Land Rovers gather on the Serengeti whenever a guide spots one of the "big nine" game animals. (1997)

Photos and story by Rudy Brueggemann

Minutes after entering Serengeti National Park, Tanzania's premiere nature reserve, our white, 1995 four-wheel-drive Land Rover turned toward a clump of trees and huge granite boulders called a kopje. The shady oasis on the vast grassland offers a perfect resting spot for simba the lion.

Lucky for us, simba was home and receiving visitors.

Our guide and driver, Timothy, pulled behind seven other white Land Rovers and Toyota vans with the names Leopard Safaris or Hoopoe Safaris. Our jeep's insignia with a Masai warrior said Roy Safaris.

Vehicle tops propped open for easy viewing, the white tourists (and they are almost all white, or "mzungu") extended zoom and telephoto lenses in simba's direction. Wild Africa's premiere attraction would soon become a photographic trophy.

I buzzed with conflicting emotions. I felt like a dirty old man at a smokey strip club. I also felt like the world's luckiest person. They were feelings that remained throughout the safari.

Six feet from my window, a black-maned male simba walked past. He was so close, I could see his thick muscle definition, his scars, the ticks on his chest. The rest of the pride lay still, breathing slowly, occasionally looking annoyingly at the vehicle-protected voyeurs. A peaceful slumber for more than 10 simba had become a public spectacle, as it was the day before and as it would be the day after.

My group -- a Norwegian couple, Arno and Elsa; Tom, an American nutritionist who had worked nine months in rural Tanzania; our cook and former Kilimanjaro climber-guide, Andrew; and Timothy -- sat as silently as pious churchgoers. We heard hushed whispers in Italian and German and English coming from the other vehicles, broken by the clicks from Japanese cameras. I joined in the photographic frenzy.

Meanwhile, tourist driver-guides privately sighed in relief. They had delivered one of the "big nine" to their clients, who will hand over from $440 to $800 and more for a typical five-day safari. By local standards this is a small fortune. A typical Tanzanian family with six kids will earn about $800 a year. The East African country is among the world's poorest.

This pride attracted more than five Land Rovers, all filled with camera-wielding white tourists who snapped prize photographs. (1997)

The driver-guides, who all knew each other after years on safaris, would worry the rest of the trip if they would find more-elusive animals. Their $30 to $100 tips at the end of the safari -- enormous sums for average Tanzanians -- might well depend on spotting the charismatic creatures. Complaints by disgruntled Europeans were common, according to Timothy.

The day before in Lake Manyara National Park, the same companies had spotted all but one of the large herbivores among the big nine: hippos, elephants, Cape buffalos, giraffe (Masai giraffe).

The black rhino, the least common of the big nine, has been nearly destroyed by a ravenous poaching industry that has claimed about 60,000 animals during the last two decades. A horn will fetch more than $2,000 for use as a Yemeni dagger handle. Ground rhino horn is also used as a fever remedy by Chinese and East Asians. Only 10 black rhinos remain in the wild, all in the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area.

Timothy said last year, a mother rhino was shot in the crater by poachers, who he said often were ex-rangers familiar with the terrain and anti-poaching measures used by their former colleagues.

Timothy shared this and other animal tales when we spotted the less-threatened big-nine species around Manyara: a bull elephant can ejaculate three liters of sperm, elephants will shit up to 150 kilos a day. I don't know why he recited these particular facts; perhaps other tourists before us had asked about them.

Unfortunately, Timothy's lectures led to bad jokes by Tom. "How many liters of sperm from a wildebeest, bwana?" asked Tom, laughing. Timothy never smiled at Tom's humor, which soon divided our safari group. Tom would exacerbate the wounds for the remaining four claustrophobic days. He arrived late after every break, just to establish dominance over the waiting passengers and safari guides alike

In my eyes, Tom's behavior insulted his travelling partners and belittled our paid guides. Those feelings also stayed with me during the safari and shaped my reactions as much as the animals I saw.

