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ABOUT AFRICAN SAFARIS:
THE DREADED “PSD”
“At night I sit at the window watching the moon cast eerie shadows across the grass. But the large moon shadow and the soft song for which I wait come no more.”
--- Delia Owens, The Eye Of The Elephant
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SAFARI. The word is magic! It conjures up visions of romance, adventure, danger and excitement. The Kiswahili word for “journey,” it quickens the blood and sharpens the senses.
Today’s East African photo safari offers opportunities to savor an Other World, a world of awe and wonder, a world of primeval majesty and timeless splendor, a world whose drumbeat pulse throbs in harmony with the rhythmic cadence of all creation, revealing glimpses of Eden and offering encounters with a world that was. In the words of Evelyn Ames (A Glimpse of Eden), “It is a world, and a life, from which one comes back changed.”
Perhaps that is the only dark side to the Dark Continent, the very real possibility of returning home to face those endless bouts of dreaded PSD. Even the CDC offers no known preventative or reliable treatment for this traveler’s plague… Post Safari Depression!
One of the best ways to stave off recurring attacks of PSD is to collect and read books on East Africa. Not an actual cure, it is more of a continuing therapy for those who have once safaried, and since spend most of their time safari dreaming and hatching plans and schemes that will get them back to Africa. For those who have lost their hearts and souls to the Dark Continent, and can’t seem to see enough, read enough, hear enough or learn enough about it, a collection of quality books on the subject acts as a sedative for their uncontrollable exuberance. And it offers a break from chatting up total strangers about East Africa and from dragging people in off the street to watch the slide show or see the photos.
The Dutch scholar, Erasmus, once said a very wonderful thing. He said, “When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes.” Because my own case of PSD was tragically advanced, I emulated Erasmus and at one time had collected over 400 books on East Africa. My dear wife, who encouraged me to go on safari in the first place, observed that I might have made a second safari with the money I sank into books, videos, CDs, projectors, slides, magazines and a few walls full of photos, masks, wood carvings and sculptures. But I knew that “surrounding myself with East Africa,” as it were, was probably all that saved my sanity, and it certainly kept me from running off to the wilds of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
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WARNING SIGNS & SYMPTOMS
Upon return from an East African photographic safari, travelers who may have previously been considered normal, well adjusted and rational, may expect to begin displaying most or all of the following symptoms of PSD (and others as yet undocumented).
1) The thought that some people only got to put the first footprint on the moon, or were only the first to fly the Atlantic solo, or were only the first to climb Mount Everest, but that YOU went on an East African photo safari and would not trade the experience for any place in history, even though you were aware just how monumental (emphasis on the "mental") the safari would be in your life and exactly what risks would likely be faced upon returning home.
2) A totally irrational supposition that other people will become equally obsessed with East Africa if only you can show them enough slides and photographs and tell them enough safari tales.
3) The constant inability to concentrate on any job-related duties, or your spouse, children or general environment for more than five minutes at a time without wandering off into a daydream of safari life and time spent in East Africa.
4) A dim realization that many waking hours are being spent in the pursuit of any scheme or plot that will produce enough time and/or revenue to allow a return trip to East Africa at the earliest possible moment.
5) A growing awareness that perhaps life should have been spent in East Africa rather than anywhere else, overshadowed by a growing distaste for paved roads, semi-formal attire and all the trappings of modern industrialized, technological society, to whatever degree, on whatever continent.
6) The very real and likely possibility of hearing yourself saying things like, “Will the Peace Corps take me when I’m sixty-five?” Or, “Well, they took Miss Lillian, didn’t they?” And, “If I request Kenya or Tanzania will they guarantee to send me there?”
Finally, among all the myriad symptoms of this still largely unstudied condition, there comes to the traveler an awful growing frustration over the personal lack of beneficial skills and abilities that might possibly, in some small way, make a real difference in helping to preserve the wildlife or wild places of East Africa for some additional measure of time. This is an all-pervasive and incurable symptom that leads many of its sufferers into bouts of mental anguish and depression and may often result in their establishing tour companies, leading safaris, publishing gazettes touting the joys of safari life, and in a few extreme cases, attempting to write a travel book about a photo safari in East Africa.
As if it were possible to even begin to describe such a life-altering event with the use of mere words and photographs.
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BEST TREATMENT: Another safari!
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