RUNWAY SAFARI

Although the actual word in Zulu escapes me, our guide informed us that the name for giraffe in native tongue means “above the trees.” A more appropriate honorific was never given. We watched the gentle giants strip leaves off thorny Acacia trees with their foot-long purple tongues all the while their pom-pom horns visible just above the trees as their epithet implied.
I snapped away that day, the African bush veldt wildlife worked it for me like models on a runway in Paris. Baby Vervet monkeys smiled for my camera, Chacma baboons sat sultry and still while I shot and elephants sauntered precariously near our open-air vehicle enabling a wide-angle moment like never before. As we exited Hluhluwe Game Park I felt like yelling “all right folks, that’s a wrap.” Normally I am a terrible photographer because I don’t like to ruin “moments” just so they can be memorialized in digital wonder. Today I had been dubbed shutterbug and put in charge of capturing the “Big 5” for the Rubke’s epic African adventure. (For those of you who haven’t been living in Africa the big 5 are: African Buffalo, Lions, Leopard, Rhinoceros, and Elephants, it took me almost two years to figure that our, don’t feel left out). I had no intention of letting my fans down so armed with a Nikon I decided I’d leave no zebra behind. Taking my paparazzi of the veldt seriously I got Boks from every angle: springboks, bonteboks, steenboks, gemsboks, you name it, if it had hooves, I have a photo. Since making wild animals strut the runway is not my normal mode of being I had a blast yelling “work it” at a group of warthogs, however there was a point during the day when I put my camera down.
Hluluwe-Imfolizi Park used to be the hunting grounds of Shaka Zulu, the king who united and expanded the Zulu nation. Its rolling hills punctuated by the definitively African flattop acacia trees make the setting feel sublimely royal. Shaka reserved these hills for himself, proclaiming the spot as the best game dwelling in all of Zululand; I have to agree with him. I dropped the camera lens away from the horizon and let my own ocular lens take in the scene unobscured.
“I’m in Africa,” said that familiar voice which so often has quieted my busy mind over the past 18 months. It is easy to forget because life becomes life. Every once in a while that voice in the back of my head lightly taps my brain and says “this isn’t normal” and I am filled with a flooding sense of wonder. As we wound through Imfolozi’s hills searching the horizon for big gray rhino butts and the shady trees for lounging caramel colored cats I poked my head between my parents shoulders who were seated in front of me. I slung my arms around their shoulders and squeezed verbalizing what we were all thinking: “we are blessed.”
Truly. We exited the park watching an elephant give himself a mud bath to stave off the heat of the day. The Rubke’s epic African adventure encompassed so much more than seeing wildlife but I think that day in Hluhluwe embodied the spirit of the trip. Wonder, thankfulness, laughter and some mighty fine photos abounded as the senior Rubke’s joined baby Rubke in Africa. Stay tuned for the next installment when the Rubke’s do Siberia (just kidding Mom, and sorry to get you excited Papa…).