Safari

On a more important note than my safari – pray for the people in Sudan that were on the plane that over estimated its landing on the runway – and killed 30, with at least 20 missing. 200 were on the flight.
And if I were not so close – I don’t know that I would have thought beyond covering my mouth and gasping when I heard.
But it’s still on my mind – an hour later.
It happened this morning.
You can look up the story online.

I spent most of my safari thinking of Robert Redford – which is my Mother’s fault for crying with me time and time again during Out of Africa. And when I had to go to the bathroom in a squatty potty – a little rectangular hole in the ground – surrounded by geckos and flies and this lovely African stench I was becoming quite accustomed to – I thought of Meryl Streep and Karen and “I had a farm in Africa” and felt a little out of sorts that I wasn’t watching the chimps dance to a grammaphone and eating something cooked for me around a campfire.
But who could be jealous of Karen when your chimp guide only has – count them – four teeth, and tells you your bookmark with a picture of a chimp is a special gift for supporting – in such a big way – the chimps? And when your game drive guide is named Innocent – and laughs like a crazy drunk man when telling stories of lions chasing girls on previous safaris?
And who could be jealous of Karen when you mention, in a sort – of descreet embarrassed sort of way to your driver – that you really must pee at some time in the near future, and he swerves, immediately, to the left side of the road – and tries to follow you to the right side to find a suitable bush? Thank you – but this Mzungu is an excellent bush finder all on her lonesome, sir.
I slept most of our 8 hour drive, and felt like a woman on a dangerous mission getting wet and muddy in the rain forest chasing chimps, and stopping suddenly so my near toothless guide could listen for where the chimps were – and then take off again with us trudging behind avoiding anything that looks like an anaconda or a green or black mamba – and fending off lines of big black ants. I took pictures of big trees – bigger than the trees in the red forest sometimes – for my dad who tells me that I need to find out about African trees for him. My favorite was the one whose inner skin is a bold red when the outside peels off.
I saw huge mushrooms that were scattered across the forest floor – and big white ones that have red in the middle that remind me of the tarts that Hannah Hempstead feeds me when I am really really lucky and I stop by when a batch has been made recently.
That night we crossed the Nile on a big ferry – and I felt something inside of me leap with all of the history and strength and richness of the Nile river, and what was beneath me. Across the river we watched chimps play in the trash – and hoped for one to pick up a Heineken so we could take a picture.
The next morning we went on our game drive – and rode on the top of our safari van snapping pictures of chimps and Giraffes, elephants and water buffalo and birds and huge African trees and – oh! The animals we saw! Half way through our day, we saw an elephant and lion fight, during which our guard cocked his big gun and yelled at us to get in the van, after which he laughed deliriously for about a half an hour – and we worried about his sanity even more than we had before. But he ran away to a spot where we could see the Congo – and took pictures jumping in front of it – Diana’s idea.
I got lots of elephant and lion pictures for You-You – a special request – and will send them soon!

Later that day, after fried fish and French fries, we walked – at the request of our new-found English friend, Paul, who was such a trooper going on a safari with six girls and listening to us be completely inappropriate about our stomach problems and our feelings about what the food was going to make us do – and then kindly pretending to believe my story that we had been “flower picking” early that morning when about five of us all needed to pee at once – we went to the really nice lodge about a half mile down the road and got passion juice and chocolate meringue cake and sat and talked at a huge table on the veranda overlooking the Nile river for about two hours while waiting for our river cruise to start.
At four we took a 3 hour cruise of the Nile and – nevermind whether the accommodations or the food or the drive or the toilets were hard – I felt like queen of the Nile watching the elephants take baths and the hippos yawning and the foam look like big chunks of ice floating by me. I wondered how Nefertiti must have felt, sitting high in her golden chair and watching her slaves row her long beautiful boat down the Nile for a leisurely cruise – and I might have even pretended I was her for a few moments – if you want me to be completely honest. I put my feet up on the side of the boat – and sat back in my sun glasses and dirty shorts and pretended I was an Egyptian queen – and why not? We shared the same river – for those three hours – the goddesses of the past and myself – here are crocodiles just as close – and flocks of white birds taking off – the sun setting golden on the water – the vines taking over the trees – and then Murchison falls – so powerful and wild we had to run into a couple rocks to stop – something our guide acted completely normal about.
This river feels like so much more than water – it feels like life and death, like the rising and fall of hopes of millions of people – crops for the year – the beginning and end of successful kingdoms – loss of hopes during droughts – the start of civilizations – and I felt so lucky sitting on it and absolutely basking. To think that what starts here in Uganda ends up in Egypt…

I love meeting new people in far away places. The next morning we visited the top of the falls before driving home. Paul, our geography student friend from England whose here to work on an open arms project, and I had been talking about how expensive it might be for me to go white water rafting and bungee jumping all at once. He had gone for free because he lived at the Adrift campsite for a while and knew the guys – he told me he thought he could give me a much more invigorating experience – even than he got – for just as cheap. Being the poor college student that I am, and only having so much money for fun – I agreed, and asked Marlee to take a picture "For my mom and my Grandma."

Later that day, we also met a very talkative guy from Scotland - who somehow got a ride home to Jinja with us? I quizzed him all about the Lochness monster, because he's from around that area. He told me it's all a scam - and he knows the national geographic guys who make new stories up every year. It's only because two of the earth's plates there shift and create an area of the lake deeper even than the Atlantic Ocean at times - all sorts of bubbles and etc. come up from this vast hole - and there you have your monster. I was disappointed.