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The richest
experience I’ve had in all my travels around Africa came when my travel partner
and I gave a woman named Malina a long lift from her crafts shop at Kruger
National Park through a rainstorm to her home in Hazyview, South Africa. Along
the way she taught us all about the wild Big Five animals we’d just photographed
in the park. About the Water Buffalo, the Rhino, and the majestic Leopard. How
the Elephants get drunk in the summer by eating the fruit of the Marula tree
(it’s no myth, she swore) and how they then stagger comically about. How the
Lions roam free and fierce in the park, but why they know never to leave its
boundaries. Why the fierce Hippopotamus (the top killer of people among African
animals) never ranked in the Big Five of dangerous game trophies: (“Because
who’d want to put that ugly mug up on their wall back home ...”).
We arrived at Hazyview and to thank us for the lift through the rain, Malina
presented us several of her hand made wooden crafts as gifts, blessed us for our
kindness, and wished that I'd find as much good luck with my street photography
as I’d found in the park with “her” animals. The next day on our way to
begin a three-day leopard safari in Kruger Park, we stopped for a snack just
down the road from where we'd dropped Malina off the evening before, and I spotted
two of her Hazyview neighbors sharing an umbrella and walking past a typically
African roadside call center -- and thick with karma, the spirit of Africa, and
the best wishes of Malina, I captured one of my favorite umbrella streetphotos
I’ve ever made.
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