A trained safari professional in his late 20s, Timothy learned about African game and natural history at an expensive three-year conservation college in Arusha. He also had studied auto mechanics, making him ideal for the job in the remote bush, fixing a sick car or describing animal behavior.

Like other driver-guides who crossed the Serengeti each day, Timothy relentlessly stalked the two elusive carnivores of the big nine, the leopard and the cheetah. When we passed another vehicle, Timothy would stop, talk in Swahili with his friend, and ask about "chui," the Swahili word for leopard. He was worried because the Norwegians said they wanted leopard pictures.

According to my guidebook, the East Africa Handbook (rivalled only by Lonely Planet's even more popular "shoestring" guide to the same region), big-game hunters first coined the term "big five," referring to large trophy animals they killed on hunting safaris. Theodore Roosevelt, when he wasn't waxing romantic about the "Pliocene landscape" of the Serengeti, shot anything in his rifle range during his safaris. One of his expeditions in 1909 bagged 500 animals.

My guidebook said today the big nine are "animals that most people come to Africa to see, and with the exception of the Leopard [sic] and Black Rhino [sic], there is an excellent chance of seeing them all."

"Most people" are European, Australian, American, Canadian, and Japanese tourists, who fly into Nairobi or Dar es Salaam and then come to Arusha, a 500,000-person city in Tanzania's high farm country where most Tanzanian-based safari begins. Wealthier foreigners fly direct to the national park airport parks in Kenya's Masai Mara or Tanzania's Serengeti. In Tanzania, safaris along the so-called "northern circuit" begin in Lake Manyara National Park, continue to the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro, and then possibly go to Tarangire National Park -- some of the richest animal preserves areas in Africa.

Thousands of Wazungus (white tourists) flock to East Africa every year to photograph wildlife and scantily clad Masai tribe members, who charge a commission. (1997)

Welcome to the East African mzungu trail. Paving its way are the combined forces of the international tourist industry (intercontinental airlines, guidebooks publishers like the Lonely Planet, international hotel chains such as Sheraton). Nearly 1 million persons (half from America and Europe) will visit East Africa this year.

Other participants in the $1.2 billion East African tourist economy include environmental groups, who use endangered critters to boost funding drives, sell colorful calendars, or facilitate "research" trips for scientists to exotic locales.

Media players include National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, and major Hollywood studios, such as Disney. The House that Walt Built grossed three quarters of a billion dollars off "The Lion King," for all markets of the film and video. The smash animated feature was perhaps the most influential global advertisement for the Serengeti since blond wazungus (plural in Swahili for mzungu) Robert Redford and Meryl Streep reromanticized East Africa in 1985's Academy Award winner "Out of Africa." Well before, Hollywood and Western writers from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Ernest Hemingway built a profitable cottage industry on African safari themes.

For African countries, tourism represents big bucks for struggling national economies. Tourism accounts more than 40 percent of Kenya's foreign earnings, or $440 million annually, while Tanzania's $120 million share represents a quarter of its foreign earnings.

All this fuss for that lion outside my jeep window.

After spotting the pride of simba, our jeep of tired travellers barely raised a camera for three more lions about 25 miles further down the Serengeti park road. A den of spotted hyenas minutes later didn't earn a picture. The prevalent Grant's and smaller Thomson's gazelle hardly turn a tired head. A rough dirt-road trip of more than 250 kilometers had taken its toll.

We unloaded our gear at the camp site, about 10 miles from the new park headquarters and the luxurious Seronera Wildlife Lodge. We joined eight safari companies at the circular, wooded site and would soon be joined by four more plus an "overland" tour truck holding another 15 wazungus. This was low season, during the dry months from June through October. High wet season would max out not one but five similar camp sites, according to the guides.

