“If I would have known it was going to be all about animals every day, I would have never signed up for this safari!”

This was shouted at me -- loudly -- during dinner, by one of my travel companions on Day 2 of our stay in Uganda. And it is one of the best, most preposterous sentences I’ve ever heard.

The idea that this woman thought the trip might be the other type of safari, you know, the kind where instead of going out to see African animals each day, you go out and…???

What, Mimi? You go out and do what? Tell us what type of safari you thought this was.

Dianne was a cranky old woman who told us her name was Mimi, but we mostly referred to her as Sybil. She didn't look much like Sally Field, though, so I decided that if it came down to it, I’d cast Ellen Bernstyn to play her. I’d need someone with a wide range, someone who could be deceptively grandmother-ish in one instance, but then turn evil on a dime in the next.

When we came down to breakfast each day, we never knew which of Mimi’s many personalities and moods might be there to greet us. For example, one day I came to breakfast and sat across from her, but she didn’t look up. I asked her how she slept, which prompted her in turn to bark at me, loud enough (again) for everyone in the entire safari camp's dining area to hear, “I have no problem with you sitting here. Just so long," Mimi stipulated, "as you don’t talk to me. I need compete silence from you this morning!”

After that embarrassment, I gave her a wide berth for the duration of the trip. Not just for breakfasts, but in all things. Because it turned out, Mimi wasn’t just bipolar, she was also quite mean. One by one, everyone else stopped talking to her as well. With no one left to engage with, but still wanting to stay relevant and involved, she quickly took to loudly complaining about people she didn’t like to other people that she briefly did like, but always in front of or within earshot of the person she was complaining about. This was her complicated, manipulative, and passive-aggressive way of still getting to say her piece -- and tell a person exactly how she felt about them -- even if that person (like me) had made it quite clear they planned to ignore her.

But I dare you, try to ignore someone who’s loudly telling the safari lodge concierge what an awful person you are. Even though you know it’s all for your benefit and it’s exactly what the crazy old lady wants, it’s hard not to capitulate and eventually jump up and defend yourself.

On one occasion, she had the audacity to apologize on my behalf, to a medicine man of a small local village who spoke no English. Which means that in order to do this, she had to involve a translator. But that didn’t stop her. Again, very loudly, and mostly for my benefit, she belabored the point to the translator of how embarrassed she was to be seen with such idiotic Americans who asked such stupid questions. She then waited while the reluctant translator attempted to convey this bewildering sentiment to the ninety-one-year-old medicine man you see here.

This is when Mimi and I had our come to Jesus moment.

And by come to Jesus moment, I meant I told her to f*ck off.

She later apologized, saying that in San Francisco where she lived, she was used to smoking weed at least once a day, and without it, she was a little on edge. I told her she was about to be a lot more on edge if I ever heard her apologizing to anyone on my behalf ever again.

“But your question was absurd! Why would you ask the village medicine man if he believed a rhinoceros horn had aphrodisiac properties? What a crass sexual question! Were you trying to be funny? Because you failed. You know I’m a teacher back home, right? And I simply hate disruptive students who ask silly questions to disrupt my class!”

I paused for a second to make a mental note of this. A teacher, too, huh? That’s interesting, because earlier this week, I’d heard her claim to be a professional dancer, an interior designer, a painter, a sculptor, and a potter, and this was only Tuesday. So I guess I’ll also add "teacher" to the list. By the end of the week, I reckoned I’d have met enough of the people and personalities that lived inside Mimi’s head, that we could start a sizable little village of our own.

Maybe I’ll ask this medicine man to join our new imaginary village. Now there’s an absurd question for her!

But instead, I calmly said, “Well Mimi, if you had taken the time to learn anything about the region in which you’d be traveling, you’d know that rhinoceros’s poaching is a very real and contentious issue here. Pound for pound, a rhinoceros corpse is worth more than gold, and this is largely because many eastern cultures are convinced it has aphrodisiac properties, despite all evidence to the contrary. This old man is all too aware of this.”

As I suspected, even though this medicine man seemed to have many mystical, almost medieval beliefs, and might even be guilty of prescribing a few less than scientific remedies, he became very incensed at the idea of rhino poaching.

(You can read more about rhinoceros poaching HERE.)

