Sunday

So, official day one of Spring Break. The night before, if you've been keeping up, we managed to communicate with the front desk guy that we wanted a safari in the morning, with a car, driver and guide. Funny side note. None of the four of us know how to drive stick shift. I've driven it once, through a parking lot for about fifteen minutes. Because of this situation, and the fact that we were unsure of what exactly our transportation accommodations would include, I thought it prudent we educate ourselves to the nuances of stick shift. So I wikihow'd it. Yep. Thursday night before we left I went to the Academic Center and printed out a French grammar primer and the steps to successfully driving a manual car. This was the extent of our preparation, so (as you can imagine) we were happy the car for the safari came with a driver. [I have to say though, the wikihow was pretty thorough - I feel that with my minute previous experience and extensive written directions, I would have been fine...ok...fine may not be the word...I think we probably wouldn't have crashed. Decreased the lifespan of the transmission? Definitely.] Sunday morning, 6:20 am, we roll out of our Bungalows and traverse the 30 feet to the reception center, where we find waiting a pickup truck with a board across the back. Super - exactly what we were hoping for. Neither the driver, nor the guide spoke English, but it was gestured to us (we did a lot of gesturing - surprisingly effective method of communication, I must say) that he had an illustrated book of the animals that he would use for us. Sweet.

We set off. African sunrises are the best I have ever seen. It gets nearly totally light out, and then this perfectly circular ball of fire just appears. That morning, it simply appeared and then rose high in the sky, transforming from a bright white into a blazing yellow. On this safari, we saw water buck, roan antelope, gazelles, warthogs, baboons and this beautifully blue-colored bird called an absynian roller. Every time we, or our guide or driver saw an animal, we stopped the Land Cruiser and watched, while the guide handed back the book to Kaivan to show him what we were looking at. The four of us were sitting in the back on the board, facing forward. Nisha and Kaivan sandwiched Liza and I - Liza and I had to hold on to the metal bar fixed right behind the glass window of the pick-up, while Nisha and Kaivan braced themselves in with their legs. They also had to dodge foliage, which was pretty funny. Out of this constant need to duck or get out the way of branches, trees and assorted grasses, the phrase "tuck and roll" was born. This turned into a great continuing joke throughout the week - all you needed to do was tuck and roll out of any situation. As we looped back around the camp and wound up on the main road we traveled the day before, the sun was getting hotter and we could see our bungalows. Liza and I had been standing up, enjoying the wind in our face and the dust coating our skin, mostly because it was a bumpy ride to take on a wooden plank, and because we felt absolutely super-cool. Just before entering the reception area, just about where the bungalows began, and just past the watering hole and baboon lair, we had to stop. Why did we have to stop, you may wonder? Because there were elephants crossing the road. No joke. We stood in the back of this white truck while about a dozen elephants crossed the road less than 40 feet in front of us. There were some little ones in the group (relatively speaking of course), and then a whole lot of really large, dopey looking elephants. We took pictures like it was the last time we would see them, and we did wind up with some really cool shots. They just kept coming across the road, completely unperturbed at the car chillin so close by. Thus we arrive at 8:30 am Day 1 of Spring Break, Burkina Faso. Score.

The rest of the day is really spent watching elephants. We went to the observatory (round stone hut that jutted onto a peninsula slightly into the watering hole with tiered benches for [get this] observing the animals) where the rest of the visitors of the camp were already gathered (about 20 people or so, definitely no more). We sat there for a long time and just watched the elephants. There were between 20 and 24 (it's remarkably difficult to count looming grey critters when they're playing and half submerged in water) elephants in this watering hole. They were cooling off, playing and bothering one another. The old ones were just sort of hanging out alone, not really moving and not really caring what was going on around them. The ones that looked like full adults were all together, much as you would expect parents at a play ground to gather on the outside of the fence to converse and enjoy adult company. Then the young and adolescent ones (it's pretty easy to get a read as to how old an elephant is in terms of size and skin texture) were seriously just playing around. They were wrestling, dunking each other, walking over one another and tugging their playmates underwater. It was fantastic to watch, an absolute ball. This is not the last time I'll make a note of how much like humans the elephant interactions were - it was uncanny.

We got hungry, so we went to the dining hall/restuarant for breakfast. Petit Dejuner (breakfast) consisted of a lot of baguette, cheese, jam, butter, tea and coffee. Kaivan usually got spaghetti, Liza and Nisha usually went for the p.d. and I split my time. The cool thing was that because the dining area overlooked the watering hole as well, we could watch elephants as we sat there and ate. Wonderful.

We ate snacks for lunch, and then napped and went for an exploratory walk in the afternoon. We saw some warthogs chasing gazelle, and some other deer like creatures. It was cool to just walk around - we stopped about every 20 minutes for a water break, and walked for about an hour and a half. Liza and Kaivan stopped as we were walking about the watering hole to break up and bottle some dried mud. We figured we could add water to it and make it into clay - this turns into a great story for the next post, so stay tuned. Super. We thought dinner ended at seven, so we went back (having skipped lunch, save for some plantain chips and peanut butter sandwiches) around 5:30. Well, we were wrong. Dinner is served at seven. This makes sense - they make all the food at once, because there isn't enough people at the camp at any one time, and there aren't that many choices to warrant making each dish by itself - they cooked all the food and served it at generally around 7 pm. So, hence began our period of regression. We brought cards, bananagrams, our books and string to nearly every meal, in some combination, from that point on. We really felt like we were five, needing to be entertained while waiting for food to be served, but we got to be ok with it relatively quickly. It was actually a great way to enjoy the passing of time. We watched elephants, talked, laughed and played games as we waited for the food.

After eating, we went back to one of our Bungalows and all hung out and played more bananagrams, until 9:30 or so when we retreated to shower and get ready for bed with the luxury (and light) of electricity. It was an exhausting, and early day, so I think we mostly all just fell right asleep. We planned to allow ourselves time to sleep in the next morning, because we weren't going on a safari until Tuesday. Monday we decided we would just hung out, which turned out to be an awesome decision. We thought we would sleep in, watch elephants all day, and then take an afternoon walk, since we hadn't done that yet. It was a great day one (technically speaking), but I assure you, the best is yet to come.

By the way - going back to school after spring break sucks. I love learning, and being in class - but after spending a week chillin' with elephants playing in a watering hole...lecture just doesn't quite cut it. It also isn't so cool that I have a quiz, midterm, paper proposal and a group presentation during the course of this week, either. Such is life - at least I'm enjoying what I'm learning about.

:)