As a child, my favorite room was father’s library, an incubator for my fantasies. My favorite game was to turn off the lights, slip on my father’s night vision goggles, and pretend the spectacle of snarling lions, enraged gorillas, and well-armored rhinos, staring down from the walls were alive. Only my wits would keep me safe as I crept about the jungle, pretending to be a great anthropologist, just like my father.

No girl could possibly adore and worship her father more. Each winter when he’d pack his bags and leave our New York brownstone to trek through the wilderness of Africa, my heart went with him. Desolation would consume me until he returned, often bringing some fine animal to add to the amazing quantity of heads adorning the room.

Always a willing audience for my father’s stories, I knew by heart the adventures that had resulted in the immortalization of each beast on our library wall. None were killed for sport, only to save lives. For example, the lion’s name was Zambawa. My father had traveled deep into the land then known as Rhodesia when he encountered this man-eater decimating the natives in the area.  Zambawa is the largest lion ever captured or killed anywhere in the world. The beast had killed over a hundred men, women, and children. To the Tahisi and Narobi tribes, he was not a lion, but an unstoppable demon that would eventually devour the entire world.

In the heavy lilt of his Irish tongue, my father would recreate those anxious moments as the two great hunters—my father and the giant Zambawa—met for the first and last time. I have never seen any movie come close to this story of cunning, courage, and bravery. It is a story that ensnared my young mind, and left me no alternative but to follow in my father’s path.

My determination to accompany him during his next winter trek might have hit a dead-end had my mother still lived with us. Fortunately, she left during the summer of 1988, just after my twelfth birthday, declaring she couldn’t endure living one day more with a low-class Irishman. My father noted that, despite her aversion to his Irish blood, she still spent his low-class, Irish money well enough. However, he told her she was more than welcome to fly the private jet to wherever she wished to go.

To my relief, Mother did not attempt to take me with her. I was too much my father’s child, tainted beyond redemption, with the same coarse Irish blood in my veins.

The day she left, Father asked me if I wanted her back. Had I said yes, he would have hunted her down and brought her home with less trouble than Zambawa had posed.

I told him no. What I wanted was to accompany him on his next safari. At first, he declared it impossible, but with a whole month before he was to leave, a whole month to cajole and charm, I eventually won out. He finally decided it would be a fine education for me.

Since traveling would require me to miss school, he hired a tutor to accompany us through the jungles of Africa. Her name was Jenny O’Hare and she was a young Irish girl in her early twenties. She had the most beautiful shade of red hair with a mesmerizing sheen that seemed almost heavenly. I fell in love with her on sight. Evidently, so did Father.

Since the death of Zambawa, Father was quite famous among the various tribes of Africa and unlike many white visitors, he was truly welcomed and honored in any village he passed. As ‘his women,’ the natives treated both Jenny and I courteously. Yet, it was obvious, even to my twelve-year-old mind that the natives considered white women to be the most useless creatures the Gods had ever placed on earth.

We were lifted from boats and carried to the bank, as if the mere touch of water would dissolve us like sugar dropped into tepid tea. We slept on springy cots with fine nets draped around us to protect us from a single prick of the ever-present mosquito. We never drank directly from a watering hole. Instead, our water was boiled the night before, cooled, and then poured into a large stainless steel container, which they had to port, in case we became thirsty along the way.

It was this apparent helplessness that made my actions while traveling on a river in northern Zaire seem so incredible to the chief and his men. I certainly hadn’t begun the day with the intention of disproving their unflattering perception of me. To be honest, I preferred keeping my shoes dry, sleeping safe above the multitudes of poisonous snakes and creatures that occupied the floor of the tent, and drinking water that didn’t smell fetid and frequently resulted in diarrhea. 

I was quite willing to endure their belief I was pathetically helpless. However, I was not willing to let a small boy drown, or worse yet, be devoured by a giant crocodile as his frightened mother screamed pitifully from the boat.

Had Father been with me, he would have jumped in to save the child, and I would have gladly let him do it. But he was on the shore, having just carried Jenny to the bank. The boy’s mother couldn’t save him. She had her newborn bound to her chest in cloth cradle. If she jumped in the water, the baby would drown. Nor was it likely she could swim, most natives can’t.

As the large croc closed in, she wailed in agony at the cruelty of the gods. The small boy could neither swim to the boat nor toward the shore. All he could do was flail his arms enough to stay afloat.

So I dove into the muddy brown water, snared the boy with one arm, and paddled like crazy to the shore. On land was my father. I had absolute confidence that safety lay in his direction.

I heard and felt the explosion of his gun within a heartbeat of each other. The noise was excruciating to my ears and the shot was so close that the water heaved and lifted me up, tossing me forward. I had never been so rattled or frightened in my life. I’m amazed to this day I didn’t drop the boy. But I held to him with a Velcro grip even as my father pulled me from the water and carried me to the safety of the bank. Even then, it took several minutes of gentle coaxing to convince me to release the boy from my determined grasp.

