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Scenes from a Kenya Safari
Text and photographs by George W. Stone
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I had a home in Africa, and it was this tent. A blissfully simple affair, breezy, waterproof, and spacious inside. I loved it for what it was—small, open, rustic, authentic—as well as for what it was not: posh, ostentatious, expensive, and artificial. In the last decade, "safari style" has become something of a franchise, and permanent camps seem to be engaged in chic one-upmanship. "Tents" these days can have teak floors, ceiling fans, marble baths, fancy showers, silver lamps and tea service, linen sheets, glass windows, plunge pools, outdoor "star beds," woven carpets, cocktail bars, and porcupine-quill doilies. This trend is fine in many ways, because elegance can be fun, but it also tends to distract attention from the very purpose of a safari: to immerse oneself in the patterns and qualities of the untamed world, to embrace the essence of the outdoors, to celebrate the "wild" in wilderness.
A tent is no trivial thing. It invites the outside inside while protecting you from the harsher elements. I took this picture after napping through a torrential rainstorm in the comfort of my tent, which housed a bed with a soft, thick mattress, a nightstand, and a chair. The rains lulled me into a deep sleep as the drops pelted rhythmically off the canvas tent cover. When I awoke the air was cooler, the ground was soft, and the Ewaso Ng'iro river was muddier than ever. I had to remind myself that I was on safari, and not still dreaming or somehow stranded in a Rousseau painting.
The smaller tent in back is the loo (a six-foot-deep dirt pit covered by a wooden commode) and next to that is a shower tent (a tripod supports a multi-gallon bag of water that gets nicely heated over an open fire by camp attendants). A reading chair, table, and tripod sink are on my front porch. Animals apparently traipse through the camp at night, which makes a quick run to the loo something of an adventure. Between the stars in the pitch-black sky and the golden glowing eyes I imagined in the bush, leaving the safety of my little home was like entering the pages of Where the Wild Things Are.
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