea for the second time, this latest stint having lasted three years. Was it time wasted? I think not. I made another bucketload of disreputable friends, proposed to the girl of my dreams (in Tokyo, but hey), wrote two-and-a-half novels, began to take my writing career seriously, kicked off the quest to get a book published, and (completely by accident) fulfilled my childhood dream of becoming a professor in a foreign land. Now it's time to move on to a new set of dreams: marriage, family, a writing career, a commercial pilot's license (and a floatplane rating)...and after that? A steady writing job in Las Vegas, seasonal work with Grand Canyon tour companies, a published novel, a dozen syndicated short stories, two or three troublemaking kids, and a big mongrel dog. Wish me luck.
So long and farewell, Korea. You were awfully good to me and mine. I'll see you again someday. Let's do gimbap.
We languished in our hotel room until 1:30 p.m. (Tuesday, August 6), waiting for the downpour to clear up. Then we caught the train (HK$27!) to Disneyland and spent four or five hours there.
It was surprisingly small and easy to navigate. We only did five rides: Space Mountain, the Fantasyland Carousel, the Jungle River Cruise, Mystic Manor, and Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars, plus some obligatory souvenir shopping. The longest we had to wait in line was 50 minutes. The Chinese were loud, rude, and pushy...pretty typical. Nothing like Tokyo Disneyland, let me tell you! The biggest enemy was HK's summer heat: hot, still, and humid. We were drenched with sweat within seconds of arriving, and bottles of water cost a whopping HK$25 (around $3.25 US). We splurged and got a big bag of caramel popcorn for HK$38, and that put our spirits to rights. We had dinner at Le Souk, a Moroccan-Lebanese-Egyptian restaurant in SoHo. We barely made it up the escalators before more rain came pounding down. We chewed very slowly on our chicken shish kebabs and lamb stew (with Coke and Kronenbourg to wash it down), but we had to order another plate of Lebanese hummus and savor it before the rain truly stopped.
No sooner had we clambered aboard a streetcar for North Point when MORE rain hit. We were getting pretty lucky today. I was nursing the back of my right ankle. My old Airwalk flip-flops had no tread left after tramping all over Southeast Asia, and stepping on wet granite tiles was like walking on ice. I slipped coming down the stairs from SoHo and gashed my ankle on the cracked, crumbling concrete stair. Back in Room 2504, I washed the wound in the shower and sprayed it with disinfectant while Miss H went for a late-night massage at the parlor on the hotel's second floor. Then we packed up and turned in. Our last day in Hong Kong was done.
Six very good reasons. You expand your network. You meet new friends...and potential mates. You increase your social skills. You learn new things. And most importantly, you boost your confidence. If it's one thing all the manly men I know have, it's confidence. Confidence is one of my core values, but even if it wasn't, any one of those aforementioned things would be a fine reason to reach out to someone you don't know. As long as you're honest, genuine, and act interested, you can gain a wealth of information (and perhaps a good friend in the bargain). So I done it. I spoke to three strangers tonight during a date with Heather in Itaewon — the same date, actually, that I planned on Day 9.
The first person was the owner and proprietor of one of the foreign food markets. He and I had a short discussion about two things: Cheesy Ragù sauce and unflavored Ruffles. I asked if he had them in stock, and he explained that the Ragù is difficult to come by in Korea, that the Ruffles usually come in once every two weeks, and it's up in the air what flavors he'll get. At least, I think that's what he was implying. He's from Pakistan and he's a very busy man, so he speaks quickly and is sometimes difficult to understand. After bestowing these bits of comestible information upon me, he wandered away to hector a couple of his employees who weren't facing the stock assiduously enough.
The other two were a pair of foreigners on the Line 6 train heading east to Bonghwasan. I had spotted them earlier, smoking and standing outside the Paraguayan restaurant where Miss H and I had dinner. On the subway I overheard them speaking in accented English about the express line heading to Incheon Airport, so I up and asked them where they were catching it. Hongdae? Digital Complex?
Digital Complex, it turned out.
One of the men was a long-haired West African with dreadlocks and the other was a dark-complected and rather handsome southern Asian. He could have been Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi for all I knew. They were indeed taking a flight out the next morning. The Asian fellow got off at Yaksu Station only a few seconds into the conversation, but Miss H and I engaged the African man for a few moments longer, until our inevitable departure at Cheonggu. He looked to be about our age. We never got his name. He was flying home to Sierra Leone to see his family, he said. It would be a 30-hour flight. He hadn't seen his family in three years, and was very much looking forward to being home and surrounded by familiar faces. I couldn't say I blamed him. I've been feeling the need — no, the compulsion — for something similar for a long while now. We wished him well on his journey, then leaped off the train and switched to Line 5 for the last leg home to Gwangnaru. If we'd stayed on the train a little longer — which I kinda wish we had — we'd probably have learned his name, and maybe even become friends with him.
Oh well. Ships that pass in the night, as they say. Let's not forget the salient fact, here.
WARNING: What follows is exceedingly general and perhaps a bit non-PC. I don't care, and neither should you. Au contraire, you should laud me for admitting my ignorance rather than disguising it. Consider this a list of what I don't know about the world (and hope to learn someday).
DISCLAIMER: You'll notice that I said a Californian like me. You can no more judge all Californians to be the same than you can judge all Dubliners or all Tokyoites to be the same. We're a mixed lot. But even among them, I am an outlier. I was born in Northern California, for one thing. I've lived in the capital, the Midwest, the American South, and the Great Plains, so I know a bit more about the rest of America than the average Californian does. My political views don't exactly match up with a lot of other Californians', either. I'm a white middle-class twenty-something, and proud of it.
Ready? Then let's begin:
THE REST OF AMERICA:
OREGON: Best known for portraying that forested planet in The Return of the Jedi. And being mispronounced by Midwesterners and foreigners alike.
WASHINGTON STATE: Coffee. Rain. Pine trees. Killer whales. Reggie Watts. Legal marijuana. Sententious living.
IDAHO: Potatoes.
MONTANA: Looks really good on a postcard.
NEVADA: Vegas, baby. And machine guns. The rest of it's desert. And Reno.
UTAH: Mormons! Who doesn't like Mormons? And saltwater?
ARIZONA: Simply marvelous gun laws. Cacti which are the envy of the civilized world. Gila monsters. Fatuous Nicolas Cage movies. Mountains that look like Indians.
NEW MEXICO: Are the rocks supposed to be red like that?
WYOMING: Fewer people than a single suburb of Los Angeles. Seriously, the antelopes outnumber the humans. Scary thought.