Camp was established at once. Jenny cleaned me up and dried me off, as if I were a helpless baby. No protest cross my lips. In truth, I enjoyed the comfort of her mothering. Once she tucked me in my cot, I pretended to fall asleep. Earlier, I’d seen a stern lecture lurking in my father’s fiery eyes and hoped to avoid his displeasure until he calmed.

“Let her rest,” Jenny said to Father when he opened the tent flap and looked in on me.

“What the hell did she think she was doing?” he demanded, all the while trying to keep his voice to a whisper.

“She was being your daughter,” Jenny said. “She may be a girl, but she has your blood within her.”

“She could have died!”

“Aye, just as you could every time you step in to save others. She wasn’t thinking of her own life when she jumped in the water. She was thinking of saving the child.”

“Thank God she swam to the shore instead of the boat.”

“She knew you’d save her.”

“But what if I hadn’t? The croc had gone under. What if I misjudged where he was coming up?”

“God wouldn’t let that happen. There was a reason for today. It can be hard growing up under such a great tree, hard to get your own piece of sun, to become your own tree. But today, she made her sunshine. Today, she saved a child’s life, and she’ll always have this act of bravery which makes her special.”

I remember smiling at Jenny’s words that now I was special—not just the child of a great person, but special in my own right. A terrible unknown weight I had carried about during this entire trip suddenly lifted. No matter what the natives thought before, I had now proven I wasn’t useless after all.

When I woke in the morning, my father sat on a canvas chair beside my cot.

“You planning to sleep all day, Katie girl?” His words sounded light as if he teased, but his eyes shone with concern.

Still flush with my newly established self-worth, I sat up, pushed away the fine netting, and threw my arms about my father’s giant neck, planting several kisses on his poorly-shaven cheek.

“I love you, Papa.”

His strong arms wrapped tightly around me. “I should paddle you dear for risking your life so.” His Irish lilt was thicker than ever, a sure sign that strong emotions ran through his veins.

Pushing away, I gazed into his green eyes, afraid Jenny’s words had not reached their target. “I would rather you be proud of me.”

A bright smile broke through his somber expression. “Aye, girl, that I am!”

I would have happily stayed in his arms the entire day, but Jenny soon shooed him from the tent so I could change into my clothes. As she tied my shoes (something I’d been doing on my own since I was two) she smiled up at me. “Katie, I couldn’t love you more if your were my own child.”

Her words made me burst into tears. My mother had never once told me she loved me. I hadn’t thought it mattered until beautiful Jenny said those magical words and I realized exactly how dear they were.

Hearing my outburst, Father rushed into the tent and took me from Jenny’s arms. “Here now, what’s the matter?”

I looked up at his handsome round face. His short orange hair pointed in all directions as if he’d just run his hands through it in worry. “I want Jenny to be my mum,” I declared between gasping sobs. “She loves me….and I love her.”

“Ah,” he said, pulling me tight against his chest. “I know how you feel.”

At the time, I was too wrapped up in my own pain to be aware of the importance of my father’s response. However, looking back, I think this was his first open declaration of his love for Jenny—not an easy thing for a devout catholic to do while he remained married to another woman in the eyes of the church.

Once I calmed enough to leave the tent, I discovered the entire tribe stood outside, patiently waiting for my presence. They had undoubtedly heard me crying just moments before. Utterly humiliated, I wanted to return to the tent and hide in shame, but my father’s hand held me firmly in place.

Tukana, the chief of the Narobi tribe, stepped forward in his formal attire of a leopard skin robe and beaded loincloth. Red and white markings covered his face and chest making him a fearsome sight. But I knew him to be a kind man, so I was not afraid‒not with my father at my side.

The chief explained in his broken English that when a man saves another man’s life, the saved man becomes the slave of the savior. Tukana then pulled the frightened naked child away from his mother and offered the boy to me.  

I was terribly confused. Was he giving me the little boy? I looked up to my father for guidance.

My father gently returned the boy to the chief. “My daughter has a great respectyou’re your traditions, but she is just a girl. The tradition does not apply.”

At this, the mother stepped forward and grabbed the boy’s hand. I thought she was glad to have him back, but instead she pulled him to me and put his hand in mine. “He is yours now.”

I looked at the frightened boy, his lips quivering, his eyes filled with unshed tears.

“He is a good boy,” I said, leading the child back to the mother. “But I am too young to care for him. You must care for him. You must be a good mother to him. Do this for me and I will be pleased, and any obligation will have been fulfilled.”

The chief and the woman discussed my offer in their native tongue for several minutes and then she took the child back and led him away.

I thanked the chief and returned to my father’s side.

Father praised me as his large hand stroked my hair. “That was well done, Katie-girl. Well done, indeed.”