An acquaintance visited from Colorado. First time in Kenya. First time in Africa. A cliched American: gigantic fellow with a scraggly ginger beard that I suspected was home to all manner of small American rodents back home. Let's assign him an American name: Matt.
Matt wore sunglasses all the time, possibly because Africa is very bright. And he said ‘dude’ a lot. Hefellows we see in movies who can hold their breath underwater for two days and jump off a helicopter with dogs strapped to their backs. But Matt turned out to be the gentlest man you ever saw. He wept at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust when he was told that the baby elephant he was bottle feeding was an orphan. A ‘cuddly panda’ is how a female friend described him. Why are big men ever so gentle and sensitive? It's always the tiny men, who shop for shoes in the children's section, who want to start fights over armrests.