NORTH DAKOTA: I felt like a celebrity there.
SOUTH DAKOTA:Big stone heads. The Black Hills (yeah, baby). Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
NEBRASKA: What the guy who thought of the phrase "middle of nowhere" was thinking of.
KANSAS: You're not there anymore, Toto.
OKLAHOMA: Bombs. Musicals. The Dust Bowl. Tornadoes.
TEXAS: If it weren't for them, Mexico would have invaded long ago.
MINNESOTA: So, like, let's go to the lake, eh?
IOWA: The Minnesotans are right. The best thing coming out of Iowa is I-29.
MISSOURI: My dad went to college there. Considers himself more Missourian than Ohioan. They've got an arch. That's the limit of my knowledge.
ARKANSAS: Most direct route between Tennessee and Oklahoma.
LOUISIANA: Bayous, swamps, Cajun food, levies, Mardi Gras, and hurricanes. Especially hurricanes.
WISCONSIN: Cheese.
ILLINOIS: Abraham Lincoln.
INDIANA: No friggin' idea. Maybe basketball?
KENTUCKY: Is the grass really blue, or is that just a figure of speech?
TENNESSEE: Too many mullets for my taste.
MISSISSIPPI: Hard to spell.
ALABAMA: Probably has the most likeable/least unpleasant Southern accent, depending on where you stand on Southern accents.
GEORGIA: Good peaches.
FLORIDA: Can't think of it without thinking of the auto-tuning rapper. Thanks a bunch. Before Flo Rida was a thing, I associated Florida with Scarface, my grandmother's house with the orange trees in the backyard, the one billion percent humidity, and the white-sand beaches.
MICHIGAN: They make cars there, don't they? And awesome music?
OHIO: Hot in summer, rainy in spring, miserable in winter, the most beautiful place on the planet in autumn.
WEST VIRGINIA: Coal. The Civil War. Trout fishing. Caves. Chuck Yeager.
VIRGINIA: This may sound weird, but I can't help but think of Virginia in terms of the famous people who were born there: Ella Fitzgerald, George C. Scott, Sam Houston, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (yes, that Lewis & Clark), Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, Tom Wolfe, Booker T. Washington, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and, like, twenty U.S. presidents.
NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA: What's the difference?
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Crazy homeless people in the streets, crazy people in the government.
MARYLAND: You need to put on some weight, you're too skinny.
DELAWARE: Sounds like a seldom-used word you'd find in a dictionary.
NEW JERSEY: Just as all myths have some basis in fact, the moniker "Armpit of America" must on some level be well-deserved.
CONNECTICUT: Pretty. And filthy rich.
PENNSYLVANIA: The birthplace of liberty and independence. Looks nice in autumn, too.
NEW YORK: California's biggest competitor in terms of culture and coolness. They've got some pretty country, too; and heck, they even have their own version of the San Andreas Fault. We'll get you yet, you buggers.
RHODE ISLAND: Too small for my Californian mind to encapsulate.
MASSACHUSETTS: Baseball. Football. Clam chowder. Cod. Moby-Dick. Cheers (the TV show).
NEW HAMPSHIRE: The last stop before Maine.
VERMONT: The second-to-last stop before Maine.
MAINE: The last stop before New Brunswick. Also, Stephen King is from there; I do know that much. A lot of his books are set around those parts.
ALASKA: I know as much as everyone else does. Grizzly bears, gold, the Inuit, glaciers, the tallest mountain in North America, savage cold, bush pilots, hunting, cruises, trains, oil, fishing, formerly Russian, real men and real women. Oh, and I'd give my right arm and two or three toes to live there.
HAWAII: Palm trees. White-sand beaches. Turquoise water. Tropical fish. Sunshine. Ukeleles, luaus and leis. Volcanoes. Surfing. Pearl Harbor. The U.S.S. Arizona. Paradise on Earth. California's biggest competitor in terms of fun in the sun and water sports. Not bad if we can take on New York and Hawaii and still compete, eh?
THE REST OF THE WORLD:
MEXICO: Lovely beaches, great food, incredible culture, marvelous natural beauty, and good booze...but a corrupt government and a few too many all-powerful drug cartels. Oh wait, that's California.
CANADA: A dichotomy. On the one hand: nigh-socialism, a Governor General, and a certain amount of cultural snobbery (though that might just be the folks from Toronto). On the other hand: maple syrup, the Yukon, Nova Scotia, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Alberta, the Canadian Rockies, ice hockey, Shania Twain, William Shatner, Dan Aykroyd, Kim Cattrall, Stana Katic, Nathan Fillion (whom I hear is from Edmonton), Rick Moranis, Leslie Nielsen, Donald Sutherland, Alexander Graham Bell, Elijah McCoy (the real McCoy), James Howlett (better known as Wolverine), Anne Shirley (a.k.a. Anne of Green Gables), Chris Hadfield (the astronaut), Rush, Barenaked Ladies, Great Big Sea, dinosaurs, Black Velvet whisky, the Devil's Brigade, lentils, Swedish Fish, and some of the friendliest, politest people on the face of the Earth.
BRAZIL: Great barbecue, oddly-named mountains, and the best jungles and parties (and jungle parties) anywhere.
BOLIVIA: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid got zonked down there, didn't they?
URUGUAY: It's all about the tango.
KENYA: I know Tanzania, Mozambique, and some of the other countries have amazing biodiversity, natural beauty and safaris, but whenever I think "East Africa," my mind just leaps to Kenya. Craters, rhinoceroses, the Serengeti, poaching problems, and now some election brouhaha. And a spectacularJohn Wayne movie.
SOUTH AFRICA: Let's move past the bit with the apartheid and get into Sharlto Copley, J.R.R. Tolkien, Basil Rathbone, Manfred Mann, Candice Swanepoel, and that sweet movie Zulu with Michael Caine. Just please don't mention Dave Mathews. We don't mention Dave Mathews on this blog.
LESOTHO: See RHODE ISLAND above.
EGYPT: Revolutions. Pyramids. Rivers. Desert. Camels. Political turmoil. And they have their own version of The Daily Show.
MOROCCO: I only know where it is 'cause I watch Bogart films.
CROATIA: It gave the world Serious Sam, so it can't be all bad, can it?
RUSSIA: I was born five years before the Berlin Wall fell, but I'd venture to guess that my generation's the first one that doesn't think "Commie bastards" whenever we hear the word "Russia." That doesn't mean I trust Putin or the KGB, but I sure would like to visit the country, ride their trains, drink their vodka, walk over their bridges, and so forth. Oh, and see St. Petersburg in the wintertime.
