hers

We met just outside the mess hall tent. I was sitting in one of the old hide chairs reading West with the Night after a long day of managing bookings and deliveries.  Out of the darkness she strode toward me, her sandy hair catching the light and bouncing it back at me. I sat still as she cautiously ambled down the rocky path in my direction, stopping just before crossing under the tall wooden structure that served as the main shelter for the camp.

Three months prior, I’d gotten bored with my life so I moved to Kenya to work at a safari camp. In need of some adventure, I jumped right into life in the bush. My appearance was the first thing to go— no makeup, no hair straightener, cold showers and no time for shaving my own bush. My friends from home wouldn’t have recognized me, but it didn’t matter because there was no WiFi there anyway. I’d been hired to assist the manager of the safari camp, scheduling activities for guests and asking whether they would like tea or coffee for their wakeup calls in the morning. On the Equator, the sun fully rises and sets in about twenty minutes. Days are always just about 12 hours long, but I was always up before and after the sun. It was a busy life: 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. seven days a week of constant attending to needs and bookings, but it satisfied my wanderlust and I could pursue my three passions: travel, photography, and animals.

Occasionally I could get a break from work and tag along on a game drive around the reserve. Bouncing around in the open air Land-Rovers, I absorbed the environment around me, but as soon as the driver pulled to a halt, my camera was always out, converting the wildlife into images on a 32gb memory chip. Everything I saw was through a lens, whether it was wide angle, fisheye, telephoto or binocular lenses. The animals’ existence didn’t matter so much as their facade on the little screen of my Canon 5D Mark iii. I figured a photograph lasts longer than a memory, but I always thought it would be cool to get attacked by an animal— enough to leave an awesome scar, but not enough to kill me. I dropped that desire as soon as I got to Africa and saw the game. So I settled with playing it safe and keeping my hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times.

She came to me in May, on the night of the Extreme super moon. The sun was long gone, but the moon effervesced along the waves of wet grass. The guests had all been escorted to their tents for the night, and my South African co-manager, Xan, was finishing things up in the office. Wrapped in my fleece-lined flannel, I tucked myself into the leather chair, reading the second paragraph on page 138 of Beryl Markham’s memoir of her days as a bush pilot. Though the moon was practically bright enough to read by, I kept a lantern burning next to me, its light flickering across the pages. My Kenyan nights were full of life. The crickets sang in chorus while the hippos moaned like tractors. The lions rumbled and howled, and the zebras brayed bleakly, but the cape buffalo were silent except for the sounds of their movement.

I heard some twigs crackle, just beyond the canvas wall of the open tent. My instinct told me it was a cape buffalo, the most dangerous animal in Kenya along with the hippo, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that it wasn’t. Instead, it was number six on the list of most dangerous animals in Africa, the lion.

After three months in the bush, I had been taught how to act when different animals approached me, yet I hadn’t come face to face with any. I stayed in my chair perfectly still as the graceful golden cat strode into the tent. At first she looked around, sniffing various objects like the curious animal she was. They say curiosity killed the cat, but I was more worried about my life than hers. Nonetheless, I maintained my position and while I screamed prayers in my head, I kept my body calm because as far as I know, lions smell fear.

She paced elegantly, her body hanging between her shoulders, moving one hefty paw at a time. Gliding past the mahogany wood chest, she turned her head and looked straight at me. From about five meters away her golden marble eyes mirrored mine. After that she didn’t take them off me, the cottony black tip of her long tail swaying back and forth a few times before she began her stride again. This time she was headed directly toward me.

The lioness didn’t come at me like I was her prey. There was no sulking and stalking through the grass as though she was hunting a wildebeest or zebra, but I still felt like her target. My heart forcefully propelled warm blood through the pink tunnels around my chest and down to my extremities. I could feel its thumps reverberating across my body, and I was so sure that the lioness could hear it with her sensitive blonde and black ears. This time I wasn’t in a protected Land Rover, I had no camera in my hand, and there was no driver to help me escape this danger.

She moved slowly and cautiously, waiting for my reaction to her presence, but I sat still, waiting for my life to flash before my eyes. It didn’t, though. Maybe it was because that doesn’t actually happen, or maybe because I wasn’t about to die. When she was less than a meter away I closed my eyes. I was sure of my imminent death, and although I knew it wouldn’t be a quick process like a gunshot through a heart, I wanted to believe that when I opened my eyes again one of us would be gone. With my eyes closed tight, Goosebumps spread like an oil spill over the surface of my skin, as her course fur grazed my unshaven legs sending shocks of electricity through my nerves. Like a colossal house-cat, her body weight leaned against my shins, as she sauntered along pressing me against the wood and hide chair. By then my eyes had shot back open as I hoped she would continue on her way after this tabby-cat move. Instead, she sat down in front of me, her tail lying across my bare feet.

She faced the darkness from where she came, and rested regally in front of me like a king’s greyhound. For a moment, the fear escaped my body, and I felt like Daughter of Africa, the lion whisperer, until I remembered I was still behind a beast twice my size, with four canine teeth resembling bullets. She then raised her pelvis to a squatting position and I felt a warm pond of liquid collected around my feet, some of it splashing up onto my shins. She carried on with the stream and the scent of her urine rose up and hit me in the face. I didn’t dare move my feet, afraid of startling her with a sudden movement, and letting all my patience and prayers go to waste. Instead I allowed my feet to soak in the water and toxins fresh from her bladder. After roughly twenty seconds of an expanding puddle of heat around my toes, the lioness hoisted herself back up and sauntered off into the darkness, a melody of twigs and leaves cracking under the pads of her feet. She left me no scar that I so desired from my escapade to Africa, but she marked her territory. I was hers.