Maupirrtour’s 
South 
America 
HIGH QUALITY escorted tours. In- 
depth sightseeing, best hotels, 
unique dine-outs, entertainments, 
limited size. 
DARWIN'S GALAPAGOS on 5 dif- 
ferent programs from 14 to 19 
days. Combine a Galapagos cruise 
aboard the new Santa Cruz with 
Indian markets, Amazon port 
towns, Panama’s primitive San 
Bias Isles, hidden Machu Picchu, 
Bolivia's Lake Titicaca or mys- 
terious Easter Island. 
22-DAY GRAND SURVEY of South 
America’s most interesting places. 
Bogota, Quito, volcanoes, Indian 
markets, Lima, Cuzco, Machu 
Picchu, Santiago, Asuncion, 
Iguassu Falls, Brasilia, finale in 
Rio de Janeiro. 
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to glimpse the full potential that 
comes to us all when we see ourselves 
as a small but essential part of a world 
much wider and grander than the one 
that we have manufactured exclu- 
sively for ourselves. 
When tourists add “Africa” and 
“Kilimanjaro” to “animals” on their 
list of objectives in coming to East 
Africa, they seem to me to be plainly 
stating one objective, not three. They 
expect an indivisible, natural whole 
made up of both human and animal 
components. But unless they are un- 
usually lucky this is not what tourists 
find on the organized safari. All that 
is observed is man-made: game parks 
devoid of the herders and hunters who 
used to live there as an indispensable 
part of the ecosystem. The movements 
of the game itself have been distorted 
by, or adapted to, the movement and 
behavior of tourists in their \ariety 
of vehicles. The animals, far from re- 
taining their independence, have in 
every sense become as dependent as 
pets, for we have taken control of all 
that lives and moves and dies in the 
park. Even Kilimanjaro, seemingly 
majestic as ever, has lost something, 
for the greatness of that mountain lies 
not so much in its height and grandeur 
but in the beliefs and hopes of those 
who live on its slopes and in the plains 
stretching far into Africa on all sides. 
Many of those people have been 
moved in the name of progress (and 
tourism), their whole way of life has 
been changed, their beliefs taken from 
them. To know Kilimanjaro is not just 
to see it, but to touch it, say, through 
the life of an old man or woman to 
whom it is still sacred. And that is 
precisely the way to know the animals 
in Africa. 
To know the wildlife is to float down 
the Semliki in a canoe with men whose 
harpoons are poised, waiting for the 
reeds that some hold between their 
fingers to betray the presence of a 
submerged hippopotamus. Then you 
will know that animal as you can never 
know it by watching it yawn in the 
muddy waters of a game park puddle. 
And as the harpooned, still submerged 
hippopotamus takes off, towing the 
canoe at the speed of a powerboat, 
you will come to know what it is to 
be the hunter, full of respect and com- 
passion for the prey. Without the 
hunter the game park is just another 
Disneyland, another of man’s fanta- 
sies. The hunter kneeling in a canoe, 
standing high on an anthill, or climb- 
ing a solitary tree in search of a pos- 
sible kill is an essential part of the 
world the tourist really wants to know. 
I met some tourists who specifically 
came to recapture something of what 
they see as their lost identity, man 
the hunter. Many of them had pre- 
viously been on big game hunts, but 
having had their share of killing had 
been left unsatisfied. The hunter of 
our past was strangely nonviolent; he 
killed with no animosity, no sense of 
superiority, only because it was nec- 
essary to survive. Not far away, across 
the border of Uganda and into Zaire, 
live the Mbuti, a people who, with 
a pre-Stone Age technology, still sur- 
vive by hunting and gathering. They 
tell a story of how God created all 
living things- — animal, vegetable, and 
mineral — endowing them with differ- 
ent degrees of life force but making 
them all immortal. Then one day, one 
of these living creatures, man, killed 
an antelope. And although he and his 
family consumed the animal entirely, 
making use of all its parts so that 
none went to waste, God cursed the 
day and ordained that from then on 
all animals, including humans, would 
die. Since that day, the Mbuti say, 
they have had to kill to survive, but 
they kill only the minimum they need 
for each day, saving nothing for the 
morrow, in the hope that if only they 
can learn again how to survive without 
killing their fellow creatures, they may 
regain their immortality. 
A thousand miles away the Bush- 
men, whose ancestors may well have 
come from the plains below Kiliman- 
jaro, tell an almost identical story. The 
experience of human beings living as 
an integral part of a connected, natural 
world is what pilgrims/tourists mainly 
seek when they come to Africa. The 
animals are the means by which the 
culture-bound pilgrim can grow and 
expand, sensing a unity with all other 
living things and finding a greater po- 
tential through another source of 
power. And if our history tells us any- 
thing, if there is anything to be found 
in the art and literature of all ages, 
it is that through contact with the 
animal world we can touch the mys- 
tery of life itself and for a fragile 
moment know what it is to be semi- 
divine, immortal. 
Colin Turnbull, formerly associate 
curator of African ethnology at the 
American Museum of Natural His- 
tory, is visiting professor of anthro- 
pology at George Washington Uni- 
versity. 
34 
