Safari!!

My 2 days of safari was a very humbling experience for me. All of these amazing animals live and exist completely in spite of me, or anything that I've done. It is real live EXISTENCE! Untouched! The way it was originally created by the Lord! Life on the Savannah is so natural.. the food chain, the water sources, the migration cycles, etc.. I feel like in American society, almost everything is determined or managed by something or someone.. (was that vague enough for you? ;) What I mean is that humans don't "guide" the elephants to find shelter when there is a massive storm, we don't make a schedule for the watering hole "Okay, the zebras need to come at this time, and the lions at another time so the lions don't attack the zebras"..we don't make sure the water is safe for the animals to drink, we don't go in and cut out all the poisonous plants so the animals don't die.. Everything happens so naturally.. if the zebras show up to the water at the same time as a pack of lions, well, that's just how life goes! It's how God created it. The word "wild" seems so unruly, uncivilized, and unorganized.. But the REAL wild, where the wild animals live, it's the exact opposite! The LORD manages everything for them. Life for the animals in the wild happens exactly how it's supposed to- without human intervention!! What a crazy thought! I guess before the safari, I was just extremely egotistical, and had the notion that humans pretty much had a handle on everything in the world. It was so humbling and eye opening to see that that is SO not the case. And while I am an admitted, shameless control freak, this realization actually made me feel really at peace.. I love that there is a place where God is truly given all control. I think that kind of environment is the closest it comes to the original Garden, where God truly had total control.. but it's the place humans call the "wild"... strange, no?

Another thing that Jess and I talked about was how humbling it was to be able to hop back and forth in between realities. We got to go spend 4 days in a rather spoiled manner. Yes, we slept in pretty gross tents, but other than that, we were treated like royalty compared to how most of Uganda is treated. We had nice meals made for us, we had a big car to drive around, and we had nice cold water every day when we got back from driving. However, when we drove out of the gates at the end of our safari, I saw something that caught my eye. It was nothing out of the ordinary, it was just a boy pushing a bicycle with water jugs on it.. You see this EVERYWHERE in Uganda. It's a way of life. The children take their water jugs to the well, pump the water into their jugs, attach them to a bike because they're too heavy to carry, then take them home for their families to use. I saw women walking down the dirt roads with things on their heads, dirty children running around, etc... All things that I see every day in the village, but I was able to separate myself from that for 4 days. I didn't see any traditional Ugandan outfits, or fruit being sold on the side of the street. While compared to America's living standards, I was basically camping on my safari.. compared to Uganda, it was pretty plush! Around the safari camp site, and in my safari group were all white people.. hardly any Ugandans. I just remember thinking "oh, yes.. I'm going back into regular society now.. no more of this Mzungu [white person] society that I've been living in for the last 4 days." I had to switch my mindset. Seeing that boy with the water I thought "he doesn't even have the option to just switch over to that reality." He can't just hop out of his reality and just grab some bottles of water. He is always in that lifestyle. 24/7...and I wonder if he even KNOWS there's such a different reality than his (water filters, processed food, internet, etc)." I don't mind living in the Ugandan society that is more poor and dirty.. I usually don't have a problem with it. But I am so humbled by the fact that I have the OPTION to choose which one I want to exist in. The majority of people in the world don't have that luxury. It was definitely an eye opening realization