Epilogue

Toward the end of my trip to Africa, I found my face was hurting a little, and I couldn't think of why. Then it dawned on me, I was smiling way more than usual. I was smiling so much that my face actually hurt a tiny bit. It's still happening now that I'm home again.

The animals were such a joy to see. The scenery was something out of a storybook I read as a child - background art that I never dreamed I would be a part of real life. The smells were a bit overwhelming at times; the food, the scent of the greenery around me, the elephant farting right beside the safari Jeep. But the biggest impact was from the people I met.

Our guides were exceptional people, so positive and filled with positive energy, wanting so much to show me what Africa is really like.  This is Dee, our first guide with Andrew, our Kirstenbosch Gardens guide.

From a distance, there seems to be a tendency to paint a large area with one brush while the area closer to us is painted with finer and finer strokes. The closer you get to self, the finer the strokes. I saw some fine strokes of Africa and nothing could make me happier: getting to know a distant part of the earth better. Fining the strokes. 

The animals are different from what I thought before I saw them in real life: the leopard is faster, the cheetah is more graceful, the elephant is much more imposing and powerful, the giraffe isn't quite as tall as my mental image put them, the rhino is straight out of a Jurassic Park movie. 

The animals are all about the conservation of energy; when the temperature is 40 degrees, you've got to save your energy for short bursts and generally lay low in the shade.  

Here are some cheetahs, walking past our vehicle.

This video was shot as we got between a group of elephant bulls and a mom with her child. They were not happy and attacked us.

Animals are smarter than I thought. Buffalo line up to vote for the next location they will move to for grazing, but the alpha buffalo has veto rights. Snakes often strike first with a dry bite (no venom) to warn away others; they have a limited supply of venom that is used for other purposes as well as defence so it must be conserved. 

Here are buffalo (and hippo) that we saw on our game drive by boat in Botswana.

The sound of a duiker being killed by a leopard is heartbreaking, but a reminder that life is largely about survival. Animals and people differ only slightly on this point and that is one of the perspective changes I experienced: people want to survive and the more threatened a person's existence is, the more they will behave as animals. There is a load of animal in all of us. 

I wish I was as agile as the leopard we saw climbing a tree to eat the lion he had killed and stored there.

People leave their family and move from Zimbabwe to South Africa to survive. When faced with being forced to return to Zimbabwe and face starvation, they will do whatever is necessary to stay in a place where they are not starving. 

Desperate people often start with intimidation to get something from you, like physically bumping you to coerce money or clothing from you, and that can escalate to killing you for your car if the survival situation warrants. 

This guy near Victoria Falls made it quite clear that he wanted my shirt and sneakers.

I am far from worldly, but I feel like Africa brought the world into a more visceral light and I find it beautiful and scary at the same time. What level of desperation would drive me to what actions? What would turn me from a thoughtful, helpful, caring person into an opportunistic vulture or hyena that would pick meat off bones? That line became a bit clearer to me during this trip. 

The people in Africa are surrounded by many levels of desperation and have found ways to deal with it while retaining sympathy and empathy. They don’t see a bad man, they see a desperate man not that different from them. If the situation warrants, we all can become desperate.

I hope I can draw on what I have seen in Africa to transform myself into a more sympathetic person and embrace all people for who they are. I choose to see the beauty in survival. The similarities between people and the differences are becoming a blur that makes me smile, knowing I understand a little more about life than I did before this trip and it is beautiful. 

Life appears a bit more raw to me now, but I see people as beautiful survivors and the more I see, the wider my smile gets.