I returned recently from the trip of a lifetime to Kenya and Tanzania. I rode in bumpy jeeps across the Serengeti, Amboseli, Ngorogoro Crater, and the Maasai Mara, dust flying as we careened over vast, acacia-dotted landscapes that held lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, wildebeests, rhinos, baboons, hippos, ostriches, cheetahs, leopards, Cape buffalos, and so many more. They were only yards away from us, yet acted as if we weren't there. It was like traveling through a dream.
I saw a dozen lions sunbathing on boulders, elephant families in slow, dignified processions, a mama and baby cheetah sleeping under a tree, baboons scampering alongside our jeep with mamas carrying babies on their backs, ostriches protecting a giant egg, hippos soaking in a crowded lagoon while snorting, belching, and shoving each other out of the way. In Nanyuki, Kenya, our group visited a school where kindergartners sang an adorable welcome song, middle-schoolers showed off awesome moves from a dance competition, and when we left, bombarded us with hugs and kisses, which melted our hearts.
In Amboseli, we visited a Maasai village, where warriors greeted us with a spirited welcome song involving high jumps and spears, and shared their way of life, even showing us into their homes, huts that the women built out of cow dung, which amazingly didn't smell and were water-tight. For hundreds of years, this land has been their home.
My late husband John grew up in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, and his stories inspired my trip. Stories of playing on giant anthills, and roaming through the bush with his spear. Tales of freedom, of endless plains and deserts. Though there's a much darker side to Africa, where people were betrayed, stolen and enslaved, and wars and famine are currently taking place, I'm grateful to have experienced such beauty and magic.
When he lived in Africa, John sailed in Lake Victoria, which fed his love of sailing. If you'd like to learn about about my sailing adventure with my late husband and young daughter when we followed his lifelong dream and left everything behind to sail away, go here.