This week was incredible on so many levels. It all started with a safari that was amazing because it was like a zoo and a Disneyland ride put together. I hadn't realized that on safari we wouldn't just see cool animals like elephants and cheetahs; we would see them in their natural habitat and we would be out in the wild with them!
On our first drive through a game reserve, we were in a van and saw the animals through open windows. We saw some elephants and giraffes and we got pretty close to them. We also saw zebra and different kind of buck/deer like antelope, nyala, and impala.
On our second drive we got into cars that could go off-road and they didn't have windows, just a roof and a small door so that the car had a big open space for us to stick our heads out and see the animals clearly. We drove to the camp were we slept for 2 nights. The camp was in the middle of the wilderness and it was unfenced so animals could walk through as they pleased. We learned basic safety tips and we put our stuff into our chalets. The chalets were made out of wood logs and straw and the walls were a material that is see-through so that if any animals came we could see them from inside.
We woke up early every morning so that we could catch some of the animals that only come out at that time. We returned to camp for meals, but we headed out after each meal and basically drove around each day. We saw so many bucks that Kailee and I decided they would only be cool if they were being eaten because there were just so many of them that they weren't exciting anymore. We also saw some warthogs and wildabeasts, which are the animals that stampede in the the movie The Lion King and kill Mufasa. By the way, I found out that The Lion King is pretty accurate because Wildabeasts often trample lions. After observing them, we realized why; they get scared so easily and they just run away in groups without any real direction. It's like they freak out and just run, but don't know what to do so it's kind of entertaining to watch. We also saw several giraffes that made me feel so small and we saw several zebra. In the evening we sat at the edge of the water and watched the hippos popping their heads out of the water. We also saw baboos in the trees and we searched for a leopard, but we didn't find any.
My favorite sighting was the elephant we saw. One thing I hadn't realized going into the safari was that we had to actually search for animals because it's not just like a zoo where each animal has a designated location; the animals are all running freely. We searched for an elephant all day and got excited when we saw broken trees and fresh poop. We knew we were on the trail of an elephant and we were looking in all directions when all of a sudden we saw it standing there 3 feet away from the road. Usually Andrew, our safari guide and driver, would turn off the car when we saw animals so that they wouldn't be scared away by the noise of the engine, but with the elephant he kept the car on and he looked like he was ready to drive away at any moment. The elephant was pretty big and had huge tusks. He looked at us for a while and then gave a warning call with his trunk. After staring at him for a couple of minutes and taking a lot of pictures, Andrew started trying to find a way to get around the elephant and he moved the car forward slightly. When the elephant saw this he turned and walked away a little, but as soon as we started driving past him he turned around and then started charging toward us. It was so incredible because I was filming a video and I saw this huge elephant just start running towards us and when we drove off he lifted his trunk and made a loud elephant noise.(You can probably see the video on my Facebook page) We were so excited and scared that he was going to charge his tusks into our truck and kill us all. We spent the rest of that hour just talking about it, replaying videos, and retelling the story of how cool it was to get charged by an elephant.
My second favorite sighting was the cheetahs we saw. We went to a private reserve to see lions because the place where we camped didn't have the risk of lions walking into camp. We searched for lions all day and found tracks, but it had been raining all night so the lions were in a place where even the huge land cruiser we rode in would get stuck in mud so we didn't see lions. I wasn't bummed out about it because we still saw some pretty cool things. When we spotted 3 cheetahs, it felt like we drove into a discovery channel show. We were told not to stand up because the animals are used to the shape of our vehicle and can't distinguish individual people in it so they think the big truck is just a herd of animals and it's an animal that doesn't interest them so they don't do anything as we drive past them. If one of us stood up we would be something that the animal doesn't recognize so the weak animals would run away, but the dangerous animals would attack. We drove up to where the cheetahs were and the whole time I was thinking, "this can't be real". I got nervous as our driver got closer and closer until we were standing about 10 feet away from the cheetahs.
As if seeing cheetahs wasn't enough, we happened to see them while they were hunting. Our driver informed us that cheetahs don't hunt unless they are hungry. These cheetahs looked like they weren't starving, but they were observing the pack of impala across the field that was grazing. We waited to see if they would attack and prepared ourselves for something great. As we sat there we radioed another car so that the other people in our group could see the cheetahs and they appeared on the other side of the cheetahs. As they came closer they scared away an impala that had been hiding the whole time behind us and in a matter of seconds we saw the impala sprint past us and right past the cheetahs and run across the field towards his fellow impala. At this, one of the cheetahs took off after it and started to sprint towards it, but he gave up and stopped. It was obvious that the cheetah could have caught it if he wanted to, but he didn't. We were slightly disappointed and, if the cheetah had caught the impala, he would have been my favorite sighting, but it was still cool and it made me realize how incredible it was to be on a safari.
