While getting dressed I noticed a small red piece of yarn in my underwear. Took pause to remember a bit then went on with the day.

I've done a lot of things in Africa but none have involved red yarn in my underwear. Maybe I'm not getting the whole African experience?

If I find anything out of place in my underwear it most certainly does not remind me of Africa.

quote:

Originally posted by TerryR:
I've done a lot of things in Africa but none have involved red yarn in my underwear. Maybe I'm not getting the whole African experience?

LOL!!!

You guys just aren't observant enough. When they take your laundry for the day they tie in a tiny piece of yarn to make sure the right articles end up in the right tent. My color was red.

John-
You need to go on more safari. I've never seen/ heard of this and thought you had completely lost it.
Cheers

You guys have never wondered about these little threads on your clothes after a safari?

For me being the only hunter usually in camp, it has never been a problem. This is the first time that I had ever heard of that as well.

I had a shirt that had the smell of the campfire on it even after a couple of washings back home. That smell sure did bring back fond memories. Should have never washed it.

Knew immediately what you were talking about. Ours on the last trip were green, and the other couple had yellow threads sewn into the label of each piece of clothing.

I too get a smile on my face when I come across one.

Mine are still tied in my shirts too.

Elkfitter
I have a shirt, in a plastic bag, that I don't intend to wash. Sometimes, I take a moment to smell the smoke of the mopane campfire, then I have a glass of Amarula and dream.
Bfly

A little story by Gene Hill on remembering Africa (I have posted this before, but I enjoy reading it over and over)-

Unpacking Some Memories of Africa
By Gene Hill

Just about this time of year, a few years back, I was happily packing for Africa. After I got home I never really unpacked. I played at staying ready to return at a moment’s notice. I kept a few things in my little tin trunk and a lot of things in my heart. But now that my part of Africa is closed t hunting, I guess I might as well shake out most of the things I put away.

I wish I could tell you about the dawns and sunsets, but I can’t. I could attempt to describe the colors of the sky, the ways the light shifted from dark olive to orange to yellow to blue-white, and the way the air went from bone cold to suffocatingly hot, but I can’t really do them justice. I can close my and see the colors change, but I lose the intensity when I open them.

What I would like you to hear most are the sound of mourning—a pair of shrikes, a male and a female, calling so melodiously to each other that you cry from the beauty of it. The baboons setting up an early leopard watch with their angry, vicious backing. And until the morning heat sends everything into a modest quiet, the rising susurrus of sounds: an animal newspaper with everybody reading items aloud to everyone else.

And the n evening comes on and the sun hangs there just the way Cezanne would want it to, framing a perfect acacia tree so long you’d think it was stuck. Then suddenly it’s dark and the night orchestra tunes up: one animal small-talking to others of its kind; another just bragging and shouting; others still going about their nightly business of getting supper and rounding up the kids.

But, as I said, I can’t do it justice and I won’t try. I can’t even get across to you one of the things that I still dream about. It’s a simple thing to say but something else to feel all around you. It’s space, or distance, or horizons, and it’s really no one of these things—it’s all of them; it’s Africa.

Perhaps more than anything I liked riding up in the back of the hunting truck with the trackers, trying each other’s tobacco and snuff. You’d look out in front as the truck topped a hill, and there was Africa everywhere—and you’d smile because that was just what it ought to be. You’d runt around and there it was, even more of it, all spread out behind you. And no one was there, except for a few Masai or Wakambas who you didn’t see unless you went looking, or got on one of the real roads—the kind that didn’t have trees and brush growing up in the middle.

Off in the distance you’d almost always see something: a band of ostriches, giraffes, oryx, zebras, gazelles, or—where we were—rhinos. It was an experience just being there, being part of Africa, part of something so right, so big, so exactly what could never get enough of that I didn’t want the truck to ever stop. In my mind we just keep driving on and around forever… Katheka and Josie and me, poking each other in the ribs whenever we see something, or chucking a little snuff under our lip to make spit. Together we form a kind of Africa Flying Dutchman.

