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Published: November 18th 2007
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Its July 15 and I sit peacefully in our campground at Lake Nakuru National Park munching on fresh veggies, avocados and bread. Not knowing at all what to expect because this is Africa! And after a long and rough ride, we're about to go out on our first game drive! For the next two weeks Kenya and Nairobi are ours.
I look back already at the dirty and bustling city of Nairobi where I flew in and wandered about. I think back to the visit to the Animal Orphanage at Nairobi National Park where I marveled at the caged but rehabilitating animals. Just like the visiting Kenyan school children who marveled at those same animals - and at me and my traveling companion, Eric, another overseas teacher and great friend to travel with.
I also look back at the evening spent at the East Africa Orphanage, a church sponsored venture that gives food, shelter, education and so much love to their family of young orphans. So many orphans in East Africa have been left without parents by the ravages of the AIDS epidemic. In parts of East Africa the infection rate touches 20%. Kenya alone has 550,000 AIDS orphans
and 78,000 children living with AIDS. Nonetheless it was a heart warming visit. Many of the orphans seemed to attach themselves to one or another in our larger group of safari travelers. Each orphan seeking the kind of connection with the type of person that they lack or perhaps lost in their lives. Daniel connects to me. And I to him. I loan him my SLR digital camera to feed his creative side. At dinner he and his friend John, who was busy helping cook earlier, sit on either side of me while we all share songs and the orphanage staff shares a slide show. The hold tightly to my arms, stroking the blond hair on my arms. Daniel seems particularly fascinated by my cheap WalMart watch, a watch that will eventually become his. Tears are shed as we all say our farewells!
But meanwhile, back beside Lake Nakuru, ready for our game drive, what to expect?
Well, two weeks later, as this incredible adventure came to a close, I realized that the only thing that one could predictably and easily expect - was the unexpected!
Whether it was the surprise of a vibrant orange sun rising
above the Serengheti plain. Or that same tired and dusty sun gently and inexorably setting over the perfectly positioned lone tree on the horizon. Or perhaps it was the overwhelming and absolutely incredible sense of openness that comes with this expansive land - the land of the Serengheti plains, a land of volcanic calderas (collapsed volcanos) like Ngorongoro, of Olduvai gorge where LSB Leakey and his daughter, Mary, found some of the earliest evidence of ancestral man, and a land where the amazing Great Rift Valley is ripped open daily as the face of the earth continues to spread, creating new land day by day (in fact we experienced several minor earthquakes during our safari). Who knows, maybe it was the continual uncertainty that comes into one's life when the overland safari vehicle seems to like to stop functioning or to have a flat tire every once in a while. Who's to say? It is a land of surprises, uncertainty and the adventure that comes with such!
My enduring memories of this trip? Well, two are moments. The third is sound!
The first, our early morning safari walk at Lake Naivasha. I'd been on one sunrise safari walk
in my life, in South Africa's Kreuger National Park. We saw no animals on that trek! And yet it was a highlight of that trip - just being out there on foot in the open land that is not under man's watchful control. But this safari walk proved to be even more incredible - with up close encounters with giraffe, zebra, impala, water buffalo, waterbucks, and a hippo. The silence is marvelous too, as no one dares break the spell with inane chattering to fill the time. The time doesn't need filling, it is unwinding on its own terms in front of our eyes! There is a sense of exposure, the knowledge that you are in Africa on Africa's terms. I breath deeply and thankfully. In awe.
The second enduring memory will be of the many sparring matches that we saw. As dik-diks and impalas and elephants and wildebeests all came horn to horn, tusk to tusk, antler to antler, to settle their differences. Often differences caused by that age old fight over the women or to impress the women! But the sounds. The sounds of the fight. The deep and labored breaths. The clashing and clattering of the
horns or tusks or antlers. The hooves pressing the dry and dusty earth trying to gain purchase on that same earth, to gain advantage in their fight. The sounds. The sound of the elephant so close by the road side, startled and upset by our passing. Who's ears flapped straight out in anger. And who trumpeted his rage with raised trunk just as my seat toward the rear of the vehicle passed him. The sounds! They will live on in my memory forever.
And finally, an enduring memory, the morning we stumbled upon a recently deserted kill. Probably a lion kill from the night before. But now the satiated lions had left and we arrived right before the first vultures. Timidly they flew over the kill. Timidly they landed - twenty yards away from the kill. Timidly they began hopping across the Savannah toward the kill. Then, with full force, they started tearing and ripping at the flesh. Burying their heads up to their necks in the warm entrails. Then jerking their head out of the kill, with dangling flesh and dripping blood glistening in the morning sun.
And again. The sounds. Of that ripping. Of clawing at
the skin for a new opening. Of bones being scrapped clean - nothing to go to waste!
The sounds!
Interrupted only by the sounds that surround me in the vehicle as we stare wide eyed.
The sounds of our cameras!
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Jenn
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I am sooooo jealous
I'm glad I didn't see all of these pictures in July. Who knows what lengths my jealousy would have driven me too! Miss you!