Land of the Free, Lynn Santer [best books to read now TXT] 📗

I had waited a lifetime for this moment, more than a lifetime. The instant my feet touched African soil it felt as though I had come home, as though I belonged there.

Watching with the eyes of an awe-struck child as my father screened his home-made documentaries of the Dark Continent in the attic cinema of our London home, I had yearned with every fiber of my young being to explore the magical, mystical, ancient land that is Mother Africa. Yet as an adult I’d held back. Why?

I’d traveled all over the world. I’d seen the Arabian Nights style towers of the monumental edifices in Moscow’s Red Square. I’d flown over Niagara Falls in a tiny helicopter, dwarfed by their grandeur. I’d dived the oceans in Australia’s Barrier Reef, in Hawaii, Tahiti, Noumea and Fiji. I’d visited the Tower of London, a concentration camp in Vienna, the jazz quarter in Prague, but always Africa was a place I feared to tread. Why? I know why. Because as a child, watching those mesmerizing documentaries of my father’s I had built Africa up in my mind to be something so big, so fantastic, so incredible, that my adult mind told me the reality would never match up to my childhood perception, so I didn’t want to burst the bubble. Because I love the animals so much and fear them so little I knew with absolute certainty that visiting Africa would likely be the last thing I ever did. And lastly because when I “did” Africa, I wanted to do it a certain way; I wanted to be alone (except for the guide I had to have) to track the animals in the most natural way possible, the way my father had done. I wanted it to be real. But when I returned at night I wanted four brick walls, a comfortable bed, and a hot shower. You can “do” Africa that way, but it comes with a hefty price tag. All of this notwithstanding, finally I was ready.

Booked into a place called Ngala, a private game reserve on the Western boundary of the famed Kruger National Park, I flew first into Johannesburg and then to Skukuza before boarding a twelve-seater Cessna Caravan for the remaining ten minute flight to the fifteen thousand pristine hectares of prime private game land at Ngala. For the first and only time in Ngala’s history I was the only guest booked into the lodge – fate! Of course the staff were terrified that a single, white, woman, alone in Africa for the first time would be horrified at being the only solitary guest, but nothing could be further from the truth. Fifteen thousand hectares of Africa’s finest and eighty staff all to myself was my idea of what heaven looked like!

Perhaps in attempt to placate me, as I was the only passenger on the aircraft, Sandra, the South African pilot, asked me where I’d like to sit. I opted for the co-pilot’s chair and to my astonishment after Sandra discovered I’d taken a few flying lessons (in a tiny two-seater Piper Tomerhawk) she asked me if I’d like to pilot the plane! That was how my first trip to Africa commenced, piloting a twelve-seater luxurious private jet over the Kruger National Park… that was something that was NEVER going to happen in my lifetime.

That night, by a water hole, with Eric, my native Shangaan guide at my side, I looked up at the sky and realized you do not truly know how many stars there are in heaven until you have seen the night sky from African soil. Tears welled in my eyes. I was overcome with the grandeur, the spectacle, the ancient belonging of the moment… and I hadn’t even seen an animal yet! Then, as has been happening since before recorded history, a herd of elephant silently emerged from the undergrowth to drink. How such vast numbers of gigantic beasts could be so silent, and so invisible just moments before, seemed impossible. Everything about this seemed impossible, and yet so real. I felt as though my entire life had been a rehearsal for that moment in time, as though nothing else mattered, as though success, career and material possessions were all simply missing the point. That moment touched, or more accurately awakened, something in my soul I didn’t even know was there. After that life-changing trip (the first of many) to Africa I returned to my home on a mission. This land and its magnificent creatures were threatened, in danger of marching unerringly forward to extinction, to the relegation of existence only in history books. I knew I had to do something about it.

I had won my first award for animal welfare, inspired by my father, when I was only eleven years old. At the age of forty I was about to embark on something that would see my life threatened, see me join forces with an iconic Hollywood legend, see me receive a cry for help from a multi-awarded and embattled conservationist in Zimbabwe, and perhaps most unbelievably of all it would see me plan an undercover mission with ex Special Forces Commandos to expose brutal atrocities by some of the wealthiest men on earth. And this I did, for real: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUKLFFsiQPk

Publication Date: 11-19-2009

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