The Guide

This is one of the many guides who helped make our time in the many camps and lodges we stayed at during our travels in Africa so enjoyable. I found his picture the other day and, looking at it, remembered how unusually cheerful, willing and helpful he was.

He seemed to go out of his way to help us. At night, lions came close to the lodge where we were staying at Saadani in Tanzania, so we would often find....

....their pug marks along the sand at the top of the beach. I wanted to see one of these lions so, one evening, as we were the bar sipping our sundowners, he came across and summoned us. It was pitch black but, if we'd like a ride in one of the lodge's Land Rovers, he could take us to a spot on the road near the lodge where a lion was lying up in the bush. We went and, sure enough, we could see the animal's eyes glow in the light of a torch.

This is early one morning when I went with him to the small water hole which lions and other animals used at night, and he pointed out the lions' tracks. This spot was yards from the lodge's restaurant.

He was 'our' guide, so he went with us on our expeditions. This is at the end of a three-hour walk through the bush, with the sun setting and an expectant hush settling across the land. The man with him, toting the Kalashnikov, is a ranger from the park authority.

The terrible thing is that, rack my brain as I might, I couldn't remember our guide's name. It was something like Goodluck or Goodnews.... No it wasn't, it was Goodwill. What a lovely, and appropriate, name.