Final Musings on the African Bushveld

I often wonder why I feel the way I do when I'm in Africa. So, I thought I’d try to capture in words the emotions I experience. I expect the words to fall well short of the real feelings, but I’ll give it a shot.

The moment you set foot back in Africa, the first thing you’ll encounter is the biggest, warmest smiles—smiles filled with big, beautiful white teeth. The smile is infectious. The happiness flows into you like warmth. This feeling grows, almost becoming a giggle or laughter, which to me is synonymous with the people of Africa. A happiness envelops you, and all other worries seem to disappear. Hakuna Matata.

The next thing you notice is the children. Kids are playing everywhere. They aren’t wealthy; often, they don’t have shoes. They probably should be in school, but they’re happy. They aren’t whining about the toy they want or the colour of their shoes. They’re not a burden on their families; instead, they’re integral members of the support system. And again, they are content. They are happy. Hakuna Matata. We fill our heads with pity, yet they feel none of it, accepting happiness with ease.

As you venture into the bush, it feels like stepping into a 4D cinema. All your senses come alive. Suddenly, you hear, smell, touch, and see everything more acutely.

Three smells always stand out to me. The first is the strong aroma of wild basil when the Land Rover’s wheels crush a bush. It’s sweet, aromatic, and utterly delicious—this is the strongest scent I remember. The second is the incredible smell of rain, either approaching or just passed. like warm honey touching the back of your throat and tasting like burnt sugar. You can almost eat this smell. Parts of Africa are dry, and when the rain falls, something happens that I don’t experience anywhere else to the same extent. That smell is inseparable from Africa for me. Finally, the smell of fire in the evening—whether it's just the wood burning or food cooking over it—lingers in my clothes like a safety blanket. Oh, how I love the smells of Africa.

The sounds. Oh, the sounds of Africa. In the earliest hours, just before dawn, the birds begin to wake. It starts with just one, then more and more join in. If you really stop to listen, you’ll hear so many different kinds. Once you truly listen, the sound becomes so loud that you can’t hear anything else. But then the animals begin to wake. The snorts and alarm calls of the antelopes, the deep rumble of a lion, the trumpet of an elephant. These are the obvious, clichéd sounds, but if you allow yourself the effort, you’ll hear so much more—the wind whistling through the acacia, the crack of a tree breaking under an elephant's weight, or the quiet calls of the smaller creatures.

Then evening arrives. Unlike the morning, when the nocturnal animals are quieting down to the sound of birds, it is the same animals that wake up at night, creating a cacophony of sounds. The most obvious is the whooping of hyenas, but it’s the alarm calls of zebras that always stand out to me, ever conscious of lions hunting at dusk. Then there are the owls coming out to hunt. But the loudest of all are the tiny bush babies and their strange screeches, sounds that will have you convinced they come from a much larger creature.

Africa is a journey of exploration. Every hill offers a new vista—a silhouette of an acacia tree with an elephant beside it on the horizon, or another blood-orange sunset. Every valley presents a new adventure. Watching impalas pronk, or the uncertainty of wildebeests. The nervousness of a dik-dik, the guilty embarrassment of a hyena, or the quiet confidence of a buffalo. Seeing a hippo yawn or a giraffe bend down to drink at a watering hole. Observing families supporting each other, whether it’s cheetahs hiding their cubs in secret places or adult elephants surrounding their young ones. It’s a never-ending search for the next exciting episode, the next act in a play unfolding in front of you in real life. There’s nothing like being in nature, untouched, unbridled, unaffected by human hands. Watching life happen around you, like a voyeur.

Oh, how I love Africa.