ARTICLES
My First African Safari
by Margaret Barkley Williams

When I opened a present on Christmas morning and saw a safari jacket, I knew I was invited on one of my Pop’s (Crawford Williams) trips to the Dark Continent. I felt honored, especially since I was the first one from my family to be invited to join him at his favorite place on this earth.

After over twenty hours of traveling, we arrive in the largest airport in the first country we are hunting.... a two gate one in Windhoek, the capitol of Namibia. This Safari was going to be a short four-day stop with Pop searching for a red hartebeest, black springbok, and a bull gemsbok. After an hour argument with a difficult customs agent (because we only had bullets and no gun, something that third world bureaucrat had never seen before), we traveled about 80km north to a town called Okahandja. We had about two hours of light remaining and we sat at a water hole so that I could view and take pictures of animals. Since this was my Pop’s seventh safari, I had seen most of the animals but in only stuffed form. It was exciting and amazing watching and photographing springbok, warthogs, kudu, etc., in this sandy desert terrain.

The next day we headed south where Joachim Brand (T.P.) owner of Nhosab Hunting Safaris (our professional hunter) claimed Pop would acquire his black springbok and bull gemsbok, both within a thirty minute hunt. My Pop just laughed at J.P. and gave me his “this guy has lost his mind” look. We arrived at the hunting concession in the Kalahari Desert and Pop promptly was able to take his black springbok. We shortly afterward happened upon a newborn gemsbok that could barely walk which had gotten separated from a big herd of gemsbok. The herd didn’t want to leave the newborn which was bleating regularly to his mama. It wasn’t long before Pop took his big bull with one shot at about 150 yards. We had taken both within exactly thirty-three minutes! With day two and two of Pop’s checklist accomplished, it was time for him to move on to more important things.... getting his daughter to take a trophy; something I had not anticipated.

I woke up on day three to hear J.P. and Pop plotting what I was going to hunt and with the abundance of springbok, it was not a difficult decision. Never having been a hunter, I had an uneasy, bad feeling in my stomach that I was going to mess up. I had only plinked with a .22 growing up but had never fired a high power rifle in my life. After I took a number of practice shots, we went off in search of a springbok. We crossed over a large red sand dune and a nice bull springbok stood sideways staring straight at me about 100 meters. I got him in my cross hairs and my heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat. I kept reciting to myself, “Calm down, remember breathe in and out slowly.” I don’t remember pulling the trigger, but I did and that springbok took off like a rocket. They decided before my nerves got completely rattled that I had better shoot again; kind of like getting back on the horse that just succeeded in throwing you. So finally, after continuous assurance that I clearly missed the springbok, I nervously attempted another. I tried again.... another bull with somewhat smaller horns at about 80 meters. After much shaking, I deadly wounded the springbok. My first kill ever, and it was in Africa!

Little did I know then, but the next trophy I would hunt would be a giraffe. That night at the camp where we were staying, the owner offered us a reduced price on a particular bull giraffe. My Pop can never refuse a bargain so I was going to hunt a giraffe. There was an old bull that controlled all the females in the area that the concession owner wanted culled. The next morning in the process of searching for that big bull, some red hartebeest were spotted. So J.P. and Pop went after them on foot while I stayed on the truck with Ben, J.P.’s native tracker and skinner.

Ben started tapping me on the shoulder. I turn, and there my giraffe is with a female and a baby about 50 meters away. They saw us and promptly departed, but not before I got him on film. The boys returned about thirty minutes later empty handed. Pop then decided that the hartebeest could wait for another day (and that would give him a good excuse to come back to Namibia), so it was my turn to go after that giraffe. Ben climbed up a tree and still could not spot the giraffes. Then, all of a sudden, J.P. spotted them in a thick brush area a half mile away. Sure enough, it is my big bull and he actually has two babies and two females with him. Off on foot, J.P. and I go through acacia thoms and extremely heavy bush. One would think that it would be easy to shoot a giraffe, but one of their steps equals seven of ours; also, they are so tall they can see everything all around them. Since he has two babies with him, he is extremely skiddish in nature. Every time we would get within 150 meters, his tail would flap and he would be off galloping away from us.

We found out later that Ben, from a high point, could see the whole situation for miles and was attempting to cut off and turn the giraffe. Unbeknownst to us, Ben managed to spook the giraffe to the left so that J.P. and I were able to cut him off. We did a leopard’s crawl under some thick bush that left thorns that had to be removed from my neck later enabling us to get within 80 meters of him. The shooting sticks went up and I was determined after working this hard (we had tracked him for about two hours and over four miles) that I was not going to mess up again. You could hear the bullet thump as it went directly into his lungs, right where J.P. told me to aim. I was so stunned that I forgot to immediately reload the gun. J.P. grabbed it from me and bolted another round in the chamber.

“Barkley, shoot him again; this time aim for his neck,” J.P. said to me. At that same point, the giraffe reared up like a horse and took off. I promptly missed him once on the run. After another unsuccessful miss, one lucky bullet hit him right in the neck, which snapped his neck and down the giraffe went. Before long, Ben and Pop had caught up with us in the truck. We hopped in the back in search of the wounded giraffe through the thick bush. I spotted him rearing his head up and down. Since I had shot him, I had to finish him off, which was the hardest part for me, but I did it. I don’t know who was more excited, me or Pop?

It was officially “breakfast time” for Pop resulting in the celebritory cold beer and a Cuban cigar. T.P. radioed back to camp for some help. Every male worker at the camp (about forty natives) showed up riding on a trailer pulled by a tractor in order to load the over two-ton beast in one piece and haul it back to camp. All of them were excited over all of the food (“Nyama”) for them and their families. If you helped clean and move the animal, this entitled you to a portion of the meat. Thus ended the most memorable four day period I had ever experienced.....up to that point. I had no concept of what was in store on our upcoming hunt in Zimbabwe.

Early the next morning, we took off from Windhoek International. Even though Namibia and Zimbabwe border each other in one place, it took Pop and me three flights and ten hours to reach our next destination of Bulayayo, Zimbabwe. This is a result of the fact that only a hand full of flights occur a day to Zimbabwe as many airlines refuse to fly there. In Bulayayo we were met by an old friend of Pop’s....”Jumbo” Moore...with whom Pop had hunted on many previous occasions. The next day we were to begin a two week safari in the famous Matetsi Safari Area on the Zimbabwe/Botswana border, just below Victoria Falls.

(TO BE CONTINUED....)
P.S. Pop got my giraffe head mounted for me and I have put him on the wall in “The Barking Kudu” pub in Birmingham’s Lakeview District for everyone to see.