Seeing the Big 5 does not come without drama
It’s Africa Thursday! I made that up. But there it is, so here we are. And boy, are you in for a treat today, because today, we are talking about leopards. And colons.
In Africa, the penultimate experience is to see the Big 5. Most people don’t, but if you are exceptionally lucky and hit everything just right, you might. I had gone into this trip with no expectations of accomplishing this goal: my own Big 5 was a little different: chimps, lions, giraffes, elephants, and warthogs.
We got very lucky on our travels in the Ngorongoro Crater the one day we were there, and no I didn’t blog about it yet but oh! It was lovely! And in the crater, armed with binoculars and a guide who was in constant communication with the other guides to find the best game, we managed to see four of the five:
Cape buffalo:
Elephant:
Lion:
Black rhinoceros:
We really didn’t think we were going to find rhinoceros, so that was an exceptionally fantastic moment. They are, as you know, critically endangered. (Yes, I saw one not three weeks later at the zoo a half hour from my house, but it’s not the same as seeing a wild one.)
Anyway, we came out of the crater with only the leopard to spot (get it?) in order to fulfill our Big 5 experience. I was ambivalent. If we saw it, amazing. If we didn’t, then I had an excuse to come back.
Our last couple of days in Africa were spent in Tarangire National Park, where large elephant herds are the attraction du jour. I was just happy to be there and see whatever we could see, which, unsurprisingly, included a whole lot of elephants. We started our day at camp outside the park boundaries, and drove an hour to the park gate. From there, we would have our morning game drive, and plan to be back to our camp around 2.
Now here’s the thing about African parks- you can’t get out of your car unless you’re at a designated rest area, of which there is, like, one. Otherwise, it’s Jurassic Park out there- you leave the car, the attractions will eat you, or stomp you. As if to punctuate the point we came across a 95% eaten antelope carcass on the side of the road as we were discussing that very issue. So you’re stuck, for better or worse, inside your protective moveable cage.
This is not normally a problem. You plan ahead. If you are a wiser person than me, you remember to bring your backpack. Because if your stomach starts to rumble an hour in, you may have some difficult choices to make.
It was just such an event that transpired our morning in Tarangire, that painful, stabbing cramp in your stomach that sends a feeling of dread down your spine: the moment of terror when you think, “my intestines are doing calisthenics,” followed by, “this could be bad.”
Do they give you bottled water to brush your teeth with? Yes. Did I use it every time? I think so. But I don’t know, I might have forgotten once, or maybe I opened my mouth in the shower, or maybe that adventurous appetizer I tried the night before was not the wisest idea. No matter the cause, I found myself ominously indisposed in the midst of the bush with little recourse. My backpack, groaning with enough medications to treat a small village, was at that point 2 hours away at camp.
I directed our guide to please locate the rest area, like, post haste. He obliged. I was glad of it. But you know how these disturbances go- you really have no idea if you are going to be miserable for 10 minutes or 10 hours. Either you get over it, or things get indescribably worse. My husband was looking at me worriedly. “Are you OK?” he asked, noticing that instead of being pressed to the window like I had been for the past 4 days I was holding a bottle of ice water to my forehead, hunched over the wheel well.
“Well,” I said, “I think maybe we should go back to the camp. Just to be safe.”
“No problem!” said our guide. So he turned the truck around and we started rattling off towards camp, every pothole a small sliver of glass in my colon. An hour later, we were at the park gates. Clemence stopped the truck and turned around.
“How are you feeling, Jess-ee-ka?” he asked in a concerned tone.
“OK,” I said, and I was. I mean, all things considered. I was in a holding pattern.
“I just want you to know, and this is completely your decision, Jess-ee-ka, that there is a leopard back where we were in the park. I wasn’t going to tell you, but they are pretty rare in Tarangire.”
pause.
“That would complete your Big 5.”
another pause.
“So I will give you the choice of what to do. No guarantee the leopard will still be there.”
And here was my choice:
A. Continue back to camp and get some imodium. Miss the leopard.
Or, B: turn that boat around and go back into the park, where I reasoned one of four things would happen:
1. See leopard, don’t get sick
2. See leopard, have a mortifying and horrific incident in the truck
3. Don’t see leopard, don’t get sick
4. Don’t see leopard AND have a mortifying and horrific incident in the truck
Well, you only live once, I say, and I was in a gambling mood. So I told him “Let’s GO!” and started consciously willing my inflamed intestines into willful obedience. I don’t know that mind over matter can really apply to such things as colitis and involuntary muscle spasms, but I was willing to give it a shot.
And this was the result:
I don’t know if such beings as the Colon Gods exist, but I like to believe that they do. And I like to think that perhaps my years of treating other living beings’ horrific GI disturbances had somehow created a series of deposits in the cosmic colon karma pool that I was then able to draw upon, because we saw that leopard, and I felt nothing but joy in the pit of my stomach. The Africa magic continued, just long enough.
Alas, East African Magic Fairy Colon-Dust is, by all accounts, short-lived. We drove two hours back to camp, I ran to my room, and died. I spent the rest of the afternoon curled up on the bed wishing an elephant would stomp on in and put me out of my misery. But it was sooooo worth it.