FRANCE: The other place an aspiring artist or writer might go besides California.
ICELAND: All of the wintry fun of Canada or Alaska with none of the urban sprawl.
ENGLAND: Sorry, did I say Canada was guilty of cultural snobbery?! Though that could just be Londoners. Seriously, some of my best friends are from England. I wouldn't mind retiring to Newcastle someday, having fish and chips down by the quayside, a pint in the Turk's Head, then a walk 'round the priory and a pipe-smoke on the point. Geordies rock.
SCOTLAND: It gave us Scotch whisky, haggis, Robert Burns, Ian Anderson, and some of the world's finest and hardiest soldiers. I think a good many wars would have been lost without a few good Scotsmen.
IRELAND: The setting of another rather good John Wayne movie. If you don't think about the Troubles, you can get lost in the whiskey, the beer, the corned beef and cabbage, the stew, the River Liffey, James Joyce and the wild Irish countryside. Gotta love Chloë Agnew and Liam Neeson, too.
GERMANY: Efficiency. And cake. And philosophy. And awe-inspiring classical music.
SPAIN: Sunshine. And beautiful horses. Architecture to die for. Paella. Soccer. Bulls, and a lot of sports that shouldn't be combined with bulls. And tomato-chucking.
SWITZERLAND: Americans voted it the best place to go if you're trying to escape from a German prison camp. I've heard they make pretty good watches and toys, too.
INDIA: Outsourcing. Overpopulation. Sacred cows. Fascinating religions. Fantastic architecture. Pollution. Garbage in the streets. People pooping in public. The Ganges River, which I wouldn't dunk my worst enemy in.
VIETNAM: The site of a rather nasty and unconventional war. Now home to gorgeous waterfalls, delectable cuisine, a generation of suspiciously blond-haired Vietnamese, and tons of unexploded ordnance.
CHINA: Big. Really big. Filled with people. Controlled by a Communist government. Mao's noggin is everywhere. Still, even though fat guys go topless in public and toddlers poop in the streets, the trains run on time and the countryside is undeniably gorgeous.
JAPAN: My knowledge beforehand was mostly limited to World War II, anime and manga. Now I see the country through the Korean lens, and that colors my perception a bit. It's definitely one of Asia's bright stars, a broad, clean, polite and user-friendly country. But its foreign-relations record is a black mark in its ledger.
SOUTH KOREA: Before I came to live here, I knew the name of the capital and that the country got snow in winter. That's it. Now I know that, despite the bali bali culture that grinds students and salarymen into the ground, Korea has elevated itself from a smoking crater to one of the most prosperous, bright, advanced and innovative nations on the planet. The people, though bound by millennia of tradition and rigid societal and behavioral mores, are some of the most friendly and unconditionally kind folks I've ever encountered.
NORTH KOREA: If you're ever in need of a good laugh, just look up some of their propaganda.
AUSTRALIA: Deserts, mountains, jungles, forests, beaches, great music, good actors, some fantastic sports (and sports players), architectural wonders, storied history, a charming accent and some of the weirdest animals to be found.
NEW ZEALAND: Like some weird mix of England, Iceland, and Hawaii. But it did give us Peter Jackson, Lucy Lawless, Karl Urban and Bruce Spence, and some lovely glaciers.
ANTARCTICA: Snow. Ice. More snow. More ice. Mountains. Volcanoes. Rocks. More snow. More ice. Frigid seas. Storms. Penguins. Blubber. Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and every other adventure or horror writer who ever needed a remote, bleak, barren, ice-blasted place to set a secret base or an eldritch abomination.
No word yet on that nightly journal I'm supposed to be keeping. Be that as it may, I have some thoughts to share with you.
I'm researching China, particularly the eats, and I'm getting really jazzed about this little four-day jaunt. But some unsettling questions remain in my mind.
I have mixed feelings about China.
The government, not its citizens, mind you. So far I've found that people are people, no matter where you go. But China, and her communist leaders, have done some things that I find difficult to swallow. The country's history is more checkered than the flag at the NASCAR finish line. I'm trying real hard to be objective here, but I am and always was a subjective bugger, and that usually filters through to my perceptions about other places. Some of these issues that I have with China and its history are seeping in around the loose edges of my consciousness, and I have to get them off my chest before they're diluted by experience.
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of China, of course, is the color red. Communism. Mao Zedong. The Great Leap Forward. Josef Stalin, Kim Il-sung, Pol Pot, and other prominent communist dictators who've influenced or been influenced by China and its politics.
I have a problem with communism. What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander. I get that. China has a different moral code, a different work ethic, a different societal paradigm and a much different history than America or any other Western state. But still: the idea of communism itself seems, to me, fundamentally flawed and diseased. In my mind, human beings were not meant to exist in classless, moneyless, stateless societies. I'm no social Darwinist; there's times when I've despaired of the ossification of class in Western society and its total dependence on currency. But there's no denying that capitalism and competition encourage hard work and innovation. That, to me, seems preferable to the alternative: a society focused on production (at the expense of intellectualism)—a breeding ground for conformity, mediocrity, and stagnation, in which the group is superior to the individual.
Whether or not that's what's happened in China is debatable, because of the second problem I have with the place:
They're not even doing communism right.
I remember penning a passionate article about this in my high school's literary magazine back in 2002 or thereabouts. One of the basic tenets of communist theory is that the people have control, and that's that. Society is stateless: there is little to no concentration of power, no overarching authority. This is what makes North Korea's proper name so laughable: the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is four lies in one. It's anything but democratic, inasmuch as the power is held by one family and one family only, with the mere pretense of choice on the part of the people. The citizens do not own the means of production, nor do they have any say in the government—the Great/Dear/Outstanding Leader does. The definition of the word "republic" is a state in which political affairs are public matters and not the private concern of the rulers; as I pointed out before, the people have about as much say in (or knowledge of) political affairs in North Korea as do chipmunks or cucumbers. And finally, "of Korea" implies that the DPRK considers itself the rightful government of the entire peninsula, which is about as horrifying as it is hilarious.
Not my photo. This is China, not North Korea.
Though China's human rights record is far from spotless (I'll get to that in a minute), they at least seem to have empowered their citizens to a greater degree than the Hermit Kingdom. Even so, power is centralized and concentrated in Beijing, which means that the "stateless" part of communism is being openly flouted. Moreover, even a superficial glance at China's economy and society reveals that it is neither moneyless nor classless. At best this makes the Chinese government hypocritical; at worst, it makes them dishonest. I have no use for dishonest people—let alone a dishonest political system.
