I woke up today to a stunning sunrise. The sun's rays extend farther into the clouds than I had ever imagined they could. Gold, orange, and red, streaked from the mountains in the distance across the sky.
Sunday is the typical day off, and we are using it as a day to recover. Despite the invitation to rest, pretty much everyone wakes up at 6 am. The coffee here is unusually strong, and after an early morning cup mixed with chocolate, I find myself buzzing with energy for hours after. A day off means exactly that...a day off. Relegated to Mpala, we wander. This morning, on a walk around the campus, I ran into a grazing dik-dik. No taller than my knee, she stood a mere foot away, observing me with a curious detachment. The animals here have no reason to fear humans, and so they allow us to come quite close. I stood wiggling my nose at the dik-dik, and she wiggled her own back.
The only animals with reason to fear people are the monkeys. They don't. This morning we watched as three stole into the kitchen where breakfast was being prepared. We ran up to them yelling, and with a glance behind them, they deftly slipped back into the forest. We see them often enough, though not constantly. This morning, multiple people woke to the sound of two on the roof, fighting or having sex, I'm not sure. The air is filled with sounds of birds, at dawn and dusk the air is thick with them.
It's only 10:42 and already, I've been up for five hours. I buzz with energy, mental and physical. We play cards, meditate, talk, dance, write, and walk. Still, it's kind of impossible to feel bored. Being here is novelty in itself.
As it turns out, it is possible to feel bored.
As the day stretches on, boredom turns into a desire for solitude, which turns into a certain kind of melancholy. I begin to wonder what I am doing here in Mpala. I am essentially stuck in the middle of nowhere. We have no access to the outside world, students are not allowed to leave the campus right now for security reasons. I feel powerless in a way I haven't since moving to New York.
And then we go on the game drive.
At 3:30 we assemble. 6 of us go into one jeep, another 5 pile into a second.And then we are off.
(A giant bee/beetle/bug thing just crash landed into the table I'm writing this on. He seems harmless but I do not want him to come near me.
He's coming near me.
He's about the size of my thumb. I just realized I'm sitting underneath a lamp absolutely swarmed by giant bugs. Moving.)
We drive first to a bend in the river. Behind it is an incredible landscape. I stare for a while at the view, and then realize there are hippos in the water. As soon as we notice, Jackson (our guide) invites us to step out of the jeep and move to the edge of the water. We are behind an electric fence (it protects a camera set up by researchers here) and so we can watch without worry. The hippos dive beneath the water and resurface goofily, flapping their ears at us in a playful sort of way. They are the most dangerous animals here, but at this moment they seem adorable. Especially the baby.
When we've been there a while, I turn around to head back and am stunned by the sight. There must be hundreds of butterflies. They flit around the green, looking for all the world like a fairytale. Sunlight slants through the vines and branches of fifty foot tall trees. It's beautiful.
The rest of the afternoon is a rush of animals, landscape, and moderate leg pain. We stand on top of our seats, heads poking out the top of the jeep for over three hours. We scale mountains, cross rivers, follow herds of zebra into flat plans, track lion prints for nearly an hour, startle a herd of grazing camel (domesticated, herded for profit, who knew), and make lots of magical eye contact with grazing giraffes and elephants. I take a million photos, wish for a better camera, and stand on my toes until the ache forces me into a seat. I cannot describe what magic it was to be out in Mpala, on their 48,000 acres of wild land. Words escape me.
There is a certain kind of loneliness to being here. It isn't the people, everyone here is kind and down to earth. It's just quiet, in a way New York isn't. In the city, surrounded by civilization, you can escape your thoughts. Any discomfort has to be strong to override the overwhelming array of sights, sounds, and smells. The world here is extraordinary, but it's quiet. The inside of my head, I'm learning, can be a loud and unhappy place. I am learning to lean through the discomfort, to enjoy boredom, to find comfort in stillness. It's day two. I have time.
-Carolyn