Elephant hunt

We had some enough time to squeeze in a bit of a safari. We stopped in Douentza and hired a Land Cruiser for a day, heading to Boni and then southward for a chance to spot some of the last of the wild desert elephants on the planet. It had rained the night before and ended up being a bit sloppy on a number of levels, to say the least.

Apparently, the only thing that could match up to our driver’s surliness was his ability to get his vehicle stuck through his own ineptitude. We drove around for two and a half hours without seeing any elephants, only large piles poo that made it clear that there were elephants around (or we were in Jurassic Park).










Then we got a flat. No problem. This was unsurprising as a road simply did not exist, we were bushwacking. Unfortunately, while we might have expected a flat outfitter clearly did not, or we should say he was not sufficiently worried enough to have checked his gear before departure. Changing your tire in the heat of the Sahel is never pleasing but when the spare that is put on is just as flat as the original one must simply shake one’s head. There was nothing else to do, not for the four hours this issue took to be resolved (by our guide walking to a village and getting a bicycle pump).

As we packed up and drove out we happened to come across a lone bull elephant. It was actually quite breathtaking. It was huge, bigger than expected, a really cool experience. As far as our driver was concerned, it was a done deal, we disagreed. We headed back and, during a heated argument about a revised price which we felt we were entitled to, we ended up going to see his boss. The Malian who owned the car honestly did not see the problem: you saw an elephant and you didn’t sleep outside, what’s the problem? It took Mark a bit of time to try and calmly explain that we did want to pay, it was simply that we did not feel it was just to pay the full amount when 30% of the time was spent marooned and not accomplishing our goals due to the ill-preparedness of the outfitters we were to pay. This is where the Western sensibilities and those of the African fail to see eye to eye. While we could see his point that we were paying to go see elephants, he could not understand that we were paying a guide separately for the elephants and his car was for driving (i.e. moving on inflated tires) towards that goal. « Je ne veux pas payer pour sortir en brousse et de lire mon livre dans votre mobili cassée ! » “I don’t want to pay to go out in the countryside and read my book in your broken car!” Mark said. This discussion with the grand patron turned out to be the most exciting part of the day.

(tracking the bull)