Setting that aside, let's talk about the biggest bee in my bonnet about China: human rights.
Here's a little preamble from Amnesty International's website:
Amnesty International has documented widespread human rights violations
in China. An estimated 500,000 people are currently enduring punitive
detention without charge or trial, and millions are unable to access the
legal system to seek redress for their grievances. Harassment,
surveillance, house arrest, and imprisonment of human rights defenders
are on the rise, and censorship of the Internet and other media has
grown. Repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighurs and
Mongolians, and of Falun Gong practitioners and Christians who practice
their religion outside state-sanctioned churches continues. While the
recent reinstatement of Supreme People's Court review of death penalty
cases may result in lower numbers of executions, China remains the
leading executioner in the world.
Possibly I was biased by being born in a country where freedom of speech and freedom of the press actually mean something, are protected by a constitution (the supreme and inviolable law of the land), and are sacrosanct in the hearts and minds of the people. Thus it shocks me when I hear that the Internet is heavily censored in China, with social media sites like Facebook being routinely shut down or blocked. The Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is indefatigable at censoring news reports and filtering what information the people receive. The Chinese government is enormous, inefficient, bureaucratic, and callous. Petitioners cannot easily seek redress of grievances, and are often lost in the shuffle or crushed by the big wheels. The class system is not only extant but downright marginalizing, equal to anything seen in South Africa. In 2005, Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, stated that an apartheid-like segregation system was in effect in China. City-dwellers, he said, enjoy a wealth of social and economic perks while peasants, or "rural workers," are treated like second-class citizens. They require a portfolio of hard-to-obtain passes to work in provinces other than the ones in which they reside. Movement is restricted. Freedom of association is nonexistent, freedom of religion is a joke, and people are regularly stripped of their rights if they do something, anything, that causes the CPC to label them "subversive." And then of course there's the one-child policy. To me, a government that fines its citizens for having more than one kid is just plain tyrannical.
In addition to these documented transgressions, dark rumors abound of torture, brutality and degradation in China's arbitrary detention centers. Evidence has surfaced that Mao and his followers abused the science of psychiatry to their own political ends, declaring thousands of people mentally ill, thereby discrediting them. (Statistics hint that this practice continues to this day, especially in the persecution of practitioners of Falun Gong, which the CPC has branded undesirable.)
Besides all that, we have the official Chinese policy of refusing to acknowledge North Korean runaways as political refugees. Instead, China calls them "economic migrants," captures them and deports them back to North Korea, where, as we all know, they face separation, torture, "reeducation," forced labor and execution.
And speaking of North Korea, let's not forget that China has abetted the existence of that oppressive regime with food and electricity for nigh-on 60 years now. I have a bit of a problem with that as well. For all I know, Chinese soldiers might have killed some of my grandfather's best buddies back during the Korean War, too. So I'm a little ticked off at the country on my granddad's behalf, silly as that sounds.
And do I even need to mention Tibet?
Not my photo.
I don't like any of this. No way, no how.
What really sticks in my craw is that China does (or allegedly does) all of this stuff even after signing UN-sanctioned agreements saying that it won't do it. China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but never ratified it. So they just do whatever they please. Hell's donkeys.
In a nutshell, my preconceived notion of China is this: it's a country, a big country, with a huge population and a long and storied history, which in the 20th century had some tremendous political and societal upheavals, during which a rather unscrupulous man came to power, espousing communism and imposing his vision upon the country and its people with varying degrees of success. What we have now is a country used to be doing told what to do, which is really too big to regulate, whose citizens are finally starting to get fed up thanks to the unstoppable influx of Western technology (and with it, ideology), and whose ruling party has all but abandoned the proper pursuit of dogmatic communism in favor of a corrupt regime based on absolute power, suppression of dissent, a single-party state, and strict regulation of economics, society and human life, thereby blighting a nation and its sovereign dignity.
The Temple of Heaven, one of the things on my Beijing to-do list. From Wikimedia Commons.
So, yeah. I'll visit their country. I'll peruse their monuments. I'll stand in their square. I'll tour their palaces. I'll eat their nibbles. I'll breathe their air and sleep in their beds and watch them go about their lives. But that doesn't mean I have to like the way they run their business.
I have a tendency to seed my writings—and my blog titles—with references to classic novels, well-known poems and pop culture arcana. You know, just to see if you guys are on your mental toes. And to give you food for thought, of course. And to show the world what a well-read and culturally aware fellow I am. The title of this blog post was based on a noteworthy 1955 film...do I really have to say it?
The new semester has begun at work, and I'm adjusting to new faces, new classes and a new course load. I have a fuller schedule this time around. We've lost a few teachers. So many people have departed that the very character of the academy is changing. First it was Chris, the fellow I used to watch movies with on Wednesday nights. We'd barely gotten the tradition started when he up and left for mainland Asia. His replacement is a lovely woman from Connecticut whom Miss H and I have been glad to hang around with.
A couple of our teaching assistants (young Korean adults who do odd jobs like copying, filing, and errands) have left too. One of them went off to Turkey for a few months, and the other's going back to university while he waits for his girlfriend to get done backpacking through Europe. Terrible shame—they were wonderful souls.
And now it's M&E, the head native teachers ("native" meaning "native English speaker"—they're from England). Their last day was Friday. They've been working at Avalon for the better part of five years. Their retirement was an emotional affair—they've watched many of these students grow up. They started teaching them in elementary school and ushered them up all the way to high school. Wow. I mean, I forge bonds with some of my students, but one year isn't enough to make those bonds more than transient. I've dropped out of contact with all but one of my old Geoje pupils (tell ya sorry). But M&E are leaving five years of pure history behind. I wish them luck.
All this talk of departures and new horizons has got me wondering. I used to think it was the bee's knees, living here in Korea. I felt like a seasoned world traveler. Things felt so different here—the language, the culture, the food, the whole nine yards. That was just my inexperience talking. I see that now. Any country, from Canada to Mozambique, would have qualified as an exciting travel destination as long as it wasn't U.S. soil. I just needed to be away from my homeland and discover new things. Korea was a good place to start.
Lately, though, I've begun to think that I've discovered all that Korea has to offer. I'll grant you there's a hundred things in the guidebook that I haven't seen. And a mere two or three years isn't enough to know a place, even a country as small as K-Land. But I've begun to think that this place just isn't different enough. Except for its geographical location, its language and its history, Korea is virtually indistinguishable from a Western nation—particularly the United States. It's got Internet. It's got computers and cell phones (they call them "handphones" here, but what the hell). It's got cars galore. They drive on the left side of the road, too. There's a highway system. There's traffic lights. There's skyscrapers. There's Internet cafés. There's department stores. There's name brands like Converse and Tommy Hilfiger. There's movie theaters, complete with buttered popcorn and 3D screens. There's English-language bookstores. There's McDonald's, Burger King, Quiznos, Subway, Taco Bell. They even have MTV, for Pete's sake.
