Tsakane Nxumalo is a sergeant in the Black Mambas, South Africa's first all-women anti-poaching team.
On Safari in South Africa and Botswana, Seeing Myself in My Father for the First Time
25.07.2023 - 14:03 / cntraveler.com
The parent and child relationship is a famously complicated one. It’s one of the few in life where the love is often so pure—and the bond so established—that both members expect to continually transition together through the different stages of life. But as children grow and develop their own identity, boundaries are redefined and the foundational rules drummed into us are questioned.
My own journey with my father has been a doozy. I grew up in a deeply religious household with a strong heritage to uphold within that belief system. So when I rejected those beliefs at a young age, and later came out in my early 20s, I wasn’t only challenging that religion, but my parents, too. Because of this, my father and I didn’t have a meaningful connection for many years. Yet the love between us was always felt—almost as though spoken in a foreign language since we no longer knew how to relate to one another.
I’m ashamed to admit that we both let this pattern last for more than a decade. I traveled to China and Eastern Europe, before deciding to move to New York City with my loving partner. I had all of the support I needed in my romantic relationship and close friendships. Yet the only person that has answered my calls within two rings has always been Dad.
So earlier this year, when my eight-year-relationship fell apart and I went down a rabbit hole questioning the decisions in my life, I decided it was time to turn to my father for guidance. He suggested we gain perspective together through a new travel experience: a safari trip that would take us to South Africa and Botswana.
I have long dreamed of bouncing around through wild sage in an adapted Range Rover, binoculars slung around my neck. But what I actually thought about most was how I wanted to use this opportunity as a chance to mend some of the damage of our relationship man to man. Not man to child.
In the run up to the trip, my father would call me almost every day: He had watched a documentary and discovered that we might see leopards. He decided that we should pack a painters kit and use the afternoons interpreting the bush. He ordered some mosquito-resistant clothing for both of us—the list goes on. It’s the most I’ve talked to my father consecutively in living memory.
Yet by the time the departure date swung around, I still hadn’t read the itinerary. I deemed myself too busy with work and heartbreak. I called my father and cautiously asked him the same thing. He hadn’t read it either. We laughed, and I noticed how our laughs sounded like echoes of one another.
A view of the Moremi Game Reserve with Barclay Stenner Safaris
Once we made it to Cape Town and settled in at the Silo Hotel, we sat down together and looked at what was ahead of us: an
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