The day before we left on safari we met a man at our going away BBQ named Tony. Tony and his wife are the kind of people that within about 2 minutes you feel the hole of what could have been, why hadn’t we met earlier? What a rip off.
Tony is a pastor and it doesn’t take long to get an idea of why his services would fill with churchgoers eager to hear his stories. Tony tells everything from happenings at the grocery store to deeply spiritual ones with passion, clarity and connection. Funny enough, we had met his son a few times over the past couple of weeks on campus and he struck me as a shockingly articulate and knowledgable 12 year old... it didn’t take long to see where it came from!
When I mentioned that we were heading out on safari Tony’s reaction wasn’t what I was expecting... there was a part of me that thought maybe local Kenyans thought it a bit silly that vacationers would pay to drive around and stare at their local game! Tony launched into an emotional description of how he himself had gone on safari and though he kept trying to describe the experience to me, he would fall short of words and then say, “It’s just phenomenal”. He said there were moments where you were out on the savannah watching these animals and you want the whole world to see what you’re seeing, that everyone who hasn’t is missing out... but at the same time you want to back away quietly and hope that no one would ever go and disturb them again. Then he launched into a story about his car and a rhino...
If I hadn’t been before, I was deadly excited now!!!!
I’ve been putting off writing about the safari, because where do I even start? And every time I start thinking about it I get emotional. It was so much to take in, even though it was such a simple journey. You sit in a truck and watch, that’s it, but you’re changed forever. In a word - it was phenomenal.