I feel like my taste in travel destinations has matured, somewhat. I don't need all the comforts of home (and a stamp in my passport) to feel like a seasoned world traveler. Increasingly, I feel the need to get away from the trappings of Western civilization: television, designer clothing, fast food, six-lane boulevards, subway trains, computers, cell phones, pop music. I want to escape. I want to fly the coop. I want to lose myself in the bush, decompress by a crystal lake somewhere with a flask of whiskey and a book (a paper book, thank you very much).
Maybe I've been in the big city too long. I've lived in Bucheon for nearly five months and I still haven't gotten the chance to get away into the countryside. I've made a few trips to the DMZ, but apart from that, I haven't budged from the Seoul metropolitan area. Then again, I don't have anywhere to go. Korea does have some nice national parks, but they take ages to get to. You can't just drive for an hour or two like you can in the States, find yourself in the deserted countryside, sit down and have a picnic.
It's more than that. I don't just want to get away from the city. I want to get away from civilization itself. I've had it up to here with processed foods and noisy copy machines and American politics. I'm done; get me out of here. I want to shop at a Vietnamese market, listen to a beat-up old radio in a ramshackle bar in East Africa, take a nap under a tree in some Patagonian village. Remove myself from technology, world events. Find someplace quiet. Get off the grid. Take a hike. Move off the beaten path. Be incognito for a while.
This is actually a fairly typical phenomenon for expatriate teachers in Korea. Roughly halfway through their year-long hitch, they get itchy feet. They get restless. They get antsy. That, or they go the opposite direction, becoming lethargic, irritable, listless. The humdrum banality of their daily routine gets into their heads, and the cramped conditions on this tiny peninsula exacerbate the situation.
I'm no exception. I find myself Googling pictures of exotic, natural locales like the Atlas Mountains, Anatolia, the Hindu Kush, or Siberia. I feel anxious to be out on the road. I resent being stuck here in the city, going to work 2-10, with hardly a vacation day in sight.
S'pose I'll have to get through it somehow. I'll let you know how it goes.
April 7 was a fine day: clear and cool with a fine breeze blowing. So fine, in fact, that our hair was lifting off from our foreheads and tugging at our scalps, trying to fly away. The trash cans kept falling over and a fine haze of aerosol hung in the desert air, obscuring the horizon.
Nevertheless Miss H and I decided to venture some 100 miles to the southeast, to the town of Palm Desert, California...and the singular zoo and botanical garden which hides itself there. Tucked into the rocky hills behind the city, behind the golf courses, country clubs and gated communities, lies the Living Desert.
One of Southern California's little-known gems, the Living Desert showcases plants and animals native to the world's deserts. Here you will find all the major players from the hot and arid regions of Planet Earth: the Sahara, Arabian, Gobi, Atacama, and even our own Mojave, Colorado and Sonoran. (For some reason, they left Africa's Kalahari and Australia's Great Sandy and Simpson Deserts right out.)
From the black widow spider to the zebra, the oryx, giraffe, ostrich, bighorn sheep, Ankole-Watusi, peccaries, badgers, mountain lions, coyotes, fennec foxes, ringtails, coatimundis, servals, sand cats, rock hyraxes, chorus frogs, Gila monsters, meerkats, golden eagles, roadrunners, Mexican wolves, ravens, pronghorn...all manner of desert denizens reside here. Heck, the only thing they don't have is...
...well, I take that back. They have 'em now.
Now, my girlfriend had never been to a zoo. Her parents are homebodies. They don't really go anywhere. Miss H has been to Disneyland (with her friends, or the school band), but not the thousands of parks, museums, zoos, beaches, or other attractions Southern California is famous for. She hadn't even been to an aquarium until she went to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, near where she went to college.
I consider this a travesty.
Zoos were central to my childhood. I still consider them one of the few places I could spend an entire 12-hour day, along with libraries and arcades.
So I elected to rectify this inequity.
I've already spoken to you about the wonders of Old Highway 247, so I'll say no more about it here. But the wonders of the CA-62 deserve honorable mention. The chaotic descent through Morongo Valley (little more than a glorified canyon, narrow and steep-sided, houses clinging to the hillsides like mountain goats) is followed by a sudden drop through through a perilous gorge, which opens out into the Coachella Valley. Mount San Jacinto looms up in front like a great blue-gray god preaching to his minions—the white and many-armed masses of windmills which line the valley floor. A few miles later and we merge onto Interstate 10, which stretches from Santa Monica to Jacksonville, Florida, thousands of miles to the east.
A few miles later we get off in Palm Desert.
Palm Desert (and the neighboring borough of Indian Wells) is the slightly shabbier cousin of Palm Springs. Only slightly shabbier, mind you. If Palm Springs is the equivalent of a thirty-room mansion, Palm Desert manages at least a fifteen-room hacienda. Green lawns, red-tile roofs, stucco walls, golf courses, country clubs, classy restaurants, and more palm trees than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It's a haven for the wealthy, where the comfortably-well-off go to golf and get away from the hustle and bustle of the beach and metropolis. It gets blasphemously hot here; even a 90-year-old wouldn't need to pack a sweater or track suit.
This is also the perfect environment for a zoo with desert animals.
Miss H and I had to dodge a few stupid drivers on our way through town (unfortunately, you can't lose the dumb people no matter how far you go). We parked, took a last swig of water, and marched on the gates. About $28.50 later we were inside.
Thankfully, in early April, it was still quite equable in the Coachella region. If this had been a normal spring, temperatures might've been in the upper 80s; but as it was, a cold front was blowing through and it was a balmy 67. That same stiff breeze was blowing, cooling whatever wasn't already cool enough. The train diorama was in full swing, and so were the billions of schoolchildren surrounding it.
(Photo credits go once again to my beautiful and talented girlfriend.)
I won't spoil the multitude of exhibits awaiting you inside this fantastic place. As always, I invite you to see for yourself. I will say, however, that Miss H and I strolled through it with languor and abandon, picking out the zoological attractions we'd most like to see on the map and sallying forth to peruse them. Aviaries, paddocks, sprawling pastures, quiet tree-lined paths...arm in arm, hand in hand we walked, gazing into each other's eyes and sharing a quiet giggle between us. Once we paused beneath an ironwood tree to snatch a quick, passionate kiss. We were in love and we didn't care who knew it, not the oryx, nor the meerkats, nor the warthogs or cheetahs or...
