The Best of Friends Read online

  But as the months passed, an occasional fluttery feeling of panic became more frequent. At thirty-five, there was no way to deny I was in my “mid-thirties,” a time when many of my friends were already married or about to be. My friend Sharon, who’d had so many dating disaster stories of her own, now had a wonderful boyfriend and didn’t sugar her sage advice. “Sara. If you want to get married, sweetie, not to mention have kids, you need to get going.” I tried not to think about it, but increasingly, weddings and baby showers gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  And the truth of the matter was, there was a man in my life. Sort of. Although I never saw him, given that he lived 6,760 miles from New York.

  Two weeks after we’d officially broken up, Andrew had called. Before long we’d resumed our daily chats, and thanks to the Internet, we could also correspond by e-mail. After all, what was the harm? We were Just Friends. I figured it wasn’t a problem because it didn’t stop either one of us from dating. But I did wait a while before confessing to my girlfriends, especially Ginger. When I did, their response was swift and unanimous. This was Not Wise.

  Perhaps not, but I still appreciated his warmth, intelligence, and kindness, and the distance made our connection feel safe. Plus I had too much to think about. It was the spring of 1996 and I was about to leave on another assignment, one that, while important, was anything but safe. It would take me back to Africa. I wasn’t so sure about telling my parents, but I couldn’t wait to tell Ginger.

  19

  GINGER (1996)

  IT WAS 1 A.M., and I couldn’t sleep. If I had been in New York with Sara, I might just be getting back from a night out with her friends at some exotic restaurant, about to peel out of my little black dress. But I wasn’t in New York. I was in Etosha, where I was once again babysitting in the bush. I heard the sound of branches breaking, feet stomping, the fence giving way. The toddler in my charge was having one massive temper tantrum, wrecking my backyard. I rolled over, put the pillow over my head, and moaned. “Elee, please. Stop it. I’m trying to sleep.”

  I tried fading to black, counting sheep. All I saw were elephants. I tried listing all the things I loved about my life. Space. Not having to answer to a boss. Learning new animal languages. Freedom. Capturing beautiful images on film. Drifting naked down a flowing river. Investigative work into animal behavior. Driving out onto the plains at sunrise. Still being there at sunset. Storytelling. I loved my life, I truly did. I had fought hard for it. But at 1 A.M. with my thoughts clouded by sleep deprivation, suddenly my friend Sara’s life looked better.

  She owned her own apartment. I lived in a government house. She could write a Zagat restaurant guide to dining out in New York, London, and L.A. My cookbook would be called 300 Ways to Cook Pasta for Under $1 a Serving. She could order takeout, a different cuisine delivered to her doorstep every night. I brought food supplies in monthly bulk with no one to cook but me or Nad. She had a substantial salary that would come in month after month, year after year, without break while she developed new story ideas. Not an assurance in the freelance world. She had benefits—hospitalization, dentist, stock options. Not me. She could keep an audience riveted with the stories of her travels, the knowledge she’d plumbed from years on the road from the White House to Whitehall. I talked about baboons. My life was removed, completely out of touch. Sometimes I felt like I had only one story, one life, while my friend had many and each was more interesting than my own. Sometimes it was hard not to compare. And many times I longed to trade places with Sara…for a night or two…or two thousand and two.

  “Dammit, stop it, Elee!” Starting with tonight.

  The next morning I refocused on my life, conjuring up all the magical elements that had drawn me to the bush and kept me there. There was this great wild world to explore, ephemeral bonds formed with animals which could turn on you in a flash but didn’t—moments of clarity when, after years of observation, an animal’s behavior suddenly made sense and a story took shape. Unique to my world, these were gifts I never would have discovered in New York. And there were more. There were gifts with names and faces—baboons like Pandora, Smudge, and sweet Cleo; a baby rhino; my husband, Nad; and when I saw who was waiting for me at the fence, I added another name to the list, Elee.

