Lions, Tigers, Bears...oh and CHEETAHS!

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June 8th

I was feeling a lot better in the morning after waking up at the Okaukuejo Campsite, well enough to eat a good healthy breakfast of pineapple and pancakes. After finding out that I’m not too bad at flipping pancakes, a few of us headed down to the waterhole to see what was happening there at the break of dawn. There were some zebras having their morning breakfast and we watched them for a bit before jumping in the truck and heading south.

We drove to Outjo, Namibia to spend a couple hours on the internet before going to the supermarket to pickup groceries for dinner that night. It was at the internet café that one of my biggest fears of traveling became reality. I read an email from my mother that my Aunt Anne had been in a car accident and was seriously injured and in critical condition at the hospital. It’s something that you never want to happen, but especially when you are out of the country and you can’t be with your loved ones when they need you the most. It’s been a rough few days for me, my mother and my cousins John and Heather have been on my mind a lot and I wish that I access to phone coverage and to at least speak with them. To be overseas, especially in Africa, makes you feel absolutely helpless and useless at a time when you wish you could do the most for your family. I really hope that my aunt is doing well and my thoughts and prayers are with her and her family. As I write this (the 10th of June) I still haven’t been able to get cell phone coverage to call her and find out how she and my cousins are coping.

With my mind and thoughts a million miles away, the land whizzed by, especially after I was able to call my mom and hear her voice for the brief time before my cell phone credit ran out. Before I knew it we were arriving at the Cheetah Farm in north central Namibia, just outside Kamanjab.

The eleven of us were told what to expect when we got there but it was still really strange to walk into a fenced yard with three cheetahs walking next to you like dogs. We all had a chance to pet cheetahs and scratch them behind the ears. One of them, named “Naughty” in Afrikaans, lives up to her name. She loves to cause trouble and her primary focus when visitors come by is to play with their shoes. So straight away she was attacking my feet with sandals on them, I was afraid she might soon draw blood so I just let her play with one of them for a bit, it was hilarious. To say that the cheetahs got my mind off of things back home would be sincerely true, but in the back of my head it still lingered heavily.

After playing with the cheetahs for a bit we jumped back in the truck and while still on the Cheetah Farm we went to the campsite to setup our tents and wait for Marco, one of the owners of the farm to come pick us up. We had paid about $7 US Dollars to play with the cheetahs and then go on a drive to see the wild (but still captive) cheetahs get fed. It was pretty awesome to be in the back of a pickup truck with a garbage can full of meat on board surrounded by about six full grown cheetahs! After feeding the wild adult cheetahs we headed to the other side of the acreage and then fed the six younger cheetahs. They were much more aggressive and leery of us, and thankfully there was a seven foot fence between us and them otherwise they would have had a huge feast.

So we got back to the campsite shortly after watching the cheetahs eat their giraffe meat and the dinner group got to cooking. I layed in the tent and tried to put my mind at rest, call it prayer, meditation, or just deep thought, but while dinner was cooking I wasn’t in Africa, I was in the Midwest USA. I ate a bit of the food that Wendy, Luke, Hayley and Nicio had cooked up and then jumped back in the tent for some solitary thought. I would wake up the next morning and hope that our next stop would bring cell phone coverage or internet service, fingers crossed.

I hope you are well Aunt Anne! Lots of Love and Prayer from overseas!

-Brendan

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Comments

[wendy]

hi there
Thanks Brendon I am hopeful your Aunt will make a full recovery missing you stay safe and enjoy your travels.