My heart and eyes go missing in the Serengeti (Part 2)

Strangely enough, the week I was blind (and blindfolded) in the Serengeti I must have been significantly less intimidating because all the Tanzanians I encountered seemed to go out of their way to talk to me.Unlike Kenyans, many Tanzanians are shy, reserved and usually don’t like to approach foreigners. Since I couldn’t do many of the activities with the rest of the group I ended up spending hours and hours just talking to the Tanzanian staff and learning all about their lives. Askari Bora (as he likes to be called) dresses in a trench coat and always wears a ski hat with a spider on it. He can detect that there is a lion or elephant within 300 meters just by sounds and he can track any animal just by a few footprints. As far as I can tell there is not a single animal that scares him no matter how big, poisonous, or fast they are. He is known to actually chase hyenas out of the camp and slap them on the head like bad dogs. Also, he loves to imitate lion growls (especially when they are in our campsite), and will actually go up to elephants and greet them with his big metal flashlight. Then there is Arthur, our head cook, who is one of the most obsequious people I have ever met. “What ever you want I will make you, no problem, no problem,” he always says. Somebody took him up on this once and asked for pizza. The next day we had a peculiar looking pizza that toppled 4 inches high with green beans, pineapple, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, onions, peppers, kale, squash, zucchini, banana, lentils, cinnamon, and about anything else you can find in our kitchen. “Mmm, just like at home!” we told him. Then there is Moses who helps out with anything and everything. He speaks 6 languages fluently (including several tribal languages, Swahili, and English) and will always convince you that you’re in a good mood. He couldn’t afford to go to college but knows more about chemistry and biology then most of us and is obviously extremely smart. He can fix all the cars and can solve just about any problem that Africa puts on his plate.

Throughout the week my eyesight slowly but surely recovered and I could occasionally take off my blindfold and barely open my blurry eyes. It was frustrating not being able to see lions when I knew they were only a few meters outside my car, but we did plenty of other interesting things that kept my excitement fired up. One afternoon I got to visit the famous “Lion House” where the top research on lions has been conducted for the past 50 years. The researchers there explained their work on carnivore interactions and how they have over 300 camouflage cameras placed throughout the park to record lion behavior (Tanzania has 30-50% of the lions in the world). Another day we had a lecture from the head vet of the Serengeti and learned about all the horrible diseases have passed through the area in the past century and how they have affected the animal populations. In the 60’s and 70’s Rinderpest killed off around 1.5 million wildebeest!
The last day in the Serengeti I was able to occasionally take off my blindfold and see things. One of my professors (who had lived in the Serengeti for several years researching lions) claimed that he was going to take me on the game-drive of a lifetime to make up for the week. He drove me to a herd of elephants with a tiny baby that was less than a year old. It looked so wobbly as it threw its trunk around and tried to play with its siblings. Soon after that we drove by a pride of 10 lions that were all sleeping in a tree. 4 of them were tightly snuggled against each other like a pile of stuffed animals. Not long after that we saw a beautiful leopard that was gracefully climbing a tree. It was the most rewarding feeling to have my vision back and see all these astonishing things and it put me in the best mood I think I have ever been in.
On the long drive home I mentioned to a friend that I had never appreciated being able to see things so much and it felt like I had brand new eyes. Living so minimally has made us all realize the value of the simplest things in life – like vision, and clean water, and milk (or any other refrigerated food), and couches, and toilet seats. Many people look at Africa as a place that is full of problems and discomforts – and in some cases it can certainly feel like that – but in the end it is the people that pick up your head and make you see things with a new heart, even when you are completely blind.