Just north across the border, high season was kicking off in Kenya's Masai Mara National Park, a continuation of the Serengeti grassland. There, even more Wazungus had congregated to view the migrating herd of 1.5 million wildebeests. Wazungus and wildebeests followed predictable routes during particular seasons. We off-season wazungus in the Serengeti in July resembled the nonmigratory wildebeests who stayed south.

On camping safaris like ours, everyone helps set up camp, mainly raising the heavy canvas tents. Meanwhile, the cooks prepare intricate, three-course meals, usually a meat dish, followed by fruit salad and chai. That night, Andrew prepared spaghetti Bolognese while we watched thoroughly civilized baboons dash into the compound and steal food from unsuspecting cooks.

Timothy said baboons aren't afraid of wazungus, but would run from the black safari workers, who threw heavy objects at the marauding primates. Baboons also raided the camp's garbage pits with impunity and in full view of scores of amazed onlookers.

East Africa's booming "wildlife" tourism economy also has changed the behavior of the region's human inhabitants. Most impacted are the parks former human dwellers, the Masai, a proud cattle-raising people of Kenya and Tanzania whose pastoral ways are challenged by land restrictions and an encroaching modern economy driven exclusively by wildlife tourism.

Before the Europeans carved up East Africa at the 1885 Berlin Conference, the Masai laid undisputed claim to all land around Kenya and Tanzania's most famous game parks of the Serengeti. From the 1500s to the coming of the Europeans, Masai cattle grazed next to herds of antelopes, wildebeest, and other big-nine animals. Masai activists credit the region's rich wildlife to the Masai's careful stewardship.

But by the 1920s, British colonialists had annexed large swaths of Masai land for tea and coffee farms in Kenya, after a cattle disease called Rinderpest had killed most of the Masai cattle and epidemics claimed three quarters of their people. Later, European conservationists promoted the preservation of Masai land as parks, future moneymakers through hunting and tourism.

Today, more than 25,000 square kilometers of Masai land have been set aside for conservation in Kenya and Tanzania. The patchwork of parks and game reserves on the Serengeti plain is mostly off limits to Masai cattle -- the tribe's lifeblood.

Just like the big nine, Masai also attract the attention of camera-carrying wazungus. Masai women sport ornate costumery of necklaces and bracelets. They keep short hair and have strong physiques. The equally striking Masai warriors wear bright, red-colored wrap clothes and carry spears. I found their appearance striking; they were among the most beautiful people I'd seen anywhere in the world.

The Masai also have learned to value their colors and their half-naked physique. I'm sure one elderly women I saw went topless purely to attract photographers at a rest stop outside the Serengeti.

Timothy and Andrew said Masai will charge $10 and more for pictures. If you snap without paying, even of their villages with a zoom lens, the Masai will throw rocks at vehicles, breaking the windows.

Timothy also told our group that the Masai have suffered hunger and drought in recent years. The lean years and land conflicts around the parks have helped turn Masai men, women, and children into beggars. Some stand outside the parks on roads holding out their hands or selling tourist trinkets. Vehicles that stop are fast approached by groups of up to six or more, even in remote areas with no humans immediately in sight.

Within five minutes during a lunch break before the Serengeti, two adult Masai warriors and a still-uncircumcised boy, who did not carry a spear, approached us. They sat down patiently watching. We shared bananas and water with the three. I presume they wanted cash for pictures. I could hardly blame them. They received not one shilling of the money I had paid to my safari operator or the Tanzania park service. They didn't get a shilling from me now; I kept my camera out of view.

According to Timothy, AIDS has taken its toll on the Masai. Timothy blamed French and Italian women who took the overland tours.

These groups are usually led by young South Africans, Brits, or Australians who drive converted tour trucks with small groups of wazungus on long trips, hitting parks and scenic points in eastern and southern Africa. Timothy said the same groups illegally camp outside the parks, occasionally receiving Masai visitors. The mzungu women would sleep with the Masai warriors for the novelty. A guide at a Masai cultural center in Kenya's Hell's Gate National Park told me a similar story. Three warriors from his village had married British women in recent years, he said.