“You saw that he got upset after I asked my question," I explained to Mimi,"and you misinterpreted his reaction. He wasn’t upset at my question or its absurdity whatsoever, he was passionate about stopping the senseless killing of rhinos by the marauding poachers.

"Maybe next time ask more questions yourself, Mimi, rather than apologizing for the questions of others, especially on matters which you know nothing about.”

Somewhere in there I also added “and f*ck off,” but I can’t really recall where. We’ll just plop it here on the tail end of my little speech, as it’s as good a place as any. Admittedly, it wasn’t my most eloquent moment.

For better or for worse, I noticed that after this little conversation, all the people in Mimi’s head started requesting to have their meals brought privately to their room each night instead of eating in the communal tent areas with everyone else. At the time, I thought it was just one more way for Mimi to be difficult and demand special attention from the staff, but I later learned that she’d had some kind of similar altercation with almost everyone she’d met thus far. Mimi was likely self-isolating due to the large number of people she’d systematically managed to piss off in our camp (and probably throughout Uganda at large, too.)

But, ugh. Damn it, now I felt sorry for her. So I made up my mind to try giving her at least one more chance to redeem herself. I could surely manage that much, and I even contemplated apologizing to her for telling her to f*ck off.

However, this resolution of mine was short-lived. She woke up the next morning with a new and recharged sense of purpose and spitefulness, the likes of which we’d yet to see. Whereas before she seemed determined to be combative and difficult and make everyone around her miserable through constant complaining and derogatory comments, today she seemed hellbent on actually CHANGING OUR ITINERARY.

After college, I’d briefly lived with a bipolar roommate, so I knew how to handle moody and difficult, no problem. Mimi’s little games were nothing new to me. However, what I refused to tolerate was someone who began actively trying to mess with my ability to photograph the animals I came halfway around the world to see.

And mess she did.

Mimi’s new modus operandi became to wake up each day, decide in her crowded head which activities in the whole wide world would make her team of personalities the absolute happiest person/people on earth, and then start campaigning for our group’s agenda to change, to accommodate the activities she had just confabulated.

It was maddening.

And, unsurprisingly, all her ideas involved ways to not see any animals that day, and instead replace all our preplanned game drives and preordained tracking expeditions with something else entirely. Something of her own invention and, oftentimes, something utterly preposterous and unrealistic.

Thank god no one else went for this, nor were most of her ideas even seriously entertained: we were all there to photograph animals, you crazy lady!

So, most days, while I went off with a guide and another intrepid photographer, Mimi stayed behind and did… we don’t really know what she did. Maybe she just concentrated on avoiding all the beautiful animals.

Honestly, the biggest mystery to me isn’t what she did all day, it’s why she ever came to Uganda in the first place.

I know we don’t call them third world countries anymore, but to me the term is still useful in evoking a certain emotional and visceral response. And believe me, Uganda certainly fits the bill of every visualization I saw as a kid of a “third world country.” In fact, I’d say it is the quintessential image most people will pull up in their mind when they hear the term. It is dirty and underdeveloped, and it is often primitive in unsightly rather than charming ways. The levels of poverty and destitution in many parts of Uganda can be not only heartbreaking but also dangerously unstable.

I am telling you all this to emphasize the point that you have to really want to come to Uganda. And if you’ve come all this way, you probably have a good reason for doing so.

For myself, and many other likeminded photographers, the reason is the animals, and they are well worth justifying the trip. The high costs of getting here, as well as all the sacrifices in terms of comfort, security, and physical well-being, are all worth it once you are out amongst the animals with your camera.

So what was Mimi’s reason for being here? I often asked myself that question, and I never did discover a satisfying answer.

On the first day I met her, she showed me the fancy, "expensive" camera she’d just purchased, presumably to use exclusively on this very trip. The fact that she kept emphasizing how "expensive" it was, as opposed to anything else about it, pretty much told me all I needed to know. That, and the fact that she blatantly admitted she had no idea, whatsoever, how to use it.

Fantastic.

Well, I thought, at least her honesty is refreshing. Years ago, my mom and I traveled around South Africa with an infuriating “photographer” that had rented a lens the size of a bazooka. Due to its sheer size and weight alone, a lens like this would prove cumbersome and unwieldy in the hands of the most experienced wildlife cameraman or the most adept landscape photographer. Since this ridiculous man was neither, he might as well have brought a battering ram along with him on safari, for all the good this ginormous lens seemed to be doing him. With him at the helm, this fancy camera was capable of taking the blurriest, most under and overexposed images you've ever seen, yet its sheer size alone emboldened the man to request special privileges and demand the best vantage points. (I talk more about BIG LENS SYNDROME here.)

