Catching Up...

It certainly has been awhile... Back in Tanzania, awaiting tomorrow's journey into the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti, I have become a bit reflective. It seems my want for adventure, excitement and the need to be enraptured by all things around me has come true to the extreme. Immense wealth of spirit and faith was gained by volunteering, followed by the lows of true fear and worry for life that civil war encroaching around you and your caretakers brings gave such a polar dichotomy of emotion. That was the first two months. The stress from having to escape a land I had immersed myself in, really just made me numb to exactly how "off" I felt. Subjecting my body to the physical stress of climbing a 19,000 foot mountain seemed to be a good tonic for the ill-will I was feeling to the world. Amazing how 10 days can be such a vacillating roller-coaster of thought. Joining the tour and eliminating all of the daily craziness of planning and, more importantly, implementing travel from country to country certainly has been the right choice. After the pinnacle of adrenaline was summited rafting Grade 5 rapids on the Nile, the fear of drowning on the craziest rapid, Silverback, was a slippery slope in which the bottom was only narrowly avoided. Having since acquired that as my nickname on the tour, I am even more confident that humor can heal almost any situation. It also proved to be foreshadowing something great. Being face to face with a real silverback gorilla deep in a Rwandan rainforest should be a requirement for all. The feelings that you envision having during the $600/hour are so lacking in what becomes an overwhelming sense that the world has stopped. To stare into the eyes of a 800 lbs animal that could rip you in two, at only 3 to 4 feet from yours is beyond description. The cost turns out to be one of the best bargains on the planet, and a memory that no souvenir could possibly match. Still mesmerized by the thoughts of standing in the middle of 38 mountain gorillas of the Rwandan clan "Sousa," we moved on to Kigali where walking through the Rwandan Genocide Museum took me on another immediate change of feeling bordering on despondency and shame. For as much as I had pawned it off as "just another example of African tribalism" so recently experienced first-hand in Kenya, I realized that history writes a vastly different picture of the root causes. Leaving that aside, the atrocities that were committed were every bit as grotesque and abhorrent as "the" genocide, yet it isn't even on the map of our conscience. Guess it is "just" Africa. There is something about seeing things for yourself, live and in vivid color that changes you and your views so greatly and abruptly.

Just as abruptly, however, is how fast this trip moves along and forces a shift in focus. No sooner than I completed wrapping my mind around what I saw than I realized I was on our tour bus staring at 40+ elephants grazing about Lake Manyara NP. If I was "checking off" things, I would need more boxes at this point. And, I have yet to reach the Serengeti.

Life has been a whirlwind. It is what I signed up for, expect and yearn for when its not happening. It is an amazing experience when you get exactly what you want. And more...