Playing Soccer With Elephant Dung

Most people know I am not exactly an animal person. I like some on an individual basis, but if you want Dr. Doolittle please see my sister. However, I have been on a mini mission to see an elephant in real life. I felt like seeing an elephant would complete my experience of living in Africa; seeing Dumbo makes this Peace Corps thing a little more real....

So, every year a few of the environment volunteers are in charge of the game count in Liwonde National Park in the south east side of Malawi. National parks in Malawi are not exactly the mecca of the big five as far as game parks are concerned; but as far as I am concerned warthogs are almost as cool as lions. Maybe not--but they did make laugh every time hoping I to see a meercat riding on its back a la Lion King. I digress, my quest for seeing an elephant became magnified when I signed up for this game count. This was my opportunity!

Saturday Ben, Jordan, a guide, a navigator and I set off for a 14k trek through our assigned quadrant of the park. We were dropped off in a village and had to army crawl under the park fence. I realized then our chances of seeing an elephant drastically decreased because a) they aren't going to visit the gun-toting villagers and b) herds are led by females so it is not like they are going to get lost...ha, bad joke. We walked and walked and walked and saw lots of poo. Finally, we saw Impala, a few Livingtonia things (like mini foxes/rabbit things), two kudu, and lots of warthogs--but no meercats and certainly no singing. We saw some wild pigs, those were my favorite, they had some crazy mohawks and looked like they should be in a rock band. We walked and walked and walked right into the 'leprosy tree.' I was intrigued by this 'leprosy tree' because of the stories our guide was sharing. Apparently they stuffed people both dead and and alive suffering from leprosy into a small hole in a tree. 'No way,' I thought. Well, that tree is the stuff nightmares are made of. We climbed up to look in the small hole and saw bones and skulls staring back at us. Our guide was not kidding.

In an effort to make things a little more lighthearted over what we just saw and the fact that we didn't see any actual elephants we played soccer with elephant dung all the way home....

The next day we were in a 'hide'- I use this term loosely as were were sitting on a giant mound of dirt in the middle of a very open plain next to the river. It was more like a 'here I am!' And there we were sitting in the middle of a termite mound in the middle of a national park in the middle of Africa watching animals everywhere. A herd of 150 water buffalo march to the water, hundreds of impalas and water bucks and wart hogs scampered around, and finally the ELEPHANTS CAME! We saw about 20 different elephants in different groups trekking to the water. (They are just as big and beautiful as they are in the zoo.) It was in that moment I wondered how my life became so far from in the middle.

loads of love,
e