Lion King Live (you thought the Lion King on Broadway was good) Day 24

Being on Safari these past 4 days was surreal, a zoo without cages. When we arrived on Friday the owner of our lodge sat us all down and gave us the safety speech. He pointed to our tents perched on a ledge and then across the river. “That's the park,” he said “what’s over there is also here.” He then proceeded to tell us not to have food in our tents, to make sure these seed pods call elephants biscuits were not under the tent and other safety precautions. The whole time I was thinking. “Yeah right. I bet animals hardly ever come over here....”

Boy was I wrong. The elephants were so close they were in our tents, almost.

The next morning everyone was climbing out of their tents. It was still pitch dark, although the lodge grounds were softly lit up at all times. I was reaching in to grab my toothbrush, and there was movement behind me. It was not small movement. Climbing up on the bank was a group of 4 elephants silhouetted against the morning sky. One adult female, 2 juveniles and 1 infant. As we stood outside our tents, they yanked branches and ate oblivious or unconcerned out our presence. This was not the only run in with my elephant friends. The following day another group, this time 5 including a LARGE bull came into camp. We took fabulous pictures from 100 feet away before they decided that the trees we were standing under looked good enough to eat. We have to retreat onto an elevated pool deck where we watched them for another 20 minutes. At times they were close enough to touch. They also stole food from the compartments of a overland vehicle and picked up a couple’s tent. On our last morning there, they came back to stay goodbye. Walking around our tents four over an hour everyone sat in silence watching through their peep holes. It was unreal to see these magnificent creatures and almost live among them for 3 days. Every time I would sit in a hammock and look across to see an elephant eating on the other bank it was a shocking reminder of where I was.

We probably saw 40+ elephants at our campground and only 6 in the park. But we got to experience many other animals on our drives. I took a total of three drives. One morning and two night. The morning was a nice intro. We saw a wide variety of animals and even got 2 sightings of lions during the day. This does not often happen. Our first night drive was fabulous. It as exciting and unreal. We were able to watch a leopard stalk it’s prey from about 50-100 yards. My favorite was coming upon a group of three lions who were resting and playing. They were just like kittens rolling around and biting on each others ears. These magnificent creatures were less then 10 feet from our truck. At times it almost seemed to close for comfort to me. Fred, our driver was not intimidated by the closeness of the lions at all. All of the sudden he said something to the spotlight man, turned off the truck and climbed out. While the spotlight was trained on the lions, keeping track of their location, Fred sauntered to the back of the truck and took a pee break. Amazing.

One thing I learned is that monkeys are not all that cute, and more devious little creatures. One day at lunch one of the the volunteers was making a sandwich. She had left an apple on the table. When she turned around the monkey stole her apple. She took off after that monkey and other came and stole her sandwich. Later that day another monkey stole a punster butter jar. About an hour later there was a loud bang as something fell through the trees, landed on the roof of the lounge building and bounced tot he ground. It was the now empty peanut butter jar.

We also had a great time hanging out at the lodge. We were camping, but it was not roughing it. There was a pool, tons of hammocks, a bar and lounge area and a restaurant. Every night we got to talk to others on safari. I enjoy hearing about people’s travels and experiences. We sat around the fire drinking Zambian beer, telling stories and singing cheesy songs. One night the night guard had to send us off to bed. We also got to hear animal stories from the owner who has had close calls with elephants and hippos. Someone on the trip perfectly described the hippos as sweet potatoes with legs. We were told that they can run 35 km per hours which is really hard to believe. Jaren thinks that it is because they barely move for days, saving up all their energy so when need be, they can explode with speed for a few seconds.

I know why travel in Africa is so difficult. The coordinators were saving the road conditions as a surprise. Once we crossed the border into Zambia the pavement disappeared and a 120 km route tools 4 hours!! The bus bumped and banged. We had to stop a few times to make sure tires had not fallen off.

On the way back we stopped at a textile shop where Zambians make all types of tapestries. These are all handmade using traditional methods. Tomorrow we start teaching at our third school. I am going to be working with the teachers this week. I am very excited about this position. I get to talk to them about different teaching methods like experiments, games and hands on activities. Most of the teachers only use call and response, memorization methods here. We also get to talk about the differences in the education systems and will discuss what the teachers need from the World Camp program. I hope to learn alot from them and am becoming increasingly more interested on global education and how to make education more effective not just in the states but around the world.