Bill Shepard said he photographed an elephant with a telephoto lens after a hearing a story about a Peace Corps worker who was trampled to death by an elephant that was apparently aggravated by the sound of the camera
Wilbraham climber recounts trip to Africa
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
By SUZANNE McLAUGHLIN
smclaughlin@repub.com
WILBRAHAM - Mountain climber Bill Shepard planned for three years to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in East Africa, and it was truly "the trip of a lifetime," he said.
Shepard's program, "Adventures in Climbing," was part of the "Explore Other Worlds" summer program at Wilbraham Public Library.
Shepard told children and adults about the safari he took into the African Savannah prior to the climb.
Tanzania was once a British colony. With the Chagga tribe, a Christian tribe that grows coffee, corn and fruit, Shepard, his brother and some college friends took a guided Jeep tour into the Savannah.
He showed slides of jackels, gazelles, ostriches, baboons, cranes, crocodiles, zebras, elephants, giraffes, herds of water buffalo and lions.
Elephants are protected because they are still valued for their ivory tusks in Asia, Shepard said.
Shepard said he photographed an elephant with a telephoto lens after a hearing a story about a Peace Corps worker who was trampled to death by an elephant that was apparently aggravated by the sound of the camera.
The tour guide did not allow those on the safari to get out of the Jeep, although they could stand through a hole in the roof to take photographs, Shepard said.
While they were stopped in the Jeep at midday, some lions came and slept under the shade of the Jeep, he said.
Before starting the ascent of Kilimanjaro, Shepard said he had wanted to go for a run, but a tour guide reminded him that he is "meat" to the lions. Shepard said he went back to bed.
A Chagga guide led Shepard's party on its ascent of Kilimanjaro, a volcanic mountain. Other tribal groups in East Africa are the Bantu, who are mostly Muslim and herd cattle, and the Masai, who are pastoral herdsmen and warriors and whose religion is Animist, a religion that worships ancient animal gods.
