When we landed in Mfuwe last Sunday afternoon one of the first things I noticed in the tiny “international” airport there was a display advertising “elephant dung postcards and note paper.” It reminded me of a brief note in the Harper’s Index a few years ago about the number of moose dung earrings that are made every year in Alaska! As we have been on the foot safari we have spent a lot of time looking at dung. Yes…dung. It has surrounded us – been in every path we have trod. Big dung – like elephant dung…and little dung, like mongoose dung. Our guide will use his stick to pick apart the dung and explain to us what these animals are eating and what the dung can tell us. Which leads to one of Jordan’s cries “I can’t believe that I’m on vacation and doing something ‘educational’ – I’m not going to have anything to tell my friends when I get back.” And then he laughs and we join him in the laughter.
In the afternoons we sit on our beds underneath the mosquito netting to ward off the flies which are everywhere by this time and play cards until the afternoon walk begins. As we play we listen to the grunts and sounds of the hippos below us on the river. Jordan notes that the sounds they make are like those of old men sitting around telling each other jokes across the river and then laughing. It does sound like that. And soon we are laughing every time we hear the rumbling deep bass chuckles from the river. And then it is more dung and more education and more wondering at the fact that we are strolling through the African forest as if we truly belong here. When we see the wildlife here – it is not used to human beings, so they run away. We watch the impala as they run. Every few steps they leap – and their leaping propels them forward so far it is astonishing. When we ask Mayem about their leaping he explains that these leaps force an odor out of a gland at the back of their back legs, which tends to confuse the predator about which way they are headed. Evolution is a truly remarkable thing.
We have often come upon signs on these walks of the brutality of nature. Our first foot safari we came upon a fresh (two or three day old) skeleton, picked nearly clean, of a baby hippo. The little remaining flesh on the nose is still soft. And the skeleton is, remarkably enough, standing as if in display at a Natural History Museum and not out in the wild! A few yards later and we come across a much older set of bones. They seem to be held together by some fur, and when Mayem turns it over we all say at once “giraffe.” There is very little left. Four hoofs. Some broken leg bones…and the recognizable pattern of its skin. On the last day after we had tea we walked back about 100 feet and came across a baby baboon, lying dead, still bleeding, that must have been killed by a bird of prey as we drank our tea.
As that part of our trip has now ended – I just wonder what it is that I leave behind that others could recognize and learn from. I hope it is a little more than a bit of dung. But what is it really? If folks came through Indianapolis what would they stumble across that would tell them who we are and what we are doing? Would it be something we are proud of or ashamed of?
I think of what we leave behind as I watch Conor preparing to go off to college. What will he leave behind? What will these experiences that we have given him traveling in India and Africa, to Malawi with his grandfather, to El Salvador with the good folks of CoCoDa? What about his experience being at Broadway – the way he has been welcomed and made friends there? What have they left behind with him…and what will people be able to tell by poking around with him?
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