Reflections on Safari

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a few days ago we returned home from a wonderful safari experience. While so much (including the individual landscapes and communities) were so familiar to me, I was amazed by how many new things I learned and experienced over this last month. To review and explore in more depth the various ecosystems was absolutely amazing and it really reinstilled in me an appreciation of natural spaces and communities who have adapted to the ecosystems in which they live rather than striving to dominate the enviroment. I continue to respect in particular the hadza people for this and while I by no means want to enter a hunter and gathering lifestyle, I hope to incorporate some lessons from our time with them into my life in the United States. Alongside these lessons, certain experiences stuck out to me as particularly beautiful or overwhelmingly new. These include (to name a few of counlessly many):
* Listening to our Maasai guildes sing and dance for us at Oldonyo Sambu and to have Bushka so extremely excited that he rocked his necklace of.
* Sitting by a sparking fire while experiencing the blues rhythms and dancing thrills of the hadza's musical legacy.
* Observing the endless beauty of the savana grassland.
* The best lesson ever - Hearing about and watching a troop of dung beetles roll and battle over their balls while being surrounded by maasai herdsmen wondering why a group of 25 wazungus were crouched over bugs.
* Catching a hyrax with out hadza guides and dragging it across the bush for the remainder of the day.
* Sleeping out by the fire and watching the endless stars.
There really are far too many to recount here but hopefully this can give a taste of the beuty of safari!!!