Timothy, a pious and serious Pentecostal Christian, did not think unprotected sex between Masai men and prostitutes in towns like Arusha had helped spread the deadly virus. He blamed wazungus for the dreaded disease, countering the wazungus' claim that AIDS originated in Africa.

AIDS or not, the Masai clearly have changed because of the mzungu trail, even if they, unlike many of Tanzania's more than 100 other tribes, continued to wear traditional tribal clothes. Today's Masai reminded me of the Navajo of America's Southwest, who live off the tourist traffic passing through their ancestral land, en route to the Grand Canyon and other scenic wonders administered by a distant federal authority and not the local population.

During a safari, luxury is not compromised, not even a table clothe. (1997)

We discussed these points around our short-legged dinner table, where a heated argument had emerged. Timothy did not want leave at 6:15 a.m. to watch the Serengeti sunrise. He said we would leave at 7:30 a.m. after our breakfast of toasted white bread, fried eggs, and instant coffee (good African coffee is exported purely for hard currency). But Tom, Arno, and Elsa challenged him. They wanted an early rise. Tom made matters worse, joking with Timothy that he should relax.

"I'm here to make you happy," Timothy finally said, parroting his company's motto: "We go thro' every measure ... to give you wild pleasure." His genuflecting emphasized the power relation created by our $435 payment each to his employers, a Goan Indian family in Arusha.

I felt sorry for Timothy. A member of his nation's strongest tribe -- the Chagga -- and a family man earning a good living by Tanzanian standards, he had worked for Indians (mhindi, in Swahili) and mzungu nearly every day for the last four years. For him, the colonial racial hierarchy remained firmly intact: wazungus on top, blacks on the bottom, and Indians in between, running the businesses.

The next morning's chilly sunrise 3,000 feet above sea level was worth the effort. In the pale light, we observed male wildebeests grunting in competition for harems, joined by their grazing partners, the Burchell's zebra.

The quantity of wildlife here is stunning. The swaying grass, regulated by nearly hundreds of thousands of zebra, hartebeests, and other staggering numbers of grazing herbivores, reminded me of the American Midwest. I began imaging that vast inland ecosystem before the mzungu settlers and cattle barons came with their guns, slaughtering millions of bison and the Plains Indians who shared the land.

Like the Serengeti, the Great Plains was a living grassland, with numerous species of carnivores -- wolves, bears, foxes, coyotes, wolverines -- preying on the even larger number of bison and some elk and deer.

And now, wazungus spend thousands of dollars every year to visit Africa, equipped with thousands of dollars in photographic equipment, to witness a similar living ecosystem their forefathers had decimated elsewhere. Meanwhile their hundreds of tour vehicles drove within feet of wild African animals, changing the ecosystem and its animals' behavior.

I discussed the future of park management with other tourists. Many agreed that we were the problem, but no one knew how authorities should regulate the numbers and still have room for middle-class, Western visitors like ourselves. In Masai Mara, for instance, the number of visitors to the park's 12 lodges and camp sites increased 260 percent between 1977 and 1989, reaching 190,000 annually.

Safaris could become prohibitively expensive by raising the entrance fees to price out "budget" camping safaris, greatly reducing the number of visitors. (Currently it's $20 per adult a day for Tanzania's parks like Serengeti, plus a $20 camping fee a night; in Kenya, $27 a day for nonresidents, plus camping fees $8-$15, for popular parks like Masai Mara.)

Or Kenyan and Tanzanian authorities could implement a lottery, like river permits for rafters on popular North American rivers. But given the institutionalization of bribery in East Africa, especially in President's Daniel Arap Moi's Kenya, permits would probably be open to the highest bidder, again forcing out the unconnected and less wealthy. There's also no guarantee the two governments would cooperate, which would be essential, otherwise tourists would favor the cheaper country, further burdening overloaded parks, like Masai Mara.

