The Day I Was Featured On the ESPN Highlight Reel....In Boma Country

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

The author on Dominique, crossing Tanzania 2015

Not exactly the highlight reel I’d intended but I’ll take glorious fame

The morning started like all the others. Randall, the only Meru man on our trip and the camp cook, was making Randall’s Famous Pancakes under a tree. The rest of us, three Maasai men and this author, were busy picking up camp and getting ready for another long day.

I was the only one riding; the other two camels were the pack animals. Everyone else walked.

I knew this crew from a previous camel safari which had taken me the three days from Mount Meru, just outside Arusha, to Moshe, where I would climb Kilimanjaro. I’d fallen in love with Dominique (above) on my first trip in 2013.

I’d signed up for a seven-day trek with the team from Arusha to Lake Natrone in February of 2015.

Each day, we would walk the endless Tanzania plains country which was dotted with the occasional Maasai boma, a term borrowed from the Swahili. In this context it means a livestock enclosure where there are small huts for each wife of the Maasai herdsman. She cooks, produces kids and brings them up, and marries her daughters off to other men with their own bomas.

Livestock is brought in each night and the enclosure is protected by the heavily-thorned acacia branches, which can fend off most predators (and is hell to get caught in if you’re human, just saying).

The area’s wildlife has largely disappeared with the Maasai taking over the countryside, with the food sources disappearing for the wildlife I’d come to see. The way of the world. Little did I know that it would soon be my turn to be the wildlife attraction.

I’m ahead of myself.

Randall, who was the master of the morning brew and crew food, made sure that we all had plenty of water. They had brought enough for me to shower each night, which struck me as a terrible waste.

Hell, in that kind of heat we’d all smell anyway. Especially the camels. By the end of the trip we’d all smell like camels.

So I eschewed the showers, which pleased everyone because that was a lot less work. We could, and did, often give that fresh water to Maasai kids who drank whatever water was available. That would be the water that their cows, sheep and goats were peeing and pooping in at the same time.

Let’s just say those kids’ immune systems would likely fend off the plague.

On this particular day, we’d managed to get a few hours into the journey when my bladder began announcing that it might be time for me to dismount and find a bush. You drink a lot of water in that parched part of the world.

Bushes in this part of Africa are in short supply. So are trees, as there are too many creatures feeding on them and too many Maasai cutting them down for firewood and homes. So, you improvise.

I was just about to wave Randall down when our little procession walked right into the middle of rather large compound made up of a great many bomas.

Right about that time, my bladder began a strongly-worded negotiation with me.

As we made our slow way into the compound, the first yells rang out.

MZUNGU!!!! MZUNGU!!! MZUNGU!!!

(Loosely translated: White person, or foreigner, originally, “white person running around,” as in chased by something with teeth, generally confused by the heat, dizzy)

That word unleashed hundreds of people from the insides of the bomas as the word spread.

Photo by Sneha Cecil on Unsplash

When you’re the entertainment

It’s been my experience that being the only White person in rural Africa can often mean that people expect you to hand out whatever form of money, sweets, goodies, gifts, anything you have for no reason other than you are White. Years of NGOs have enabled and underscored such behavior.

It’s not a bad thing. You just need to be prepared for it.

Out here, I figured I might well be stripped naked.

Not hurt, just gently relieved of everything else people might find useful.

At that moment, however, the only relief I wanted was from my bladder’s increasingly insistent pressure. All else could be negotiated later.

The idea didn’t frighten me so much as cause me to wonder if I’d brought another pair of underwear just in case. The sun is brutal, after all.

Lady Godiva would not have done well in Tanzania in summertime.

I told Randall my predicament. Dominique dropped to his knees. The moment I dismounted, gravity informed me that either I would find a bush fast or I would find myself in deep embarrassment in front of one hell of a crowd.

Randall pointed off to my right. I began speed-walking towards the only tree in the compound. Ten feet away, I realized that the shady spot was inhabited by four sleeping Maasai elders.

Nope.

I spun and sped in another direction. By now more people were gathering, dust was rising, and the growing, thundering crowd was yelling

MZUNGU!!!!!!

MZUNGU!!!!!!

MZUNGU!!!!!!

Holy shit.

I looked over my shoulder at the oncoming human tsunami and nearly toppled into a towering Maasai warrior. He was standing with one foot firmly planted in the inside of the opposite knee, a look of extreme bemusement on his face.

I backed away, and nearly went ass-over-teakettle over a goat.

By now I’d lived up to every single possible expectation of a mzungu.

I’ve been on stage in front of thousands of people and I have never felt so naked, or about to become so.

Encircled by bleating animals, the elders now awake and watchful, surrounded by hundreds of Maasai women, kids and curious warriors, I located Randall in the near distance.

He grinned at me, and pulled his cap over his face.

Whereupon I pulled my own sunhat over my face, dropped my drawers and peed into the sand.

Photo by Eunice Mobegi on Unsplash

The crowd fell into a stunned silence. I mustered all the dignity I had left (there wasn’t much) covered my brighty-whitey buttocks and strode straight-backed to Dominique.

The crowd, moving fluidly like a pack of African hunting dogs, moved with me.

“ohmigod what’s she gonna do next???”

In one smooth motion I was on Dominique’s back. In another great motion he rose, all seven feet and then some of his regal self, towering over even the tallest of their warriors.

The crowd scattered to all cardinal directions.

If you’ve rarely ever seen a horse, a camel is quite the sight. Put a skinny old mzungu on one, especially one who just peed in the town square in front of the entire population, well then.

It’s not often I leave a large crowd speechless.

Of course I’ve never dropped my trousers in front of a large crowd either, so I am shy the reference point.

Randall and I winked at each other. Then our three-camel, three-Maasai, one- Meru and one white-butted Mzungu procession strode our slow, majestic way out of the boma.

A legend in my own mind

I’m thinking….

The stories would be played and replayed for days. Months. Like all those guys who got embarrassed by Barry Sanders’ highlight reels, the tale of the mzungu who peed for all to see, whose bright white buttocks shone in the midday sun, that would be my legacy.

I would be the tribal ESPN highlight reel for like, FOREVER.

I’d be raised to goddess stature.

Word would spread. They would speak of me in hushed tones around campfires for decades. Millennia. A heroine for the ages.

The woman who…..

….the strange old White lady running around who couldn’t find a bush.

The author in Africa, 2015. She found a bush.

Thanks for spending time with me today, and hopefully having a laugh with me again. If you enjoy this, kindly consider subscribing. If it serves you please also consider tossing a few pennies on my deck. This takes time, work, love and dedication.

If you know someone who needs a good chuckle or a reminder that Africa really is an amazing place to visit (it’s HUGE), please also consider

Either way, thanks for your time, neither one of us gets it back. I hope it was worthwhile.