Memoirs of the Savanna

My brother sent me amazing footage of a herd of Cape Buffalo, three Nile Crocodiles, and a pride of lions. After watching endless footage of animals attacking and hunting their prey, I am oft reminded of an experience in the Maasai Mara a few years ago. I bring this up only because it was a good reminder of how sheltered some people really are…
It was our second day on the Maasai Mara, Kenyan’s Nature Preserve that magically becomes the Serengeti once you cross the Tanazanian border, and we were watching hippos and large Nile crocs on the Mara River. A small Nile Monitor was making its way towards the bottom of the gulch, and a 6 foot immature croc was inching towards this large lizard in stealthy fashion. Within about 3 feet from the water’s edge, the crocodile is poised to make its move, where it will potentially snatch the lizard off the rock and have himself a fine dinner.
Enter “Lisa Zoobie” (the names have been changed to protect the innocent, stupid and otherwise entirely naïve), a BYU co-ed, who naturally loves watching movies like “What is Real?” “Our Heavenly Father’s Plan”, and “The Prodigal Son”, while sipping her Caffeine free Diet Coke and playing Pictionary while living at Helaman Halls or Deseret Towers on campus. No doubt, she has eaten countless amounts of steak, chicken and fish over the years, but she is yet to see a real life animal attack its prey in the name of starvation and hunger. Lisa perceives the lizard will be toast momentarily, so she throws a rock at the lizard to scare it away. No meal for the crocodile, no video opportunity for the rest of us. It was almost the last mistake Lisa would ever make in this lifetime…
Out of the bushes springs a Kenyan military officer, fully equipped with an automatic machine gun, and begins to rebuke the absolute hell out of Lisa. Rightfully so. I was secretly cheering him on, as he yelled at her and told her that while she was off painting her nails in her so-called protected life, that animals have been hunting each other for thousands of years and she had absolutely NO right to change the Circle of Life. I think she did it just to protect her virgin eyes from seeing one animal eat another. Poor Lisa. She heard it from all of the rest of us, after GI Joe went back to his job of protecting the animals of the sanctuary. It’s good to know an act like that warrants a shot to the head with a bullet the size of my middle finger. If only you could have heard her for the rest of the day, talking about how dangerous the soldier was, and if she had a right to call her lawyer and press charges for defamation of her character…we all wanted to strangle her. In all fairness, the soldier was entirely within his job description to do as he pleased. In Kenya, they shoot first, THEN ask questions. In Kenya, they don’t have much more than their wildlife viewing opportunities and their Big Game hunts to bring in any kind of income. The land is dry, but the wildlife is bounteous. In my time in East Africa, I have been pleased to see three lionesses bring down a Cape Buffalo (while chillin in a Matatu, in a rainstorm, listening to Enya); a cheetah running full speed and overtaking a Grant’s or Thomson’s Gazelle; and a leopard dining on an Impala, 20 feet up in a Sausage tree. Oh yeah, I almost peed on a Gabon Viper, not 20 yards from the Mara River.
I don’t know what ever happened to Lisa Zoobie, but I remember she got numerous wake-up calls into the steaming manure pit that is called life for most people in Kenya. Her perspectives of how life is tough to live when you scrap for food on a daily basis reminds me of my first visit to Kenya, and helped me realize that my everyday life is a blessing from on High. We should all remember the privileges we have to seek out scholastic advancements, pursue financial opportunities and do our best to make life joyful. But we should also remember that approximately 5/6 of the world has it tougher than us, and though all things are relative, we need not complain about our dire living situations.
You should have seen the dilation of Lisa’s eyes when that soldier bolted from the bushes straight at her…priceless.