A camera is just a tool, and like any tool, if you don’t know how to use it, it’s all but worthless. There is a common maxim amongst photographers, that we’d prefer a bad camera in the hands of a good photographer than the best camera in the hands of an amateur. I wholeheartedly believe this to be true.

Just like the man with the $20,000 bazooka lens that had no idea how to work his camera, Mimi had no clue how to operate her (expensive!) new purchase either, and the dismal photos she showed me on her LCD screen certainly reflected that. This was on Day One of meeting Mimi, so she was still on her very best behavior and almost pleasant; so, when she turned to me and genuinely asked for my help, I obliged.

All her photos were either dark, blurry, out of focus, or sometimes they were the trifecta— simultaneously dark, blurry and out of focus. She asked me to help her with her settings.

I quickly assembled a list of questions in my head, partly to help me determine how to assist her, and partly because I hadn’t shot on a Fuji in a very, very long time. But I barely got the most basic questions out before Mimi exploded. It was obvious she didn’t know any of the answers to any of my questions, which was odd, because they weren’t even technical. Questions like, do you plan to edit these photos, and if so, on what software?

What does it matter what I plan to do with them?! I just want you to fix my settings! Just set my camera up the same as yours!”

“Okay, um…. We have completely different cameras, so that’s impossible, but even if it were, I couldn’t do that to you in good conscience. I’d be doing it to prove a point, and you’d get home and think I was an asshole.”

Well I think you’re an asshole now! You think you’re so special that you can keep your settings a secret? Keep them all to yourself?! You’re unwilling to share what you know so that you can be the only one to get any good photographs? Is that it? I know people like you! I know how you think!”

This was the first time I realized that Mimi might be crazy, or at the very least, unstable.

“Um, ma’am,” I said tentatively, “are you feeling okay? You seem to have become very… frothy and agitated.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I just want to take good photos like the rest of you are getting, and everything I’ve taken with this fucking camera today is absolute shit!”

That much was true.

“I don’t know how to work it and I don’t know what I’m doing!”

True, and also true.

“So just fix my settings like yours, so that I can take good photos.”

And… false. I see we’re back to this again.

I want to pause here and state that this idea— that there is some secret, magical camera configuration that professional photographers know to use, and that if we only shared it with you, then you, too, could take great, gorgeous photos— is a common misconception, and one that most photographers will be all too familiar with. It’s as if people want us to take their camera in hand and say to them, “Oh! I see, you have it on the “Take Blurry Shitty Photos” setting; you just need to flip it to the “Pretty Photos” setting. Done!”

Like so many people before her, Mimi didn’t really want to learn how to use her camera, she just wanted me to “fix it” so that it would take pretty pictures. Just instantaneously imbue it with all my years of training, knowledge and experience, and then hand it back to her. This always makes me angry, and so I knowingly launched into an esoteric diatribe of pedantry that I knew she didn’t really want to hear.

“Mimi, I am shooting in RAW and purposefully underexposing my photos, knowing that if I can get this sunset right, then I’ll still be able to pull out the details of the shadows on the animals in post.

Furthermore, I’m using two different types of BACK BUTTON FOCUS, one with animal eye tracking turned on and one without, to make sure I can always keep the autofocus from accidentally shifting focus to the foreground or background of my subject, and also so I can instantly shift the focus off of the animals and onto the mountains, should I suddenly decide I’d like to shoot the landscape instead.

Since the sun is setting, I’m in Manual Mode, but have my finger on the ready, to switch to auto ISO at any given moment; I figure that with such low light levels, auto ISO might be the only way I could salvage my footage, should something truly amazing suddenly crop up unexpectedly, like a fast moving hunt or a kill.

If I’m zoomed in all the way on this long lens, the built in image stabilization will take care of camera shake due to the movement of this vehicle were in, but in order to capture a moving animal, I’ll need a fast shutter, and at 500 mm, there just wouldn’t be enough light without really pushing the ISO. Hence the Auto ISO in a pinch.