  “Come, Elee, come.” I started walking to the fence in our backyard. From behind the shade of a mopane tree, a four-hundred-pound baby elephant came running toward me at full speed, one elephant alone without a herd of elephants in sight. “Hey, sleep well?” I laughed. “Listen, you kept me awake half the night, and there is something I must tell you, since your mom isn’t here…Elee, you are a diurnal creature. That means you are active during the day. And it means you sleep at night, so I can sleep!” I rubbed his head. “Okay, Elee? Please? Thanks. You can have some water now.”

  After I’d filled his trunk with water from a hosepipe, Elee reached out to me with his trunk. The thin skin dividing his nose quivered, reminding me that this long, dexterous tool, strong enough to push over a tree and sensitive enough to lift a grain of corn from the sand, was also an elephant’s nose. I placed my hand over the end of his trunk. It was wet, with short, spiky hairs, and ticklish. He blew hot air into my hand. “You are a very sweet Elee,” I laughed while scratching his head, his thick skin reminding me of our little rhino. After the rhino’s heartbreaking death, this would be my second chance at animal motherhood. I just hoped that this time it would end more positively, as his story was also rooted in sorrow.

  Elee came from Damaraland, a dry, dusty area a hundred miles west of Etosha. Against a vast backdrop of flat-topped mountains and baked red earth, elephants were forced to travel long distances in their search for food and water. The humans for whom this harsh land was a birthright stayed put, eking out a meager living as subsistence farmers. Inevitably the two intelligent species met, and for Elee’s herd, conflict had led to crisis. A water reservoir had been smashed, crops were trampled, and a baby elephant had squealed in fear. To protect their livelihood and possibly their lives, one farmer had fired a shot. The bullet had lodged in the chest of our little elephant’s mother. She’d turned and run with the herd, dying later, her youngster by her side.

  Namibia’s game capture unit had found him, alone, standing over his mother’s dead body. Without the protection of his herd, he never would have survived. Nevertheless, he refused to leave his mother without a fight. He had run for twenty miles, until the game guards had gotten close enough to throw a rope around his neck, stick a needle into his backside, and finally, once the sedative had taken effect, load him in a truck. Hours later, when he ended up in our backyard in Etosha, he was angry, tired, and lost. He had nothing. Nothing but us, a pair of humans he had every right to hate.

  It had taken several days of constant care from Nad and me, but soon he began to trust us. Just us. The scrapes and cuts Elee had suffered while running through the bush had healed. But those were superficial injuries. What about those scars deep inside? Elephants are sensitive, intelligent creatures, animals that live with and learn from a protective herd. As a male, at around fourteen years old, he would ultimately have left his family, moving alone or joining other bachelors for company and in a time-honored search for females to mate. But that break was only supposed to happen in the next decade, not now. As much as we loved him, there were things he needed to learn that we could never begin to teach him. We could only give him a shadow of his real life. He needed to be with elephants.

  “Elee, we are going to find you a family. Nad is flying right now, trying to find you a herd.” He shoved me, settling his shoulder against the fence and my chest. “It’s taking longer than we thought,” I explained. “Please just be patient.”

  In his search for a breeding herd of elephants, Nad flew for hours, crisscrossing the entire park, all 22,000 square kilometers of it. He didn’t see a single suitable surrogate family. Though curious as to where these massive animals might be, we couldn’t wait any longer to relocate Elee. He needed to be moved
quickly, before we became even more attached to him.

  With permission from Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Nad phoned the owner of a private game farm with a resident breeding herd of elephants. He offered Elee a home. Two days later, without drugs, darts, or drama, Elee walked past Nad into a game capture truck. He was relaxed, eating bits of grass and stripping mopane leaves from branches we’d cut for him. Nad reached through the slats of the container and injected him with a sedative to keep him calm for the trip. After he’d fallen asleep, I walked in and rubbed his head for the last time, reassuring him once again that it would be all right.

