Student Safari

In contrast to our all expenses paid five star safari, we later had the chance to accompany our Peace Corps neighbor Jordan's wildlife club on a more local type safari. No Land Rovers were involved, we just cruised around with about twenty students and a counterpart teacher in two mini-buses; any motivated elephant could have easily punctured our tin-can-like walls with their ivory tusks. Luckily safari animals categorize vehicles as large rocks, that move, so they had no need to attack us. We stayed in bunk beds at the park youth hostel with no electricity and cooked all our own food, which meant plenty of nsima (bland corn mush) and goat. Although some parks do a good job here in Africa, some leave a lot to be desired to sensitive enviromentalist concienceses, like food waste disposal (just feed it to the monkeys) or fire wood collection (gather whatever you want, we're in a forest) and litter was everywhere despite the signs. Even though our students have lived their entire lives in Africa, most of them have never seen any wild animals, except for the occassional monkey. Contrary to popular belief, zebras and lions don't just stroll around town here, and are pretty hard to see outside of the big safari parks. Everyone really wanted to see elephants, and we saw plenty. We saw two herds converge, flaring their ears and trumpeting at each other no more than ten feet from our windows. During the wrap up session in the campfire circle everyone effused about how they would remember this day for the rest of their lives and that makes us feel really good as Peace Corps volunteers. At ten PM as Luc tried to get his boys to put out their candles and go to sleep, but they just kept recounting all the animals they had seen and repeating their favorite facts our park scout had taught them (they seemed particularly interested in the exact number of female partners a male impala could have).