Safari

We took breakfast on the patio of the Mole Motel just as the sun was rising. The doa-doa tree with its red-seeded fruits hanging like Christmas ornaments, was full of birds. A small troop of baboons came to drink from the pool, and perhaps to steal fruit from the tables. The morning was cool, soft, though the sun, once it cleared the lodge, brought heat. The terrace looked out over one if the largest watering holes in the region. And as I had scanned the shore through my binoculars, the night before, I watched a long, lean shape ease into the water. Crocodile!

At seven we met DK, our guide from the evening before. Elepants had been spotted, and he ushered us into the van quickly. We sped off, raising a trail of red dust. Another tour had found the elephant, and were disembarking. DK warned us to move quietly and quickly. The elephant was eating as we approached. It did its best to hide behind the tree it was feeding from. We watched for a while, but the other group drew too close and the elephant moved off.

After some discussion, we continued in the van, pausing for bushbucks and waterbucks, cob and baboons, and finally another elephant. This one was out in the open, and didn’t seem to mind our small group. Once it turned and took a few steps toward us; DK stood forward and the elephant ambled off toward a trickle of water, pausing to pump water into its trunk, curl its trunk toward is mouth, and squirt the water in.

Back in the van, DK recited elephant’s natural history. “We have here the savannah el-ay-fant and the forest el-ay-fant.” he began “If you go down south, the elephants we have there are the forest elephants. If you come to Ghana Northwest to Mole National Park, the elephants we have here, are the savannah elephants.” He went on to illustrate the differences between the two and give more detail about African elephants in general: “Because the elephant has a poor digestive system, it eats a lot. Because they eat a lot, they go to toilet 16 times a day under normal conditions.” Though his voice was measured, a playful irony under laid it and we laughed all the way through his presentation.

It is an astonishing thing, to see an elephant in the wild. For most of us who live in the U.S., they are the creatures of story: Dumbo, Horton, Babar. We see them in zoos and circuses. Animals half tamed and bored, far from the places where their foot prints and wallows might provide puddles for other animals to drink from, weeks after the surrounding land has dried.

But after the elephants, it was the birds that distracted me until my breakfast was cold. Sent me thumbing through the Birds of Western Africa in search of a match. Found me calling for the van to stop. We scattered a bevy of double-spurred francolin, small partridges who disappeared into the undergrowth, and gazed at the impossible scarlet-chested sunbird. A flock of African grey hornbills flew overhead, calling. I had read about hornbills as child, and been amazed by their habit of sealing the female and young inside a tree cavity with a hole large enough only for the male to pass food through, and breaking the seal only when the young were ready to leave the nest. We stopped for a bustard, hadada ibis, rose-ringed parakeet, and clown-like hoopoe.

I love birds and have watched them since childhood, and it is a rare thing to encounter so many new species at a time. Like the batiked fabrics and carved animals, the check-marked drawings in my bird guide would be another treasure I would carry home from Ghana