Safari

I visited Malawi, Africa for three weeks in May of 2011.

 

The twenty-some of us pack into a bus and slide the windows down. We roll down the uneven road, our bodies jolting every few feet. I imagine myself in Jurassic Park and hope, faintly, for a dinosaur sighting. Lush branches poke in the windows. We don't pause to look at the gazelles, but the giraffes we stop to see.

 

The giraffes range in browns and tans. No two are alike; spots vary in color and size. I am more afraid of them than anything. Wide brown eyes and the balanced, majestic bones are held up by more than a bodily strength in between the sun, dry grass, and baobab trees.

 

In America, we set up zoos and put giraffes on televisions where, behind bars or glass frames, they are contained. There are no containers here.

 

We stop for lunch, getting out of the bus. I am wary with nothing between me and the giraffes, their large lungs breathing the same air as mine. The sun bears down the same heat on our bodies. The only thing between us is a patch of African plain, no wire to hold them back.

 

Our group picnics, climbing up wooden stairs to a raised gazebo. I want to eat this lunch daily: fresh picked berries from the mountain side, ripe bananas, juicy oranges. The eggs are fresh, hard boiled. We drink fruit pop: Coca-Pina, Orange, Grape.

I am coming to terms with this: wonder has to do with a common beauty and unknowing. It lies in the bones of giraffes and brown hen eggs.

 

While we were in Malawi, we spent time beneath the peak of Mount Mulanje. My friend would turn to me in the mornings and say, "We are eating porridge in the shadow of a mountain."

 

I would wash my clothes and say, "I am washing my clothes in a bucket in the shadow of a mountain."

 

I am playing tag with twenty African children in the shadow of a mountain.

I am lying beneath an earth-sky of stars in the cool grass in the shadow of a mountain.

 

I added the mountain to the end of sentences in my mind, and the world got bigger while I got smaller. This is the wonder for the daily that keeps things beautiful.

 

I am eating a whole-grain peanut butter sandwich, and I am a living, breathing soul.

I am a Saturday children's librarian in a small town, and I am a living, breathing soul.