Mornings in Namibia

A Giraffe in the Mirror

Photos, Video, and Stories by Francis Marion

Day 2

Jet lag sucks.

I stood looking at my face in the bathroom mirror. My eyes looked like shit, they were bloodshot and made me look older than I already am. My beard was coming in, something I normally don’t allow. It was grayer and coarser than I remembered.

I was doing the math in my head and realized that I had been operating on about two hours of sleep a day since I’d left Vancouver. I felt like I needed to relaxe but my PH, Sean, wouldn’t allow it. Better to get moving and do what needed to be done than to lay around trying to recover, he told me. We were going to operate on the ‘rest is for pussies’ strategy for getting over the fatigue. I guess I’m good at wandering but poor at traveling. Almost forty straight hours of plains, trains (well, not trains) and automobiles is not my idea of fun. But it’s the price you pay to play, right?

I turned on the “hot water”, hoped for the best and lathered up.

Day 1

“Welcome to camp. Grab your rifle and ammo and let’s go sight in.”

I thought: “Are you fucking kidding me,” but responded: “Uh, ok, I thought I’d have the day off to chill out?”

“No. There’s lots to do and the list of things you said you want to accomplish is long. There’s no time to rest. Besides we have work to do this morning after the rifles are zeroed.”

“What kind of work?”

“Camp needs meat and the lions need to be fed. The local population is happier when there is an ample supply of chow so we feed them. That way we control what and how much they eat. Keeps us in the driver’s seat, ya know?”

“Ok, no problem. We’re gonna watch this happen?”

“Nope. We’re gonna make it happen. Or at least you are.”

“I am?”

“Yep. Unless you want me to see if someone else is up to it?”

“Nope. That’s fine. I can handle it. Let’s make meat.”

Central Namibia is a remote and wild place. We’d come to hunt with an outfit that managed wildlife on 300,000 acres of land. It was a mix of game preserve that was large enough to be a national park, cattle ranch, and tribal lands. Their mission being primarily to keep certain species, particularly the black and white rhino, from being wiped off the face of the planet by poachers.

The preserve itself harbors over sixty of the great horned pachyderms. In a way, the rhino is its crown jewel. The hunting of the other species that live there pays and paves the way for the rhino’s future. Animals like the lion, the cheetah, and the African elephant benefit as well and thrive in the heart of the preserve. But all of it has to be managed and in order to keep the locals from eating themselves out of house and home (or each other), the order of the day had to be a cull.

We headed out in the Uri after breakfast. If it weren’t for the sun rising and setting I’d never have been able to figure out in which direction we were traveling. We were headed west with the sun at our back but it didn’t feel like it. In fact, I could have sworn it was the opposite. Strange the games that fatigue plays on your mind.

“Have you ever shot a giraffe before,” Sean asked me as I sat beside him staring at the landscape?

“Um. No. I never planned to shoot one either. Are you serious?”

“Ya, I’m serious. Very few people hunt the giraffes as a general rule and there are thousands of them here as a result. If we don’t run a combination of live capture, sale, and cull then they get seriously overpopulated. That lasagna you ate when you got in yesterday was giraffe meat. We eat a lot of it and so do the lions. It was good wasn’t it?”

“Ya, it was good. I just never thought about shooting a giraffe. Kinda like hunting a zoo animal or a barnyard critter. Doesn’t really interest me.”

“Well, I assure you they’re quite wild and it’s got to be done. Listen, Francis, it’s just protein and they’re no different than any of the critters you have on your list that you are looking for. They’re no smarter or more or less deserving of their fate. The only difference is that you’re a North American and you have been conditioned to see them as something different. It’s the Disney effect. So, are you going to take care of it or not? If not I’ll radio camp and tell them to send someone else out.”

Ouch. That stung.

I’ve always been taught to respect animals and to ensure they have a quick clean death when we hunt but not to anthropomorphize them or see them as something other than what nature made them.

“Ok, let’s get it done.”

In the distance, a group of giraffes was milling about an open area dotted with larger trees. Sean stopped the Uri about three hundred yards away and motioned for me to get out. In the middle of the dirt track, he pulled out his hunting knife and began to draw a picture of a giraffe’s body in the dust.

“Listen, when you shoot this thing you can’t shoot it like you do North American game or the antelope species that live here. Its anatomy is different. The heart in this thing is huge but it is higher than you think and further forward. If you shoot it behind the shoulder you will gut shoot him. On the chest, there is a bump on the front of the bull. Draw a line inward from the bump straight to the middle of the front leg. It looks like it is too far forward but it’s not. That’s where the heart is. Also, the cardio on these things is massive. Even with a solid heart shot, this thing won’t go down instantly. It will run for a little while then die. That’s just the way it is. Are you ready?”

“Got it.”

Sean picked out an old bull from the group on our western flank. We drove as close as we could get and stopped the Uri behind a clump of trees out of sight. We snuck around a bit of brush and set up the shooting sticks and waited for the shot. As the bull turned broadside and stopped I squeezed.

“Perfect. He’s dead, don’t shoot him up…”

The bull turned to run and I jacked another round into the chamber. At seventy-five yards I found the back of his neck and fired again. It was like watching an ancient cedar with its base cut out from under it hit the ground. It fell slowly to start then suddenly and with great weight, all at once, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust and debris floating in the cold Namibian morning air.

“You didn’t have to shoot twice,” was all Sean said.

“Ya, I did.”

I watched the bull’s nervous system twitch and quiver for a few minutes and when it was safe, and the great legs and hooves had finished their final death rattle I leaned against the back of the massive animal and contemplated it all.

“Do you want pictures,” asked Sean?

“No,” was all I said. Half an hour later the sound of a diesel engine filled the air as a flatbed with about a dozen laborers arrived on the scene to butcher the old bull. It was a sight to behold. For me anyways. For them, it was business as usual.

Day 2

As the hot water finally started to run I ran my hands through my graying beard. I pushed the button on the tin of shaving cream and spread it over my face and skull and dipped the razor into the steaming sink.

The memory of the old bull lingered as I cut swaths through the layer of white covering my scalp, once more revealing a lifetime’s collection of scars and worry. I thought about routines and rituals. The process of shaving my head, of laying things bare, somehow brought me a little comfort. I thought that maybe tonight I’d sleep. Maybe.

I released the water from the sink, rinsed my head and laid down to stare at the ceiling. My mind churned.

Past his prime. Food for the lions.

Huh. Me too.

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