Maybe it is the sound of an elephant munching in the night, right next to my fancy safari tent in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Or maybe the lion roaring benignly next to another luxury tent, on another night, in Zambia. Maybe it is the sheer volume of blue wildebeest and zebra plodding steadily up the Serengeti of Tanzania in the great migration.
Or the colourful birds of the Maasai Mara in Kenya. Or coming eye to familiar eye with a big male mountain gorilla in Rwanda. I’m unsure with which African wildlife experience to start this story.
+ And then I think of the human, cultural experiences. There’s the pleasure that comes from connecting with locals when you fold a note, and handshake a tip into their hand. Then there is the general African three-part handshake (shake, twist-and-grip, shake again).
And then the complex handshakes of Ethiopia — a different one for different relationships and moments. (For someone known well, we smile, crouch down like a rugby players, lean in take right hand with right hand, bring right shoulders together and rub one another on the back.) There’s the guide in South Africa who takes me into townships and so personally describes the end of apartheid and the years since.
In Uganda, a trader on a bicycle piled 4m high with shoes waves as I stand on the roadside. There are waxed cotton fabrics with their wild colours and big designs in the local Mukuni market in Livingstone, Zambia. And then there’s the sheer joy of the group of sin.