Serengeti!

Notes from my first days in Serengeti:

I am so stunned I don’t even know what to write. I am in the Serengeti. I am smack dab in the middle of a natural phenomenon. In my first 24 hours here, I have seen a dozen things that I can barely pronounce. Impala, Topi, Hartebeest, Buffalo, gazelle. Baboons, Hyraxes, jackals, giraffes, zebra. Elephants, hyenas, lions and leopards.

The baboons hang outside our house, like raccoons of Africa, but bigger and more agile…and much, much uglier. Ingela, one of the field researchers and a spectacularly wonderful woman, reminds us to pull the front door closed lest the baboons invade (this has happened before). She also reminds us to occasionally look up in the tree in the side yard, as it seems to be a favorite rest-stop for a the neighborhood leopard. As I watch a giraffe meander past the outhouse out back, I feel vaguely like I have stepped back in time. Or landed on mars. What is this place?
(Answer: AWESOME.)

Over whiskey and chocolates, Phil and Ingela and I discuss the important things in life, such as the following:

Q: What to do if you encounter a lion while on foot?
a)Run screaming
b) Make yourself look really big and menacing
c) back away slowly, maintaining eye contact with the lion, but without tripping. At a “safe distance” turn around to face the direction you are heading, and absolutely do not look back.
d) wave your pot and shout “kakakakakaka.”

Answer: Word on the street is that “c” is textbook correct, but d has proven to work after sunrise in the Serengeti. I do not personally know anyone that has attemped a, b, or c and lived to tell the tale. Both Craig and Ingela have survived on variations of d.