I Married Adventure!

my GWM Facebook profile picture (a.k.a Osa Johnson)

I first became aware of the name "Osa Johnson" at the Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse in Manhattan many years ago. The KBDS is an annual fundraising event that benefits the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club in New York and a spring visit to it was part of my annual calendar for about 25 years.

One of the designers that year decorated a room as a "pilot's study"with an imaginary explorer / adventurer as his muse. And in the room on a coffee table he placed a zebra print-covered book entitled I MARRIED Adventure by Osa Johnson. Great title! I was intrigued. "Who was this Osa Johnson?" I wondered.


Later I found first edition copies of both I MARRIED Adventure and Osa's giraffe print-covered book FOUR YEARS IN PARADISE in a vintage bookstore somewhere. I immediately purchased them and used them as a style element in my own downstairs study at home in New Jersey. The book covers looked great alongside my globes, vintage destination label-covered leather suitcases, trunks, and hatboxes, Maasai shields, spears and framed beaded jewelry, Australian boomerangs, Amazonian tangas, Venetian masks and other travel-related details and souvenirs that decorated the room.

Shamefully, I didn't read the books. But I did read the author's biography inside. I found out that Osa Johnson was a documentary filmmaker who traveled extensively to Africa with her husband Martin ... and she was from southeastern Kansas!

When my husband and I decided to move to South Africa in 2012 for his work, "I MARRIED Adventure" became the unofficial mantra of our great migration to Joburg and Osa became my muse. My blog page designer even used Osa's picture on my blog masthead (look up ⬆) and I similarly use her image as my GWM Facebook profile picture.

Flash forward to July 2015. During my month-long stay in the USA I took a 3338 mile road trip to visit family and friends starting from Denver, Colorado through New Mexico to Marfa and Austin, Texas through Oklahoma to Kansas City, Kansas and then back to Denver. That was an adventure!

Oklahoma-Kansas border

As it turns out I would be driving fairly close to Chanute, Kansas which is the home of the Martin & Osa Johnson Safari Museum.

Well worth a stop, the Safari Museum tells the story of Martin and Osa, their meeting and marriage and their life-long adventures as film makers, lecturers, photographers, explorers, naturalists, authors and native Kansans.

I found out that Martin's boyhood idol was Jack London and when he was about 17, he answered a call to assist London on an around the world sea voyage to the South Sea Islands and Africa. Unfortunately, the trip was scuttled in Borneo due to disease and mechanical problems. But by then Martin had contracted the travel bug. He went back to Kansas, married Osa and convinced her to continue the voyage without Jack London. The rest as they say is history.

Although not a member of  The Explorers Club, Martin was a member of the Adventurers Club, an extant club of about the same age, also founded in New York, with a scientific mission.

galleries of artifacts from their travel through the South Sea islands and Africa

Osa wore zebra-skin pumps!

vintage editions for sale at the museum

and a gift shop! I bought a mug and ...

... a couple of cushions that I used to decorate my niece's South African-themed birthday party.
They will look swell at home in Joburg!

The museum showed a History Channel-produced documentary about the life of Osa and Martin and many of the documentaries they produced were available to watch as well. Now I definitely have to read her books!