I can’t really explain how this vastness drew something out of me, rid me of some emotional paralysis and made me feel as free and as natural a part of that landscape as the Masai or the oryx or the impala. But I have never been happier.

Another of the memories I didn’t want to unpack was of lunch time: cold meat from yesterday’s supper, maybe a kidney or a Tommy liver, along with a chop or two, some sardines, a fresh-baked bread, and a semi-warm bottle of Tusker beer. I’d lie on my back and watch the clouds play through the leaves of fever trees, or the giant figs. I’d watch the weaver birds in their sort of upside down nests, or the blue rollers doing their aerial chandelles. Then I’d sleep in the heat until Josie work me up for a cup of tea, and we’d be off again, sailing over the sea of Africa.

In the evening, or more often well after dark, we’d spot our campfires and begin wondering what we’d have for supper, what the others had seen or shot, and whether to have a scotch or a gin. At camp a huge fire would be warming our canvas chairs. We’d have a quick drink and chat about the shooting, and then a hot bucket shower, clean clothes, a down jacket, and on or two more drinks before dinner.

It was always early to bed, snuggled under three or four blankets, wish-dreaming like a child for tomorrow’s lesser kudu or a better than 40-inch oryx. The now-familiar night sounds were a touch of home. It was always a great temptation, now and then indulged, to sit up and listen until the small hours and marvel that even the fire smelled like nothing else but Africa.

I would be up early with the ripping sound of my tent zipper being opened by one of the kitchen men bringing me my pot of tea. He’d light the gas lantern as he left so I could see to dress and shave. Then I’d have 15 minutes or so to lie in bed and drink my tea before getting up. No king ever enjoyed such luxury more!

Then breakfast: oatmeal, more tea, toast, and bacon. Afterwards I’d check the rifles and ammo and be off into the chill of a 6 o’clock African morning, my fluting shrikes going slightly off-key in the cold and dark. I would have given anything to be able to whistle just well enough to join them for a minute, but was never tempted enough to risk spoiling it.

A day’s note from the most inadequate diary typically reads: “Morning hunt was a five-hour walk. Perfect day to see top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Cannot believe I am camped virtually on a side of it. Never want to go home. Watched four kongoni who seem to be practicing sharp turns. Shepherd’s pie for supper. Up tomorrow at five as usual. A lovely day.”

My lovely days went into a notebook with a few words designed more to job the memory than to attempt to capture the uncapturable. There are little notes like, “Saw fourteen fine heads of different species today: rhino, elephant, eland, lesser kudu, etc., etc.” Already I’d gotten too blasé to finish the note. But now I remember some of the others: cheetah, a pride of five that we literally stepped on and flushed, like so many brown-spotted, golden, land-bound birds; a red-maned lion that was far too elegant to shoot—and too smart to come to our bait for a closer look: a leopard at mid-morning that sat a half-mile distant and coldly stared into my eyes until I flinched and looked away.

There are those who will go back without a rifle, but I am not one of them… no yet. I like to hunt. I like to stalk, the tracking mystery, the shot, and the skinning. I suppose I could go without shooting, but that’s a decision I can only make with the legal rifle in my hand. I want both the right to shoot and the privilege of not doing so. I could see Kenya again without my heavy rifles—but I couldn’t experience it.

What I ought to do is keep my tin trunk packed, after cleaning out the despair and the regret, with a fresh notebook and a new pen. Add a box or so of .375’s, my old walking shoes, some fresh chewing tobacco and snuff, and a few pictures to show Josie and Katheka when I get back.

An artist once said that his eyes were stuck to a point and would bleed if he turned away, Just so, my heart has been pierced by the turning of Africa, and bleeds for it.

Dogcat,
One of my favorite Gene Hill articles. From "A Listening Walk". Always a great read!

Dogcat,

Great article, thanks for sharing that. A lot of emotions captured in that article. There is so much about Africa that really does defy the ability to capture in pictures, videos, words or artwork -- it simply has to be lived.

Yes, Gene was a great writer, no doubt. Wonderful story.