...the jaguar.
Whoa, wait, WHAT?! A jaguar? What the—?! They didn't have jaguars the last time I was here!
It was with awe and wonder and no small enjoyment that Miss H and I beheld the Living Desert's newest attraction, a grade-A genuine jaguar. Set in a newly-built habitat simulating a Mexican silver mine, the jaguar dozed contentedly on his patch of dirt, in the shade of a spreading mesquite tree. I was stunned. I'd never seen a jaguar in the flesh, not in any zoo. Up until this point I'd been content with the Living Desert displaying species which were unique, unutterably suited to their environment, but nonetheless familiar, and therefore slightly mundane: golden eagles, mountain lions, coyotes, giraffes. A jaguar...well, that was a cat of a different color.
After enjoying the park to the fullest (including the unexpected proximity of bighorn sheep), we made our egress from the Living Desert and went in search of our next conquest.
A charming little African-themed place on the CA-111 in Palm Desert, the Elephant Bar had lots of dark, carved wood, brass fixings, bamboo inlay, and some rather unusual ceiling fans. We arrived during happy hour, and seated ourselves at the 60-foot bar, where appetizers and well drinks were half-price until 4. The food, which the menu had claimed to be an Oriental-Occidental fusion, was just that—only in wondrous abundance. We dined first on artichoke dip and Vietnamese shrimp spring rolls, both of which were more delicious than anything we'd yet sampled. For the main course, I selected the teriyaki chicken, while Miss H chose the chicken marsala. Between the two of us, we'd try both sides of the coin. Both dishes were exceedingly flavorful and succulent, and served in amazing proportions. We didn't even have room for desserts, even though there were at least four pages of those in the menu: the bartender recommended the crème brûlée, but it was the chocolate-chip cookie sundae that caught our eye. We waddled out of that place.
It was but the work of an hour or so to traverse Palm Desert and Indian Wells in the fading daylight, view the fountains and green fairways tinged orange by the red desert sun, regain the CA-62, climb the torturous road back into the Mojave, and travel homeward with the warm evening breeze fresh in our faces.
The last time I was asked this question was at a friend's barbecue, I think. I was half-drunk on bottled beer, stuffed to bursting with hot dogs, and feeling pretty mellow. There was a time when the question would've irritated me. I couldn't be bothered to look that far ahead. I didn't really care where I'd be, nor did I have the patience to try to plan it all out. Now I harbor more sanguine views. I spend most of my time these days idly speculating on where I'm going to be, since I'd rather be anywhere than where I am now.
And pursuant to this frame of mind, this post: it's a faux diary entry from my own personal journals, circa 2021 or so. Ten years down the line I should have made pretty concrete strides toward my goals. I'll be 33 years old, only just starting to think about settling down and getting a family started. I ought to have my commercial pilot's license by then, have five or six novels published, and maybe even begun that comic book. And, of course, I'll be a well-established journalist and travel writer. I'll have grown a beard, have a much wider selection of safari clothing than I do now, cigars and good Scotch always on hand, and a much less impatient demeanor. Premature? Maybe. Presumptious? Of course. Preposterous? Probably. But I'm going to write it like this anyway. Why not? It'd be fun. Plus it sounded like a pretty cool idea to ghost-write my own future. So here goes:
November 4, 2021MAN, it's hot here in Botswana. Makes sense, I guess. We're within shouting distance of the Kalahari Desert. But still, it doesn't seem right. We're on the other side of the continent from the Sahara. We're about as close to Antarctica as we are to Tunisia. Seems like it ought to be cooler, even if we are on the same latitude as Rio de Janeiro and Australia's Simpson Desert.
It's eight o'clock at night and the temperature's still in the mid-80s. Not very hot to you, maybe, but I don't like it much above 70. I'm a cold freak, a cryophile. Plus it's humid out here. I'd almost rather be in the Kalahari than the Okavango Delta. The mosquitoes have been murder. Summer's just begun. The rains have been pouring down all day, and the cloud cover's been pretty thick at night. The run-off from the Angola highlands is going to cause some fine old flooding around here come July. There's a lot of standing water and swampy terrain here now, which is heaven for mosquitoes and a lot of other wildlife. I've seen giraffes, lions, rhinoceros, elephants, wildebeest and at least eight kinds of antelope since me and the crew got here last week. We had a hell of a time finding the airfield in this swamp. And that was the softest landing I've ever done—I'm not even sure we're going to be able to get the dang plane up again. Mr. Kgomotso assures me we will, and that he and his boys will dig us out and even push us off the ground if they have to.
I'm glad he's so confident. He's got to be confident, though: as the head park ranger for the Moremi Game Reserve, and he and his men fighting an all-out war with poachers (especially this this time of year), he can't afford to despair. That's why the gang and I are here. We're delivering fresh supplies of gasoline, medical supplies and ammunition from Gaborone. We just happened to be in the area on another delivery when the director of Botswana's national parks program got a hold of us and asked us to make the run. I was a bit leery; more than a few bush planes in this area have wound up with bullet holes or even spears in their wings. Those poachers don't kid around. If it was just myself I'd have leaped at the chance, but I've got a crew to look after. Martha, Jimmy and Boris were peachy-keen with the idea, though, so we borrowed one of the park department's Caravans and came down. Like I said, it was a sticky landing. The wheels just sank right into that muck. We squished to a halt in record time. It's a dang good thing I did all that extra soft field practice back in California or we might've wound up ass over teakettle in the middle of a swamp.
So far things have been pretty peaceful, except for two nights ago. The ranger squad mounted a night raid on a poacher camp about ten miles west. Seeing as I flew in the supplies that made the raid possible, Kgomotso offered us the chance to go along. Martha and Boris took a rain check (not surprising, Boris saw enough of war in Chechnya with the 3rd Vympel unit of Spetsnaz). Jimmy and I decided to go along, though. We'd asked the director of the parks program for some "special permissions" as a condition for delivering the supplies to the rangers, and the guy was so desperate to get that stuff out here that he said yes. So Jimmy had his 1873 Winchester rifle and I, of course, my trusty Beretta Centurion. Just for backup I took my Bowie knife, too. You can't be too sure. I didn't think I'd need it but I grabbed it just in case. Turned out to be a good thing.
