\t\t\t\t\tTwo of the surprising number of female bush pilots in Kenya.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Subject<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tWe were flown (by hot female pilots!) in a bush plane over Kenya\u2019s vast savannah preserve, the Maasai Mara, through which the world\u2019s largest mammal migration takes place. Upon landing, we were spirited past zebras and baboons by our possibly genius guide, Maurice, to the recently rebuilt, luxurious yet understated riverfront Olonana Lodge. A Maasai warrior in a blue and red beaded shuka led us through the trees playing a flute, and his song was immediately joined by the singing of three families of hippos who live in the Mara River along which the lodge and its 14 spacious cabins sit. Naps were supposed to be had, but I was far too stimulated by rhino calls to sleep. I tried laying down on my private patio\u2019s daybed, but Sykes monkeys peeking over my awning led to me following them through the trees barefoot instead. There are no curtains on the bathroom\u2019s floor-to-ceiling windows that look across the river at the (allegedly) empty riverbanks, so the hippos and I watched one another bathe. I learned that hippos whip their small tails like a helicopter as they defecate. They learned that I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n \n\tGiraffes crossed the river while we ate breakfast, and we went out for a 10-hour bush drive, when we saw both The Big Five and The Ugly Five, and it was all a highlight of my traveling career. And just when my travel medicine faced a new, possibly resistant strain of Hollywood stress \u2014 as I learned that my agent was leaving CAA after 18 years to become a social worker (because, of course, it\u2019s End Times) \u2014 it was time to go to Uganda!<\/p>\n \n\tAfter another dirt landing in a bush plane, we drove another two hours through tea and coffee plantations in the Ugandan mountains to the heavenly, brand-new Gorilla Forest Lodge. It\u2019s the only lodge inside the gates of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, which means \u201cForest of Impenetrable Darkness,\u201d but, like, in a good way. The Bwindi mountain gorillas have been known to walk right through the lodge\u2019s elegant open lobby when they feel like looking at the handiwork of local women who made thousands of paper beads for the chandeliers.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tNewman and a silverback mountain gorilla in Uganda meditated about their future.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Subject<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThere are several families of wild gorillas that have been habituated to receiving visitors, a process that takes trackers three years of being punched, scratched and bitten by gorillas, 12 hours a day, until they become a good hang. These families can then be visited by eight humans for one hour per day. First you have to find them, though, which we were warned could take many hours of bushwhacking one\u2019s way through the forest in high-altitude rainstorms.<\/p>\n \n\tOn the first day, it took us 30 minutes, in sparkling sunshine. On the second, it took an hour. By reporting the ease of our trek, I\u2019m breaking a sacred promise made over a crisp white at a lovely post-gorilla lodge lunch, but I am a (fun!<\/em>) journalist now and so am a servant to the truth.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd as to our time with my best friends the gorillas? We scrambled after a family of 16 to watch them drink from a sparkling river, including one who would absolutely get a producer\u2019s callback in the casting of Curious George<\/em>. I sat next to a silverback meditating by a waterfall. We ducked under vines like forest children alongside cheeky juveniles who brushed by our legs. We watched a 3-month-old harass his napping mother and auntie, who yanked him back by one leg without opening their eyes if he found us too interesting.<\/p>\n \n\tBut as fascinating to me as the wildlife were the endangered species drinking next to me in the lodge every night: the journalists. Their habitat had disappeared long before TV writers started wondering where we were going to find our next watering hole, and yet here they were, rejecting trips to Florida. They gave me hope that even after an industry \u201cdies,\u201d life will find a way. I tried to drum up more work with my employer pool of one at dinner, saying things like, \u201cCan you believe Jean\u2019s taking us all to Antarctica next year?!\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnd Africa had more life lessons for Hollywood writers everywhere I looked.<\/p>\n \n\tA Maasai\u2019s dietary staple is milk mixed with cow\u2019s blood, procured by tapping into their cow\u2019s jugular. They then give the cow a couple of months to recover before tapping the other side. I thought that clearing out space for a new kind of writing had similarly replenished me, and maybe I too was ready to once again have my jugular opened to feed my villagers.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd consider the elephants in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. They are trapped in paradise, just like Hollywood writers, because human development closed off the corridor through which the elephants used to migrate. But in only 25 years, the elephants adapted. They are thinner and their tusks are shorter because the jungle is too thick to squeeze through with a big belly and giant skewers sticking out of your face. As someone whose own industry\u2019s habitat is being threatened by human mischief, I wondered if the slimming down that writers are bearing will allow us\u00a0to penetrate the impenetrable jungle of a downsized Hollywood. (Hopefully we won\u2019t also get angrier, which has also apparently happened to the Bwindi elephants.)<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t TV writer Kristin Newman (formerly of Only Murders in the Building) in Kenya\u2019s Maasai Mara, unafraid of the elephant behind her because, as she put it, \u201cit can\u2019t hurt me as much as Disney has.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Subject<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tI took one last precious day alone in Nairobi after my companions left. (After Jean told me I had made this one of the most fun press trips ever!) My walking tour guide, David, gave me my final lesson when he showed me the avenue that holds their red light district. At one end is the Catholic church, at the other end is the university. The sex workers arrange themselves by age, the youngest by the university, the oldest by the church. \u201cThe older the prostitute, the closer to God,\u201d was David\u2019s quip.<\/p>\n \n\tI came home to an industry that is smaller, angrier and harder to recognize than the one that raised me on 25 episodes a year and Katsuya in the writers room. But in Kenya and Uganda, I was reminded that extinction is rare; adaptation is common. Elephants trapped in paradise slim down. Journalists survive without newsrooms. Silverbacks learn which humans are safe to sit beside. I don\u2019t know what television will look like next, or where the writers will land. Television may never look the way it did when I ran to New Zealand after it broke my heart the first time. But maybe the length of time I\u2019ve spent selling myself to Hollywood means I\u2019m not finished yet \u2014 I just might have to move a little farther down the street toward God, adapting, like everything else that survives.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tNewman and the writing staff of While You Were Breeding<\/em> wrote about world travel in a windowless writers room in Van Nuys, circa 2022. <\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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