Why I No Longer Familiarize Myself With Baboons

On a Friday night in 1994, seven foreign volunteers working in Nigeria crossed the border into Yankari National Park, a 2,224 acre wildlife preserve on the central plateau of Africa's most populous nation.

Yankari's base camp consisted of about thirty round, thatched-roof huts that served as guest cabins and homes for the park's rangers and their families. It was situated in the heart of the sanctuary at the edge of a tremendous volcanic crater surrounded by a baobab and tamarind forest. As we unpacked inside the gated compound, we marvelled at the night sky...It was a cloudless starry night, and I've never seen the contrast between darkness and light illustrated so well. Two guards helped us carry our bags inside while two others shined flashlights around the perimeter of the rondel. As they left, we were sternly informed that were not to open the doors until morning for our own safety. Point taken.

The next day, our two hour safari became a four hour tourist bake due to a broken axle. The lorry driver refused to let us out of the flatbed truck for fear of the park's resident lion pride, so we blistered in the midday sun while the poor bastard risked his life running through the bush back to the bush camp five miles away. His running stride was punctuated by regular glances over his shoulder that reminded me a swimmer taking breaths of air...It was disconcerting that his rifle didn't inspire more confidence.

After disembarking from our rescue jeeps, we'd worked up a powerful thirst, and fortunately, the camp was well-stocked for tourists with Gulder, Nigeria's excellent lager beer. Afterwards, my Danish and Nigerian friends walked down to the Wikki Warm Springs, Yankari's most famous attraction. For the next few hours, I sat under a flame tree talking wildlife with our driver, Paul, making double-sure we both were properly hydrated, of course.

It was a half mile from the edge of the compound to the warm springs following a steep, rocky path. As I descended, I felt as though I was entering the Africa of my Disney-tainted imagination. I was no longer in the forest, but rather a jungle with creeping vines and mossy treetrunks. Beneath the lush canopy my friends frolicked in a geothermally heated natural pond. By the time I hit the water, my friends were already towelling off, and as the sun began to go down behind the rim of the crater, I was floating on my back watching it set...A beatiful, surreal sunset. From my vantagepoint, it was like watching a partial eclipse. The rim of the crater formed a perfect circle, and I was floating in the center, looking up from the base of a giant cone.

Suddenly the edges of the rim seemed to go out of focus. I squinted, and realized that what I was seeing was actually movement at the top of the ravine's edge. This woke me from my reverie, and it occurred to me it might be a good idea to get back to camp. As I towelled off, I realized the movement I had seen at the top of the crater was actually a large baboon troop descending to their watering hole. There were at least fourty of them, and to my horror, I realized was encircled with nothing to defend myself but a beach towel.

Fortunately, years of torment at the hands of public school bullies had prepared me for just such an occasion. My initial reaction was instinctual. I dipped the end of my bathtowel in the water, twisted it into a coil, and snapped it at the baboons while spinning clockwise and walking backwards up the hillside.

The baboons shrieked and hissed. They kept their distance for a while, but then a bold male caught hold of the towel and yanked it out of my hand.

At that point, I assumed I was a goner. I tripped over a treeroot and fell on my ass. Like Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, my moment of despair abutted my moment of salvation. Instead of clutching a magic ring, I instinctively clutched a rock. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before--perhaps years of social conditioning had prevented me from considering a rock as a weapon. I let loose with a lifetime of suppressed midwestern hostility. Not since St. Stephen has there ever been such a stoning. I unloaded on those buggers with a counterclockwise rat-a-tat-tat of stones that sent thew scurrying back into the undergrowth.

That, my friends, is why I no longer familiarize myself with baboons, and why I love my opposable thumbs with a love pure and true.