African Bush Fire

NEAR-FATAL ENCOUNTER # 11

Trailing the massed herds of migrating wildebeest and zebra in Kenya’s Maasai Mara in 1979, I became so engrossed with the braying beasts and the chivvying attention of the ever-attendant predators that I forgot that, of the three open-topped four-wheel drive safari vehicles that our company owned, I was driving the Land Rover that had a leaking gas tank that slowly dripped gasoline onto the ground. As the morning drew on, I noticed smoke on the horizon, outside the reserve where Maasai pastoralists were in the habit of grazing. At certain times of the year, they would deliberately burn off the old grass to encourage new green growth for their grazing cattle.

The smoke seemed to be drifting to the right… but then also to the left. With the wind picking up now and the flames clearly visible on three sides, I picked up speed and headed along the valley floor, away from the fires. A hill ahead seemed the only way out, but I had to slow down here since the hillside was littered with boulders and sharp-edged rocks.

I stopped the car and turned around to look at the blaze that was chasing us. At the speed it was traveling, the fire would surely outrun us before we could make it up the hill and away to safety. I made a difficult and counter-intuitive decision, turning the vehicle around and pointing it back towards the oncoming fire. It is said that courage is not the absence of fear but the mastery of it. I had three clients with me, the Birenbaums from Brooklyn NY and, fortunately, they were aghast and speechless.

Making sure they had their sunglasses on, hats cinched down tight and mouths and noses covered, I bade them hunker down in the open-topped vehicle as we sped back towards the wall of fire. From past experience, I knew that dry grass burns quickly and then the flames move on, so my hope was that we could speed through the flames and quickly emerge onto the blackened soil on the other side. But what about the leaking gas tank?

Well, I am still here, and I also have three clients who have enjoyed telling their friends over the years that “Andrew tried to kill us - but then he saved our lives!”

I have never told them about the leaking gas tank…