D.

The name of our guide in the Maasai Mara was D. Short for David, the Christian name given to him in high school when his true Maasai name, Matunga Tome, was just too hard for the class to pronounce, let alone remember. And since there were seven Davids in the class, he became known, simply, as D. I guess it stuck. The 27-year-old, who knows every inch of the Mara and can, in his own words, “spot an elephant with his eyes closed”, is married with a 4 month old daughter. He told us the Maasai tend not to name babies right away because the children don’t often survive much past their birth and once you give a name, you can’t use it ever again. D, however, says the more modern parents, like himself, are changing that rule. It’s funny to call the Maasai “modern” I guess. But when we were in the absolute deepest pocket of the Mara, surrounded only by wildebeest, lions and elephants, and D’s cell phone rang -- or should I say holla’d -- to the tune of Jojo’s “Baby It’s You” (I don’t know what’s worse: having that ring tone in the first place or me being able to identify the song right away), “modern” is really the only word that seems to come to mind. Especially when he got perfect cell reception the entire time.
Aside from his draping clothes, decorative jewellery and fond memories of spearing hippos “just for fun” as a child, he’s really not that different from the rest of us. He explained to us that most marriages in his culture are arranged. But growing up, that didn’t stop him, or any of the other teenagers, from sneaking around with the ones they were really crushing on. The more we all talked as we traversed the wilderness, the smaller our differences became. But if you ask D where his real kinship lies, he’ll say it’s with the other animals. Even though he sees them everyday, and has since he was a child, he still marvels at them. That was pretty clear during what I considered to be the best part of the game drive: seeing the African elephants. He said there’s really no animal more powerful or dangerous than an elephant, not even a lion. Elephants are just so unpredictable and remarkably huge. That’s why as they age, much like humans actually, losing that physical strength and prowess takes an emotional toll on them as well. Elephants, who can live for 60 years, start losing their tusks as they grow old. And once that happens, they know their time is drawing to a close and so, they become very solitary and go off by themselves to die on their own.

Thinking back to all the statues, photographs, and wall-hangings in my parents house in Calgary, coming on this safari helped me find an answer to a question that has long since irked me. I always wondered why my parents never wanted to return to East Africa after they had left. I mean, we could have stayed in a nice hotel, far from all the bustle of the city. They could have caught up with childhood friends, seen all the places they had been to growing up. I just assumed they never came back because they wanted to remember the country as it was. The way they lived their life 35 years ago. To preserve those perfect memories. But now, I realize why they have no need to physically come back here. It’s because Africa has never left them. It’s in the old photographs of close-up zebra and elephant on the mantel in their home. It’s in the ebony carvings of Maasai warriors propped up proudly in the den. It’s even in the way my dad jokingly signed off on his last email to me “Baba” and the way my mom says “isn’t it?” after a sentence as East Africans do, rather than saying, “right?”, as most of us do when we’re sure we’re correct about something. This country, as busy, polluted and dangerous as parts of it might be, is just as much -- if not more so -- spectacular, warm and generous. Africa seems to have a special gift I think, to stay within a person long after they have left the place. I’m not sure exactly why yet, it’s still too early for me to tell. But I hope by the time I leave, I’ll be able to explain it