'Yfou’ve never owned any- 
thing like this. Not only is 
it a stainless steel pocket 
knife that’s just 3" long and 
3/16" thick when closed - 
with two blades of fine 
Sheffield steel. It’s also a 
6-inch precision rule en- 
graved by Rabone-Chester- 
man of England, who are 
known the world over for 
precision rules. But, the 
best part of all ? You don’t 
have to go any further than 
your pocket for it. 
Send for the Garrett 
Wade knife-rule and our 
full catalog. It’s 116 pages 
ot fine woodworking tools. 
Our handy 
knife-rule fits 
as neatly in your 
pocket as it nts 
your needs. 
Otter expires Seprember 15, 1981 
Garrett Wade Co. , 
Dept. NH-5-81 
161 Ave. of the Americas,^ 
New York, N. Y 10013 
D Please send me pocket 
knife-rule(s)@ $31.50, p p d 
D Please send me new Garrett Wade 
catalog(s) @ $1.00 (Tree with pocket knife-rule order. ) 
Amount enclosed (Add sales tax for 
NY State residents.) 
□ Check/Money Order enclosed 
O Visa/Master Charge/American Express. 
Card No. Expires 
ADDRESS- 
CITY 
hotel veranda, to be served up with 
morning coffee or tea, so to speak. 
All but the most devoted animal 
watchers are easily distracted by the 
drinks-while-you-wait approach. In- 
deed, many are sidetracked into using 
the photographic safari as an excuse 
for dressing up in safari suits and par- 
ticipating in a well-staged colonial pe- 
riod piece in which man is the hunter 
and the animals his prey. Moreover, 
the “natives” are guaranteed to be 
suitably subordinate. 
In Nairobi, my colleague and I, both 
knowing East Africa well from many 
previous visits, attempted as tourists 
of moderate means to arrange a simple 
holiday that would avoid the luxury 
route and the organized group tours. 
No fewer than six safari firms said 
it was impossible. What they meant, 
of course, was that it would not be 
worth their while. We finally found 
a firm that booked us first into a do- 
it-yourself lodge in a game park and 
then into a tent camp by a bird sanc- 
tuary. Both were easily reached in a 
small rented car. The lodge, consisting 
of half a dozen separate furnished bun- 
galows, was almost totally deserted 
during our week’s stay. A mile away, 
in the same game park, the luxury 
hotel was full. From the open veranda 
of our small bungalow we saw every 
kind of game, mostly but by no means 
exclusively on the far side of a croco- 
dile-filled stream, which ran through 
a gully fifty yards away. In fact, we 
saw more animals there than we did 
driving through the park, where other 
tourists were more prominent than the 
game. A park employee visited the 
lodge daily to make sure we had drink- 
ing water and kerosene for cooking. 
When off duty he accompanied us 
to a local market and introduced us 
to a variety of local foods, including 
some cooked in his own home. And 
he talked about his country and his 
people. 
The tent camp was not such a suc- 
cess, consisting of a score or so of 
shabby tents, pitched under trees on 
the lawn of a hotel by the shores of 
a lake. The bedding was musty and 
damp, the mosquito netting torn, and 
the tents filled with every imaginable 
kind of insect. Toilets and bathrooms 
located behind the tents were barely 
usable. Only one other tent was oc- 
cupied and that only temporarily and 
unofficially by amorous couples at 
night. Everything seemed designed to 
give us cause for complaint, and com- 
plaint was met by the European man- 
ager with the offhand suggestion that, 
if we did not like it, we could always 
move into the more expensive hotel, 
which she also ran. Thus, either by 
a systematic lack of publicity or by 
an equally systematic program of mis- 
management, tourists are discouraged 
from going off on their own and are 
compelled to accept what is given. 
The individual safari, on which Africa 
can indeed be seen, is still possible 
but it takes a good deal of time and 
money. The average tourists — con- 
fined to the safari circuit and organ- 
ized groups — are carefully kept at 
a distance from all that they observe: 
the animals, the land, the people. They 
are denied the opportunity many of 
them sought: to make contact with 
something of their not-so-remote past, 
when all people lived in harmony with 
the natural world, not in competition 
with it. They are denied the oppor- 
tunity to escape from a world of ar- 
tifice and manipulation, qualities with- 
out which neither the game park nor 
the safari circuit would exist. 
To some extent we are all prisoners 
of our own culture; traveling to other 
lands gives us a chance to break out 
temporarily and briefly taste what it 
is to be not just somewhere else, but 
someone else. Tourists, however brief 
their visit, have the satisfaction of 
knowing that under other conditions 
they could have been other than they 
are; they discover an unknown poten- 
tial by sharing in the cultural achieve- 
ments of other humans. 
Our longstanding fascination with 
animals is not so different from our 
fascination with other cultures and, 
of course, it is primarily the animals 
that bring tourists to East Africa. But 
it is more than just wildlife they seek, 
and the clues to the real nature of 
their quest lie all around. Deep in 
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