It was a pretty textbook sting, up until the end. The rangers sneaked up on the poacher camp and hailed the poachers, telling them they were under arrest and whatnot. The poachers never said anything, they just opened up. Fortunately the rangers were used to these tactics by now, and were already behind cover. There were five poachers; four of 'em didn't even make it 30 yards. Jimmy got one of them. It was a hell of a shot, especially in the dark and with iron sights, but Jimmy's been popping squirrels and raccoons since he was a kid in Tennessee. The guy was dead before he hit the ground. The fifth poacher hopped in the Jeep and took off. He wasn't running on adrenaline; instead of heading in the other direction he whirled the Jeep around and headed right for us. He was trying to run us down. Kgomotso had warned us about this guy. Nobody knew his real name. The rangers just called him Mamba, after the black mamba, the most venemous snake in Botswana. Just like his namesake, Mamba would always turn and bite rather than run away. So even through a hail of bullets he turned that Jeep around and came at us. Two of the rangers just barely broke cover and got out of the way before he came crashing through the bushes. Then he was right in front of me. I was running on adrenaline at that point. Plus I was kind of pissed off. All I'd done so far is stand there and watch. And this Mamba bastard was getting under my skin. Who the hell did he think he was, anyway? He was a lousy poacher, that's all. Must've thought he was the effing king of the world or something. What kind of arrogant sumbitch tries to kill a park ranger when he gets caught poaching? When he's the one in the wrong? So I said "screw it." As the Jeep tore by, kicking up gouts of grass and mud, I dodged aside and then lurched back and grabbed hold. I pulled myself on board (I don't know how, it was pitch black and Mamba didn't have his headlights on and the Jeep was swerving like crazy through the mud holes) and leaped at Mamba from behind. He heard me coming. I managed to lock an elbow around his neck, but he took his right hand off the gearshift and got me a good one right on the temple. I saw stars, but I didn't let go. I groped blindly with my right arm and managed to get a hold of his right wrist. He took his left hand off the wheel and started throwing punches over his right shoulder at my face. I managed to get my head behind his head and shield myself that way. His foot was still on the gas. It's a wonder the Jeep didn't hit a tree and explode. Mamba must've known where he was going. Every so often his left hand would shoot out, grab the wheel, make a correction and then come back and start trying to pry me loose again. I don't know what I was trying to do: wrench him out of the driver's seat or strangle him or what. I just wasn't going to let him have everything his way. Things went on like this for another minute, a minute that seemed like all the world's history bound up together. Sweat poured off us. It was getting harder and harder to hold onto him with sweat sliming up my arms, hands, and elbow; but fortunately the sweat on his hands made it hard for him to get a grip on me. We grunted and growled like animals. I couldn't get any purchase; I was sprawled awkwardly in the backseat and my muddy boots kept slipping whenever I tried to raise up. Finally Mamba got sick of me. With his right hand he reached over to the floor of the passenger side and I heard a metallic shink! I sensed more than saw the machete in his hand and without even thinking, without even trying to grab for his wrist again, I reached down to my belt and grabbed my knife and jammed it right into the side of his neck. It was a good thing I was behind him and his angle was bad or I might not be here writing about it. He gasped, and I felt something warm drench my left arm, still wrapped around Mamba's neck. He made a horrible rasping sound, like a mouse being stepped on, and went limp. Then the Jeep was slowing down. It wound down to a crawl, then stopped completely.
It wasn't hard for Kgomotso, Jimmy and the rangers to find me. They just followed the gashes and scars torn in the muddy earth by the Jeep's tires. I was still clutching Mamba. I'd kept tight hold of him until help arrived; I wasn't about to take any chances, not in the damn dark. He might've been "playing possum" as Jimmy would've said. But as soon as the ranger squad showed up with their halogen flashlights, the matter was settled. Mamba was dead as a doornail. My knife had completely severed his windpipe. His blood was all over me, all over my arm and down my torso, and all over the seat and floor of the Jeep. The rangers sort of stood back a little as I let go of Mamba's carcass and jumped down. Jimmy slung his rifle over his shoulder, gave me one of his big ol' Southern grins, and said "Doncha ever get tired o' pullin' crazy shit on me, boss?"
Kgomotso just shook his head, smiling in spite of himself. "You are quite brave, my friend," he said. "Now I know why Director Anaya sent you. No other man would have the courage to jump on a moving Jeep and engage Mamba hand-to-hand, not knowing how good he is."
"What's that?" I asked. I was a little weak in the knees. The battle-fire was wearing off, and so was the shock. My whole body was vibrating, shivering. I felt jumpy, nervous, fragile, like I'd collapse into a million pieces if somebody clapped me on the shoulder.
"Why, Mamba was the most feared machete fighter in Southern Africa," Kgomotso said, looking surprised that I didn't know. "He liked to chop his enemies up into little pieces and feed them to the hyenas."
"Is that so?" I asked. The bottom had dropped out of my stomach. I felt like I was about to faint. I suddenly realized what a monumentally stupid thing I'd just done. Now I had yet another entry for my list of things never to tell Mom.
Jimmy told Martha and Boris the whole story when we got back to camp. They reacted pretty much like I figured they would. Martha rolled her eyes and said "Oh, brother." Boris threw back his bald head and laughed and laughed. I didn't care. I was tired and sore all of a sudden and just wanted to sleep. We got about five hours of rest before morning, when we had to dig the plane out of the mud and make another run to the capital for more supplies. Typical night in the Botswana bush, I guess. We should have things wrapped up here in another day or two, which is good, because Kgomotso says that Mamba had a lot of friends and that I should be prepared for reprisals. Not that I care (bring 'em on, I say) but there are other reasons why we ought to be going. Ethel sent me a text message last night. Another commission came in. Some Japanese businessman (Kenji's former employer, I guess) wants fifty cases of Glenfiddich delivered to his penthouse by Saturday night. We can just make it if we leave Friday. Might as well just go straight to Scotland, buy the booze there and fly it out to Japan. It'd save us some gas, as long as it's not bootlegging. I also got a text from Aaron. He said he just sold the rights to my sixth novel to Knopf-Doubleday. Guess how much it went for? Give up? A cool five million. That's more than any book I've ever written (so far). I guess this series is turning out to be as popular as I hoped! I don't really care about the money, I guess. I'm doing okay with the airline. It's the fans. I remember two years ago when I went to the midnight premiere for my fifth book. The line was around the block. Everybody from high school kids to little old ladies, all of 'em with shining faces and eager expressions. You could just see the joy in their eyes. Their minds were getting set to digest another round of howling adventures. Man, that was rewarding to see. Reminds me of me, waiting impatiently for the next Harry Potter book all those years ago.
