Lions vs. Daydreams

7 December 2011

I don’t want to get soft. And I don’t mean physically. My distaste of getting soft is what led me to take a bus for 13 hours. Then another one for 7 hours, just to get to a place where I’d stay for merely a few days, after which I’d repeat the 20-hour bus journey going back. I don’t want to become a person who can’t stand to ride a bus for that long or who can’t sleep in a tent or who can’t pee in nearly any ‘toilet’ imaginable.

(Okay, there was the time at a bus station in China where I couldn’t use the public toilet, but that was only because there were no doors on the stalls and women waiting to use the toilet would stand directly in front of the stall a.k.a. in front of the person squatting over a hole peeing. Yea, not pretty. After not standing directly in front of a stall – to obviously give the person privacy – for about 30 seconds, I realized that I would never get to pee due to the fact that women were moving around me in order to stand directly in front of the stalls where women were peeing. I was getting cut out of line. So, I moved in front of a stall which meant I was standing in full view of an elderly woman struggling to steady herself as she squatted over the hole in the floor. I left. Quickly. And without peeing. Yup, that was a dreadful 4-hour bus ride.)

Getting back to bus rides: I took a bus from Lilongwe (capital of Malawi) to Lusaka (capital of Zambia) which lasted 13 hours. The bus left on time (so unusual in my experience of public transportation in parts of Africa) at 5:00 a.m.  And, although it was an uncomfortable, cramped, bumpy, and often interrupted (police stops, border stop, stops for cow crossings) ride, it wasn’t really that bad. For me, a bus ride means: naps, daydreaming, and music. It’s not often that I allow myself a really long stretch of time to do only those things. And by ‘not often,’ I think I mean ‘never’ unless I’m on a bus. So aside from the lovely opportunities to see the countryside, meet locals, fear a crash or breakdown, and impose self-dehydration, riding a bus gives me the opportunity to indulge in three of my favorite things. And when I meet a lovely person on the bus who insists on buying me multiple chocolate bars, I have all I need for a lengthy ride.

My night in Lusaka was fairly uneventful (this time – my hostel-from-hell experience in Lusaka came later), and I got on a bus to Livingstone, Zambia the next day. I must admit that it was a bit difficult to get on another bus again. But the visions of Victoria Falls kept me motivated.

I arrive in Livingstone in the evening, take a cab to the hostel, am greeted by a very friendly staff member who insists on my having a beer (okay, maybe it wasn’t hard to convince me at this point) and looking at all the available activities that I could join during my short two-day stay in Livingstone. Half a beer in, I read about petting baby lions, and they’ve got me. So the next day I make a plan to go see the Falls in the morning and go pet some baby lions in the afternoon. A quick dip in the pool and a much-needed shower later, I’m ready for sleep. 

The next day, I head to Victoria Falls. I know it’s the dry season, so I am aware ahead of time that the water levels will be really low. And they are. But the Falls are still spectacular.

The dry season and low water level allows people the opportunity to walk on top of the Falls, something that isn’t an option (without death, and I’m told by a somewhat unreliable, unprofessional ‘tour guide’ that seven people died trying to do that last year) during the rainy season. My guide, who just sort of glommed onto me when he saw me walking alone, turns out to be rather interesting, and we talk about Zambian politics and the economy for most of the time that he shows me around the Falls. With plenty of time, I get back to the hostel to eat lunch and then leave for the baby lions.

Turns out the baby lions aren’t so ‘baby.’ There are two 12-month old lions that we’re able to follow around the bush and pet when they are calmly lying down. The non-profit organization is trying to increase the declining population of lions by breeding them and then training the bred lions to survive. The lions are on a huge tract of land – not fenced like a zoo but actual African bush land – and a trainer goes out ahead of us to find the lions, walkie-talkie back to us so the second guide can then bring us to the lions. We then follow the lions wherever they walk, and we do this all afternoon, watching them climb trees, get lazy and lie down, and play with each other. 

I’m absolutely terrified at first. I mean, I’m walking alongside a wild animal that could kill me if she wanted to, and I could do very little to stop her. The guides are carrying very thin sticks, no guns. So when one of the lions turns and stares at me while I’m petting her, I want to scream like a baby and run away. But I just keep petting her, thinking, “good kitty, good kitty, good kitty." 

After what seems like way too long, she lazily turns her head back, gets up, and walks away from me. And I'm still alive. Which is very obvious to me because my heart is pounding fast and loudly. But after that, I'm no longer scared. It's kind of like getting lost. Once I get lost trying to find a place, I always know how to get there after that.

So you see, even more than being on a bus listening to my iPod, eating a Mars bar, and watching the Zambian landscape move by me, this kind of experience is what keeps me from getting soft.