  Unlike my unwittingly false reassurance to the baboons, this time I was right. We released him on the game farm and within two days the resident herd of elephants accepted him. Elee had a new family.

  Nad and I returned to Etosha, to our empty backyard. At night, I would lie awake listening to jackals cry and genets screech, hoping for the sound of an elephant trumpeting. I had to settle for silence, knowing ultimately that both Elee and I had a wonderful life—perhaps not the life we had imagined, but a life we could learn from, one that would complete us.

  My list of reasons for living in the bush was growing. I knew that if Sara had a list for doing the job that she loved, fame and fortune wouldn’t be on it. They were by-products of many years of honing her talents, of hard work, and of real sacrifice, making tough choices to tell tough stories. Which was why she was about go to Sudan. I might envy Sara’s life at times, but I didn’t want it. All I wanted was for her trip to Sudan to end safely. And then all I wanted was her here.

  Photographic Insert

  Sara, eighth grade.

  Ginger, eighth grade.

  Sara crowning Ginger “Miss Tucker,” 1978.

  Newspaper coverage ofGinger’s romantic life, July1983.

  Ginger mending a broken heart.

  Sara reporting forWWBT-12 News, Richmond,Virginia, 1986.

  Sara on the cover of Charlottemagazine while she was newsanchor for WBTV-3, 1989.

  Complete acceptance:Ginger with Cleo,Smudge, and Pandora,1990.

  Baboons of the NamibDesert, 1992.

  Ginger with Cleo,1993.

  Ginger naps with thebaby rhino in her care,1993.

  Sara living among the troops inSaudi Arabia during OperationDesert Shield, 1990.

  Sara with the 1454th Transportation Company (Concord, North Carolina),whom she covered during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm forWBTV-3.

  Sara on the Today show with KatieCouric and Bryant Gumbel, 1992.

  Sara interviewing child slaves in Sudan, 1996.

  In Etosha National Park forthe Dateline shoot, 1995.

  Leisure time during the filming of Legends of the Bushmen for Turner Original Productions.

  Sara and Ginger at Victoria Falls,1995.

  Sara interviewing Afghani refugeesnear the Pakistan-Afghanistanborder, 1999.

  Nad and Ginger on their weddingday, November 4, 1995.

  Kimber growing up behind (2000) and in front of (2004) the camera on the National Geographicfilm Born Wild.

  Sara and Andrew on their wedding day, December 26, 1998.

  The Richmond Times Dispatch covers “Living with Anthrax,” which aired on MSNBC’s National Geographic Explorer on December 9, 2001.

  “Safe Soph,” 2001.

  Sara and Jacqueline, Easter 2006.

  Kimber and Smokey, 2006.

  Sophie and Jacqueline, 2005.

  Kimber, Nad, and Ginger, July 2003.

  Sophie, Andrew, Sara, and Jacqueline, July 2005.

  20

  SARA (1996)

  YOU DON’T HAVE to go,” said Neal Shapiro, Dateline’s executive producer. “I want to make that clear to both of you. This assignment is entirely optional.”

  Producer Lisa Hsia and I looked at each other. We were in a meeting with Neal, as well as with NBC vice president David Corvo and NBC’s lawyer in charge of network standards David McCormick. Everyone looked grave.

  “I know,” Lisa said.

  “We want to,” I added.

  “Do you have visas?”

  “We’ll have passports but we won’t be clearing customs in Sudan,” Lisa said. “As far as the government knows, we won’t be there. They don’t want anyone to document what’s happening in the south. If we are going to prove there’s slavery, this is the only way.”

  “Now let me get this straight,” Neal continued. “Once you get there, you will be on your own. No car, no truck. You’re hundreds of miles from anywhere. If the militias strike, how do you get out?”

  “We’ll use our satellite phone to call the pilot at the air charter company,” said Lisa, who’d researched the trip meticulously.

  “And how long will that take?”

  “A day.”

