Ruaha National Park

Last weekend we went on our first safari, and since neither words nor pictures can justly capture the experience, I took about an hour’s worth of video, which I’m editing down to 15 minutes or so. We went with Anette’s best friend from Haugesund, who is about to begin her sixth and final year of medical studies in Szcecin, Poland. Anette and I visited her in her first year there, so it’s only fitting that as we continue our travels, our path intertwines with the paths of those we love.
Another example: Summer of 2005 (as a new teacher) I went to Norway, then started my Master’s program at GMU, then visited Jake in The Gambia (one of the first posts on this blog). Summer 2007 I went to Norway, then Jake (as an RPCV turned teacher) and I took classes together at GMU, then we both went to Africa. Cosmic circles. I wrote a song about them at Walden Pond in the summer of 2002 when Jake and I lived in Boston; I’ve since forgotten the chords and lost the words, but the circles spread ever outwards, as Emerson wrote in one of my favorite essays – Circles (1841).
Now then, our safari. We woke up at the crack of dawn and were picked up by our driver, Esau, in his open-roofed land rover. Ruaha National Park is about 110 kilometers to the northwest of Iringa; 20 km of road are paved, the rest is sand and rocks (although still much better than most roads in The Gambia). We drove for three hours past villages of dilapidated mud and brick houses with falling-in grass roofs, past villagers pushing huge bundles of charcoal, firewood, or vegetables on their bikes towards the local markets, past fields of fruit trees, crops kept green by irrigation that has caused the Great Ruaha River to dry up in recent years, and yellow fields scorched by the sun and starved of rain. We ran over a Puff Adder on the road – they’re slow moving and often get hit by vehicles. We passed several overloaded buses filled with people (some sitting on the roof) and wares, and Esau confirmed what we’ve already seen on the roadways here – that these buses are dangerously topsy-turvy, and often flip over.
Upon entering Ruaha, we immediately saw a troop of at least twenty yellow baboons running over the rocks of a river pool, birds of all kinds and shapes (fish eagles, storks, etc.) on the banks of the river and in the trees, and hippos and crocodiles lazing in the water. We checked into our banda, prepared our bags and packed lunches and headed off on our first game drive full of excitement and wonder. Not five minutes away from camp Esau spotted a lion resting in the shade of a Baobab tree, and as he swung the land rover up over a rut to get a closer look - BANG! - the axle smashed into the ground, the engine began to roar, and the wheels spun uselessly. All this did not succeed in waking the lion, but it quickly became clear that we had lost our four-wheel drive. Fortunately we were able to drive to a workshop, where a clever fundi fixed the car in about three hours, during which time Anette, Klaudi and I sat on the balcony of our banda and watched the procession of wildlife come down to the river to drink – giraffe, buffalo, zebra, kudu, warthog, impala, etc. It was just as good as a game drive, but we were glad when Esau came back with the car.
I won’t go into the details of our day (that’s what the video is for) but I will say that luck smiled upon us, for we saw three cheetahs (rare and seldom seen in Ruaha) AND a leopard high up in a Baobab tree. Esau was ecstatic, because he has very rarely seen both of these animals in the same day in his twenty years of guiding in Ruaha. An enormous male elephant came within three feet of our car, and we caught an alpha male lion in the act - of mating, that is – and we caught it on video. The big game was indeed extraordinary, but as a beginning birder I was especially fascinated by the hornbills, rollers, and bee-eaters. The feeling of standing up in the land rover and holding on tightly to the metal bars while Esau sped along the dusty road to get us back to the banda before sunset, with the big African sun setting red over the acacias and the plains, just like in the logo for all the PBS Nature shows that I watched growing up, was quite unforgettable. A bit like flying, a bit like surfing, a bit like NOLS Alaska and the AT, and a whole lot like Heaven on Earth. Oh yeah, and lions woke us up at 5am running around outside our banda, making the resident hippo nervous and roaring so loudly that we thought they were going to jump through the thin screen and into our banda at any moment!