Not to mention, I have all my buttons in a customized configuration, so if I replicated my settings on your camera and handed it back to you, it would be like a cruel joke.

But go back to what I said right at first, if you don’t have editing software at home, then the cruelest joke of all would be for me to simply switch your camera to shoot exclusively in RAW, because you wouldn’t even be able to view your photos on your computer at home without first installing the proper software.”

I looked at her somewhat apologetically, and realized that I was actually surprised she’d let me carry on so long, just to prove my belabored point.

“Oh, are you done?” she said, while making a dramatic show of taking out the earbuds she’d apparently put in her ears at some point while I was talking. What a bitch.

“Yeah, I’m done,” I said, and I meant it in more ways than just one.

After that first day, we never saw Mimi’s fancy (expensive) camera again. Whatever occasional photos she took thereafter, she shot exclusively on her iPhone, and she never again asked for my help.

In fact, as the days went on, Mimi deigned to join us for less and less safari game drives or wildlife treks, and eventually, she stopped coming to almost any activities at all. She continued to take dinner most nights in her room, and we’d only see her when it was time to transfer to a new location by car.

Even though we saw very little of her, on the occasions when we did, was it just my imagination, or was she more even-keeled here lately and much less hyper-combative? In fact, I hadn’t even seen any texts from her today, contesting tomorrow’s game drive itinerary and listing a litany of preposterous alternatives. Maybe she’s on an upswing? Or maybe she finally found some weed?

No sooner had I thought this, we all see a text on our phones summoning our guide to her room. Even though the text was mysteriously vague, it implied that it was his duty to drop everything and attend to her beck and call. The time was almost 11:00 p.m., so my interest was definitely piqued as to what this late-night duty call could possibly be about.

The next day, Mimi was absent from breakfast (as per usual), so our guide was able to tell us what had transpired without having to hide how he truly felt about the situation. He looked as if he’d barely slept, as he explained that Mimi had summoned him to her room late last night to inform him that she’d had a revelation. She had decided that instead of going on tomorrow’s game drive, she’d be going to the local schoolhouse, early, to teach all the little children to sing songs in English.

“Arrange it for me, will you?” she asked/told him, and then dismissed him from her room and went to bed.

So, at around 11:30 p.m., our poor guide had to start trying not only to arrange transportation for Mimi, to and from the local schoolhouse, but also to call all the teachers and inform them, “Hey. Cancel all your lesson plans tomorrow morning, we have an entitled and self-important white woman with a savior complex who’s decided to come and teach the children nursery rhymes tomorrow.”

To which I imagine the teacher probably replied, “You’ve got to be shitting me. Another one? That’s the 5th white woman this month! We’re already behind in our lessons, but if all these American white women keep stopping by to teach my students nursery rhymes, we’re never going to get through quadratic equations! How long do you’ll think it'll take this time?”

“Ooooh, that’s hard to say, the self-righteousness is strong in this one! But she did only mention wanting to sing itsy bitsy spider and just one other song about a duck, so I dunno… two hours maybe? Max?”

“Fine. But you owe me! You can’t keep dumping these delusional old white women on me last minute like this, David!”

“I told her you probably already had a lesson plan for today, but she said, “Rubbish! What could be more edifying than the gift of song!”

“Ugh. I hate her already.”

“You and me both…”

When we returned to the lodge that afternoon, I could see that Mimi was beaming: it would be Happy Sibyl coming over to greet us, but by the time we reached her, I was starting to get the feeling that I’d drastically underestimated her good mood. Because while I, too, was pretty jazzed following an especially stellar day of photography (I’d managed to locate and photograph the most exquisite LEOPARD IN A TREE you've ever seen), it would appear that Mimi was ecstatic, and had just experienced the best day of her entire life.

She sat down next to me, and with a grin from ear to ear -- and a genuine enthusiasm I’d never witnessed from her before -- she began regaling us all with tales about her magical day with the children. All the children, it turns out, were unanimously glad to see her and were overwhelmed with gratitude for her glorious gifts of song and pageantry.

She explained how she’d agreed to find the older students pen pals back home in the states, so they could practice writing their English, and how she’d given all the younger kids candy, even though the teachers had specifically asked her not to. She eventually got to the part where she told them that she’d love to bring "her" photographer back with her, either later this evening or tomorrow, if they’d be up for it.

She claimed the teachers all said they would love that.

