The Ultimate Safari

The Ultimate Safari (1988) by Nadine Gordimer is a short story about a family’s journey from their demolished home in war-torn Mozambique to a refugee camp in South Africa. The story is set in 1988 amid the backdrop of a civil war, which neighboring South Africa supported by the funding of rebel forces. Gordimer, a white South African, was deeply critical of her nation’s involvement, and she tells the story of a young, unnamed refugee girl as she flees a war funded by Gordimer’s government. The story explores hope, the cruel nature of the human animal, and the refugee experience.

Quotes

• There is nothing. No home”
  • Page 13
• The African Adventure Lives On…You can do it! The ultimate safari or expedition with leaders who know Africa.
  • Page 1
• I am the middle one, the girl, and my little brother clung against my stomach with his arms round my neck and his legs round my waist like a baby monkey to its mother.
  • Page 1
• I don’t know what day it was; there was no school, no church any more in our village, so you didn’t know whether it was a Sunday or a Monday.
  • Page 1
• [w]hen we look at them it is as if we are in a real house, with no war, no away
  • Page 13
• Every morning, when people are getting up in the tent, the babies are crying, people are pushing each other at the taps outside and some children are already pulling the crusts of porridge off the pots we ate from last night, my first-born brother and I clean our shoes. Our grandmother makes us sit on our mats with our legs straight out so she can look carefully at our shoes to make sure we have done it properly. No other children in the tent have real school shoes. When we three look at them it’s as if we are in a real house again, with no war, no away.
  • [1]

External links

• super summary
• goodreads