Well, Boris just started singing "Slavsya, Rossiya!" and it sounds like Martha and Kgomotso are trying to sing along, so I'd better get out there before I miss the party. I brought some cigars and Scotch along; that ought to shore up Boris's vodka selection quite nicely. Maybe when we get back to the States I'll sit down and pen a little article about me and my friend Mamba. I wonder if Travel & Leisure would buy it?Nah, probably not.
Yeah, yeah. I know what you're thinking. Uganda. Idi Amin. Entebbe Airport. The National Resistance Army. Bantu tribal warfare. That's an undeniable part of Uganda's history. But I hear (from potentially unreliable sources) that the place is doing a lot better now. And (from those same sources) there's lots of neat things to do there. It's like Kenya, only without the obsequious porters.
I mean, there's still the occasional dust-up, and a brouhaha about crimes against humanity every now and again, but the word on the street is that the place could be a lot worse.
Whether this is true or not, and whatever the political situation really is, I'm intoxicated by the idea of actually going to the place. I haven't a clue why I am. It's a stupid idea. I could be kidnapped and beheaded for all I know, sandbagged at night and robbed of all I'm worth. Maybe that's the reason. The danger. Going to Uganda, to me, would feel like stepping into the cave of a dragon about five minutes after the noble knight vanquished it. The immediate threat may have subsided, but the place itself still maintains a sinister aura.
The white-water rafting would be an added bonus.
Just my rotten luck some of the most beautiful places on Earth are so war-torn and strife-ridden.
Here's a film for every chartered accountant who ever wanted to be a lion-tamer.
Hatari! (1962) concerns a group of expatriates in East Africa, capturing animals for zoos and circuses. And how do they do it? The fanny-kickin' way, of course: trucks, ropes, and cages. None of this wishy-washy tranquilizer nonsense. John Wayne and his gang are taking names. If you've ever fantasized about climbing into a beat-up old pickup truck and chasing an enraged rhinoceros across the sunlit grass of the Ngorogoro Crater, you've gotta sit down and see this movie.
The plot: John Wayne's character, Sean Mercer, is the boss of a game company, a crack team of drivers and animal wranglers based somewhere in Kenya. They live on an extravagant spread, a compound filled with bungalows, cages, enclosures, sheds, and enough booze and zebra-skin rugs to stock a hundred African adventure flicks. By day, they drive out to the savanna in a beat-up assortment of vehicles and run down the local fauna; by night, they smoke, drink, dance, and romance like New York socialites, accompanied by some of the grooviest tunes Henry Mancini could dish up. Seems like a pretty cool job, if you ask me.
Sean is a cantankerous Irish-American with bad luck in love. He came within an inch of getting married, once. Then he made the mistake of bringing her to Africa with him. She couldn't stand the place and walked out on him. Since then, Sean's shunned women with a vehemence bordering on misogyny. His well-ordered lifestyle is suddenly complicated by the arrival of a beautiful Italian photographer, Dallas (Elsa Martinelli), sent by one of the client zoos to take pictures of their acquisitions. Sean wants her gone, but Dallas immediately wins the hearts of his coworkers: wisecracking driver Pockets (a Brooklyn cabbie, played by the inimitable Red Buttons), who is secretly in love with Brandy (Michèle Girardon), for whose attentions the much-more-handsome-and-dashing Kurt Muller and "Chips" Maurey (Hardy Krüger and Gérard Blain) are hotly competing. There's the shadow of bad luck hanging over the whole expedition, too, as "the Indian" (Bruce Cabot), the expedition's rifleman, is wounded by a rhinoceros in the opening scenes. The crew must find a replacement and simultaneously cope with what the Indian is sure is a "rhino jinx."
Interspersed with all of this are some of the most amazing animal sequences ever seen in a movie, before or since. There are no CG effects going on here, people: it's the real deal. The cast members really did pile into trucks and Jeeps and go haring after rhinos and giraffes and zebras, all over the African plains. Not only that, but most of these scenes are unscripted: there was no way of knowing what the wild animals would do, so director Howard Hawks told the cast to ad-lib as they went along. Watching John Wayne doing his darnedest not to swear on-camera while wrestling a fully grown zebra into a crate (or getting his foot stomped on by a baby giraffe) is nothing short of cinematic gold.
Wayne proves his mettle, though. In one timeless scene, he faces down the charge of an angry mother elephant on foot, rifle in hand. I thought that was the pinnacle of manliness when I first watched this film as an eight-year-old boy. And it's not just chasing animals, either. Midway through the film, Pockets (my favorite character) comes up with a high-flown scheme to net a bunch of monkeys: a rocket. He plans to build a skyrocket to haul a net 100 feet into the air and drape it over an enormous tree, into which the helpful Warusha tribe (who, unfortunately, aren't really developed as characters, and are treated more as part of the African scenery) have chased 500 chattering, screeching vervet monkeys. Ever see that in any other movie? Eh? I thought not.
Comedy slides seamlessly in between hazards and canoodling. Not only are we privy to the whimsical courtship of Sean and Dallas, and Pockets's never-ending supply of one-liners (when a cape buffalo rams its head into the front grille of the catching truck, Pockets quips "Our insurance rate just went up"), but there are plenty of non-romantic hijinks to go around in between safaris. Bedlam ensues when someone leaves the gate of the ostrich enclosure open, and the lanky birds escape into the compound. Dallas, a compassionate soul, becomes a magnet for orphaned baby elephants, much to Sean's chagrin. And the research, development, and implementation of Pockets's monkey-netting rocket are always good for a laugh.
The film keeps the suspense going nicely, too. All the time, you're wondering whether the cast is ever going to run out of cigarettes. And through it all, there's the intangible sense of adventure hovering just below our perceptions. As one views this film, one subconsciously realizes the grandeur of the setting, the quiet ecstasy and omnipresent thrill of having a swashbuckling job in a far-flung corner of the planet. I dare anyone with a soul to resist the excitement that bubbles up in your midsection whenever the screen turns to a wide-angle shot of the Masai Mara and the catching cars heave into sight, engines roaring, bald tires kicking up dust. The very concept of the film—living and working in Africa, capturing fractious megafauna on a daily basis—is intoxicating.
Smoldering passions, shameless chain smoking, exhilarating chases, exotic locales, dangerous beasts, endless dangers and high thrills (and a hefty helping of male chauvinism) render this flick dated but endlessly fun. For world travel, nostalgia, adventure, laughs, romance, intrigue, and a rollicking good time, look up Hatari! and hang on for the ride.
Just don't get too close to the TV. That rhinoceros is a mean one.
