Memoir illustrates a 20-year love affair with Africa
By VANESSA FRANKO
The Press-Enterprise
January 18, 2009
Perched high on a bookcase in the library of Don Shay's Riverside home, there is a set of "Tarzan" novels from his youth.
Below the series, more than 100 books about Africa fill shelf after shelf. There are coffee table books, travel companions, safari guides and more.
Now Shay has one more to add to his collection -- his own.
Don Shay, of Riverside, recently published "Endangered Liaisons," a collection of wildlife photography and stories from his photographic safaris.
He recently published "Endangered Liaisons," a 320-page book with stunning photos and a memoir of some of Shay's adventures on photographic safari in Africa.
"There are lots of coffee table books that are very big on photography," he said. "Since I'm a writer, I wanted to do more than that."
Shay is the publisher of Cinefex, a quarterly magazine about visual effects in film. Unlike what he had seen in other books on Africa, he wanted to have more lively text than dry facts about specific animals or areas. So Shay set out to inject his book with personal stories, such as climbing to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, tales of wildebeest crossing the Mara River and searching for the elusive black rhinoceros in Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater.
Around Shay's home are some of the wildlife photos he's taken in Africa, candid photos of family and friends on safari and antiques and keepsakes he and his wife, Estelle, have brought back from Africa.
The Shays were dating when they went on their first Africa trip together. Working at what was then Corona Community Hospital, a co-worker of Estelle's talked about his trips to Africa and said that the organizer was going to be in town for a visit. She suggested the trip to Don, and he immediately agreed.
"I really had no idea that Africa meant so much to him," Estelle said.
Their first trip was to Kenya in 1987 with Jerry Dale, a guide and friend who is one of the people to whom Don dedicated the book.
"We both fell in love with it," Estelle said.
When she and Don married two years later, they honeymooned on safari, with 10 friends, and they've kept returning with friends, relatives and others.
Don has been to Africa 14 times, visited nine countries and has spent more than nine months on safari.
He said one of the reasons he wrote the book was to answer the question why he and Estelle kept returning to Africa.
Don spent 10 years working on the book, kicking around the idea even longer. He worked on "Endangered Liaisons" intermittently between issues of Cinefex, writing a chapter here or there, culling through about 20,000 photos to complete the product.
He and Estelle also looked through hours of video footage she had shot on their trips to rekindle memories, keeping everything under wraps from their safari-going friends until the project was complete.
The couple is taking what they say will be their final trip to Africa later this year, as a celebration of their 20th wedding anniversary and partially as a reward for Don finishing the book.
In a story not in the text, on their most recent safari Don shattered his elbow while walking around camp and had to have surgery in Nairobi, Kenya.
"We didn't want that to be our last trip," Estelle said.
But that doesn't mean the end of adventurous travel for the couple, who have walked on the beaches of Galapagos but not the beaches of Hawaii.
They want to see Italy, New Zealand, Australia and Alaska, to name a few.
"And the polar bears in Manitoba, while they're still around," Don said.
For more information about "Endangered Liaisons," visit www. africagraphica.com or call 866-539-7428.
Reach Vanessa Franko at 951-368-9575 or vfranko@PE.com
Article and photos at: http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_safari09.35f53a8.html
