Africa Safari Journal (in Haiku) (with Footnotes)

Mindela Ruby

Sossus Lodge

Deadvlei at sunset
Yelping jackal crosses dunes
The Milky Way¹ wows

¹ Earth’s galaxy home, strikingly visible in the Namibian desert night sky.

Mowani Mountain Camp

Reimvasmaaker² guide
Rosey-Face Love Birds in flight
Scattered boulder crags

² Member of South African tribe forcibly resettled to Namibia during
Apartheid, inspiring our guide to call himself Man Without A Place.

Cornerstone House

Swakopmund³ drizzle
Afrikaans’ paranoia
Bolt the gate at night

³ German colonial beach resort on Namibia’s coast, colonized
by wealthy, intolerant Caucasians.

Grootberg Lodge

Etendeka Pass
Girl named Tell It To Me Straight
Schnitzel⁴ on each plate

⁴ German culinary meat preparation in which veal or pork is pounded
and fried until desiccated.

Dolomite Camp

Damara dik dik⁵
Private plunge pool at chalet
Vast parched plain below

⁵ Smallest African antelope, rare to Etosha National Park and
charming to behold.

Okaukeujo Camp

Park’s best⁶ waterhole
Elephants’ deft ablutions
Lion grunts all night

⁶ For viewing large game at close range, surrounded by obstreperous
tourists, except late at night when we quietly view a dainty clan of rhinos.

Ilala Lodge

Victoria Falls⁷
street-hustler entrepreneurs
Ndebele twill

⁷ World’s largest sheet of falling water, whose indigenous name,
mosi-oa-tunya, means “smoke that thunders.”

Blackheath Hotel

Table Mountain glows
cab drivers speak truth to lies
The Bo-kaap⁸ is near

⁸ Cape Town, South Africa, township whose colorful houses symbolize
Muslim Cape Malays’ triumph against colonial oppression.

© Mindela Ruby

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Mindela Ruby is the author of the novel Mosh It Up (Pen L, 2014). Her chapbook That It Should Come To This was a semi-finalist in a Slash Pine Press competition. Her poems, prose pieces, and hybrids can be found online and in print journals including Frigg, East Bay Review, Arcadia, Melusine, and Literary Mama. She completed a PhD in English and Linguistics at the University of California.