Mimi had stopped talking, and was now turned beside me on the couch, looking at me expectantly.

“So? What do you think, Ryan? Will you come?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, as I ostentatiously removed the Air Pods from my ears, “are you done?”

I then looked at her unflinchingly as I said, “Because you can sit here with me, as long as you stop talking. I’m going to need absolute silence from you.”

Mimi looked completely taken aback. For once she was speechless.

My face finally cracked and I started laughing.

I’m just f*cking with you, Mimi. Sure, I’ll come!”

And then we all tenuously laughed together.

But of course (much to the local teachers’ relief, I imagine), we never did come back to the school later that evening, or the next day, or ever; because like most of Mimi’s plans, returning to visit the children was an unrealistic impossibility. We weren’t even staying at that same lodge another night, or even remaining in that same town. I wanted to say, "We have an itinerary, you silly lady, one that involves photographing animals, not photographing random children and teachers, or any other people or places you might suddenly decide to impose your impromptu agenda upon..."

Not to mention, the children wouldn’t even be there in the evening, because it’s a school— a place where children come to learn during the day and then leave— not a place where they all live around the clock, waiting patiently for foreign women to bring them edutainment and songs. Along with “safari,” I wanted to add “school” to the list of words I’d like Mimi to look up in the dictionary when she got home.

It suddenly occurred to me, thinking back on a lot of the things she’d been suggesting we do (in lieu of seeing the animals we all came to see) that they all had a certain ring to them. It was like she envisioned herself to be on some kind of missionary trip, minus any actual message to deliver, or on a humanitarian mission, minus any actual aid to offer. (Unless you consider the teaching of songs and fun dances to be aid, which I do not).

In fact, most of the outings she’d been campaigning for sounded like the kind of photo ops you’d stage for a celebrity or a politician. If the rest of us all saw ourselves as aspiring National Geographic photographers, it was like she saw herself as the next Sally Struthers or Oprah. Or perhaps that woman from "The King and I" that comes and teaches foreign children to sing delightful songs in English (while also learning a bit about herself, life, and love in the process.) Ugh.

Everything Mimi had been proposing we do reeked of narcissistic self-aggrandizement and delusion, but with a decent helping of cultural appropriation sprinkled in for good measure; then she'd wrap it all up neatly under the guise of altruism. For about the millionth time, I desperately wished I knew more about this crazy woman, what her daily life was like, and what she really did (if anything) for money back in San Francisco.

But for now, I just needed to get us back on track, and prevent her from convincing our guide that we should abandon tomorrow’s animal excursion in favor of graciously dumping more songs, dances, and candy on the local children instead.

“Besides, Mimi,” I told her on behalf of the group, “can you imagine what it would be like if you were their teacher? If you’d had an entire day planned, an itinerary that you were excited about and had put a lot of time and effort into preparing… only to have some random elderly white woman, a person you barely knew, decide she was going to show up and capriciously change it all to meet her own personal needs? Can you imagine that, Mimi?

Because guess what, Mimi? All of us on this safari sure can.”

*****************************

One last thing. I’m not going to lie, part of me did want to join her at the school, if only so I could loudly apologize for her in front of all the children and teachers, albeit in a confused, petty, and nonsensical way. Maybe even through the use of a bewildered translator.

“Oh! Tra-la-la, I’m so embarrassed!" I might say. "Her singing voice is so awful, isn’t it children? And I’m so mortified that she’s misrepresenting America, all our spiders aren’t itsy bitsy at all, are they?! Some of them are quite large and so her song is completely misleading and misrepresentative of America. Please forgive her, will you? Oh, this is just a travesty! I’m so embarrassed.

"Oh, and also children," I might quietly add, "I hear Mimi loves it when children ask tons of questions in class, especially sexual ones. I think she also loves pseudo-humanitarian things, so be sure and ask her about her position on missionary work. Yes, please use those exact words— ask her to demonstrate her missionary position for you— she will love that. Ask it repeatedly.

"I’ll just be over here with my camera, ready to go. Let me see… just need to switch it over to the “Take Pretty Pictures” setting… and… perfect! Got it! Let’s get this show started!”

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Mimi makes an appearance in a few of my other stories, like THIS ONE, about traveling in Uganda by car. Or you can read more about Rhinoceros poaching in South Africa HERE.