  Everyone was quiet. There were some things research couldn’t fix. Then Neal said, “I can’t tell you how careful I want you to be. Both of you.”

  I appreciated Neal’s warning, but it didn’t lessen my resolve to journey to the largest country in Africa, to cover an outrage which had gone virtually unnoticed.

  The background went like this. Civil war had racked Sudan for thirteen years, and the Muslim fundamentalist regime in the north had declared a “jihad,” or holy war, against Christians in the south, a tribal people known as Dinkas. But now international rights groups, including Christian Solidarity International, were reporting that thousands of women and children in the south were being bought and sold as slaves. Chattel slavery in 1996. It was almost incomprehensible. Since President Omar al-Bashir’s regime denied the charges, we decided to sneak into the country to learn the truth for ourselves.

  As committed as I was, the timing was terrible. During my years as a reporter I’d missed my share of Thanksgiving feasts, family gatherings at Christmas, and New Year’s Eve toasts. There was always next year. Except this time. In 1993 my Richmond roommate, Lisa, had married Lewis Powell, a boyishly handsome, intelligent attorney who wore the mantle of being the son of a U.S. Supreme Court justice lightly. They’d just had a daughter, and I was honored to be Hannah’s godmother. But going to Sudan meant I would miss the christening. While Lisa was supportive, I could hear the disappointment in her voice, and it was clear she worried about me and didn’t entirely understand my desire for yet another dangerous assignment. Not surprisingly, neither did Mom. As for Andrew, he urged caution but sounded increasingly preoccupied with his single life in Tokyo. I tried not to think about who might be keeping him busy as I headed to JFK.

  My producer, Lisa, and I flew to Sudan with a team including a South African camera crew and Baroness Caroline Cox, Deputy Speaker of the British House of Lords and president of Christian Solidarity International. We landed on a dirt strip where a group of tall, thin men and women waited. Everyone pitched in to help carry the numerous boxes of gear back to the village, a collection of huts on a tributary of the Blue Nile. The surrounding countryside was bleak, as most trees had been cut down for firewood and there was no need to fear lions. Game in this part of Africa had long ago been killed for sport or sustenance. When I spotted a pretty bird and asked its name, I felt a wave of sadness for both the people and their wildlife when the gaunt translator replied, “Food.”

  We pitched our tents next to a bullet-riddled shell of a building, eating a dinner of military rations, or MREs, as the baroness explained the situation in the south. Several times a year, an army train would rumble through the region, flanked by well-armed but unpaid Arab militias for whom human beings were often the spoils of war. “They tend to kill the men and they tend to take women and children as human booty,” the baroness explained in a voice of quiet indignation.

  “And when will the train come through?” I asked.

  The translator hesitated. “Sometime very soon.”

  That night, as I had so many years before in Nicaragua, I slept with my boots by the door of the tent flap.

  WE KNEW THAT the only way for families to rescue
loved ones was to buy them back at a slave auction, which was held in a small market eight miles away. As there were no cars, we set out on foot, carrying heavy gear, for the three-hour hike. We started out at daybreak to beat the heat.

  As we trudged along the path across the baking earth, we chatted with our Dinka porters, some of whom had learned a good bit of English. At one point one man paused to talk to a few local herders, and by their gestures I realized I was the subject of conversation.

  “What was that all about?”

  “I am not sure you wish to know.”

  “I wish to know.”

  “Well then. That man wants to know if you are for sale.”

  “What!!” I stopped in my tracks to stare at him. “We’re on our way to do a story about slavery—and you’re talking about selling me?”

  His laugh was loud and immediate. “Oh, this is very different! This man wanted you as a wife!”

  “Oh yes, that’s totally different.”

  “Besides, he made a good offer.”

  In spite of myself I was curious. “Purely from an informational point of view, what was my price?”

  “Twenty cattle.” I gave him a sharp, probing look, and clearly thinking he’d offended me with a low-ball offer, he hastened to continue. “He has several wives already but was willing to make such an offer because you are—different.”