At the end of the third day, at the Seronera camp site, I spoke with an Indian man from England in his 60s. He was here with his British wife and adult children and reliving an old adventure. He said when he first took a five-day safari 20 years ago, it cost less than $75 dollars. There were just a few companies in Arusha; today there are more than 50. There was almost no vehicular traffic in the parks, more game, such as elephants (who have been thinned by AK-47-wielding poachers), and no established campsites with garbage pits or toilets, he said. He predicted even more radical changes in another 20 years. He said he wasn't returning to see the results.

The next evening at the end of day four, I sat overlooking the Ngorongoro Crater from the deck of the Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge just as the sun fell over the rim. A dazzling place, the patio commands a panorama of the 600-meter deep, 30-kilometer-wide volcanic crater that our driver-guide, Timothy, called "a complete ecosystem." Other's have called it "paradise on earth." An estimated 30,000 animals live inside its green walls. UNESCO designated it a World Heritage Site in 1978.

It's also the only place in Africa where wild black rhino can be found, having been decimated elsewhere. The crater contains all the big nine, plus the soda-filled Magadi Lake popular with flamingoes, a riparian system, an acacia forest, grasslands, and marshes. A perfect micro-ecosystem for every African big game. One-time permanent residents, the Masai are allowed to graze their cattle here, but in limited numbers and by permit only, unlike the free range of tourists, whose jeeps can be seen from the crater viewpoints.

On the hotel deck overlooking the crater, a group of Australians next to me sipped Safari Lager and quizzed its guide about the pros and cons of Tanzanian beer. Other visitors -- Italians, Spanish, Germans, French, Dutch -- chain-smoked cigarettes in the lounge by the fireplace. They all looked prosperous, the majority of the European mzungu here.

After the sun fell, I met our guide in front of the hotel. Timothy would drive us back to the Simba Campsite for dinner and then back to the lodge to sleep. Timothy privately told me he was troubled by Arno and Elsa. Norwegians weren't good people, he said. He was mad about having left too early yesterday. He was mad about a lot of things, I think, especially serving wazungus like us every week of the year and being away from his wife and two children. Timothy wanted to quit this job and open a garage, where he would the boss, where he would make the profits. If he could, he wouldn't visit the parks at all.

I knew he was also irritated with Tom, who was late again. By now, Timothy, the Norwegians, and I had dubbed Tom "pole, pole," Swahili for "slow." Timothy always smiled calling Tom that name.

Lying, I assured Timothy that everything was fine. "Hakuna matata," I said, the popular "Lion King" song and the Swahili words for "don't worry, be happy." I said we were pleased with his service, when an hour earlier my companions were complaining about Timothy's dour demeanor. But I genuinely was pleased, having been a bus driver/tour guide in Glacier National Park 10 summers before. I knew the difficulties of playing to an audience every day. However, Timothy knew I was lying about the group's broken flagging spirits.

Our group decided to give Timothy a $35 tip and Andrew, the cook, $25 once we had returned to Arusha. These were fair tips and more than my companions thought Timothy deserved. But our group was unanimous. We should at least give this amount, and probably more, simply because we could.

On the final day, we saw every big herbivore inside the crater, including four black rhino. I could hardly care. Sitting inside the "eighth natural wonder of the world," I was numb from animal watching, from sitting caged inside a four-wheel drive. I hadn't had a real walk in five days. I was cross with myself and my jeep mates. Oddly, my favorite sighting that day was a lone-crested eagle, similar to a bald eagle I commonly saw in my home state, Washington. It was time to come home.

Two days later on Zanzibar island, I ran into the Norwegian couple, then Tom. Like other wazungus, we had followed the trail to the Tanzanian coast. On this resort island, I saw at least two dozen people I had first seen in safari vehicles. We were like wildebeests, us tourists on the mzungu trail. Only a week ago, our group left Arusha eager and friendly. Now we could barely say hello while passing one another on the street.