Our group of 53 students split in half this week so that half of us were on safari and the other half were on a Zulu experience trip. On Wednesday we switched and went to the place where the other group had been. We heard that 6 people had drank bad water and were rushed to the hospital with chronic diarrhea, but when we saw the other group we realized that it was much worse. We saw them climb out of the bus and we realized it was more than 6 people. We didn't get much information then, but it was enough to make us nervous about going to the Zulu place.
We made sure to bring our own bottled water and, when we got to the Zulu village, we noticed they had taken extra precautions to make sure we didn't get as sick as the previous group. We stayed in Zulu huts made out of mud and we ate traditional Zulu food. The night we got there, we were welcomed with a pot of Zulu beer from which each person had to take a drink because it's tradition to have visitors drink. We were welcomed into their home as visitors, so we were pretty much forced to drink it. All of us were nervous because it was homemade beer and it didn't taste too good, but we forced it down with a smile on our face to be polite. After dinner we saw some Zulu dances and sang songs with them. All the people in the village were excited to see us speaking Zulu words and singing Zulu songs because they said it made them feel special that Americans would come to visit and would be interested in their culture.
The next day we hiked to a forest where we met a medicine man and saw some of the herbs he uses to heal people. He wasn't like a Sangoma that provides spiritual healing; he was more of an intellectual person that knew what plants could cure stomach aches and things like that. We also learned how to throw a Zulu spear and we had some fights with Zulu sticks and shields. We weren't very good at it, but some of us actually hit the targets. I don't have good aim at all, but I managed to almost hit a target with the spear.
Good hygiene has been so hard to keep this whole week. The Zulu village didn't have running water or electricity. We had to use toilets that don't flush and showers that are basically just buckets full of water. After hearing about so many people on the previous group getting sick, we were really nervous and cautious about what we ate and drank. The food was actually pretty good and it was truly a cultural experience to spend 2 and a half days there. We met a lot of the local people and bought beaded jewelery from local women. We also played with some of the children and learned some Zulu traditions.
I slowly got sicker and sicker this week. It started out with a sore throat on the safari and then I lost my voice. I started coughing when we got to the Zulu village and this morning I woke up with an aching body. As I climbed out of my mud hut I realized how dizzy I was and how much my face was burning up. The ride back home was miserable for me, but I had a feeling the other group had gone through way worse and, when I got home and talked to some of them, I confirmed that their experience had been horrible.
The other group hiked for 4 hours to the forest in really hot weather. Our hike was only a third of theirs. One girl passed out because of heat stroke and a lot of them were dehydrating because they didn't have enough water. The water they were provided with wasn't the best water and they didn't have tubs to wash their hands before meals. When they got back from the hike it started to rain. We got a thunderstorm at the safari place too, but we had trees to cover most of the heavy rain and our chalets had good roofs. All the mud huts in the village were leaking and the group had to walk around barefoot because it was so muddy and slippery. Some people started getting sick after dinner and soon more and more people were sick. There were only two bathrooms, so after a while people just started emptying out their stomachs anywhere on the grass around the huts. Three trips were made to the hospital and, on one of them, the bus almost crashed because of the storm and the crash would have been big enough to kill some of those people. I can't tell the story for them because I don't know the details, but out of 22 people only 7 didn't get sick.
We still don't know what caused the illness, but we think it was the bad water. One of the girls that didn't get sick was the only one who didn't drink the water. Some people were okay, but then got sick later. It couldn't have been a bug because my group would have probably caught it too. Whatever it was, I'm glad it's mostly over and a lot of the people are feeling better and are even laughing at the situation.
I haven't really showered in a week because the two showers I've taken in 5 days didn't feel like enough and because I've been covered in dirt for so long. I've also been sweating like crazy and I've been sleeping in mud huts that don't smell very nice. It felt so good to come home to Pietermaritzburg and take a good shower, put on clean clothes, and eat from a nice kitchen in a nice dining room. I just want to sleep and rest because, as exciting and incredible as these 5 days have been, they have also been stressful, tiring, and tough to get through. I can sleep peacefully knowing that i can get up in the middle of the night without having to worry about walking 20 feet to a bathroom and finding a rhino in the middle of the road and I can rest knowing that I have stood 10 feet away from a cheetah while it hunted and I lived among wild animals for a couple days and have survived the Zulu experience. God is good.
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