Night Safari Travels

I remember when I was a kid seeing advertisements for visiting the Singapore Zoo at night…I think they called it a night-time safari or something else designed to pique the interest of the general public. I remember it, so it must have worked—although I never went to visit, so maybe not. Anyway, I recently had my own unplanned night-time safari, which is mostly the subject of this particular piece of rambling…

Eating mandaazi with McKenzie

After a week of hanging with my boss and his daughter, visiting projects and meeting with important people, we dropped them off in Yei (another town nearer to Uganda) where we wanted to visit a few projects and meet with a few important people before they left. On the way to Yei, we started to break down in a very scenic spot full of tall grass and no mechanics. Everyone sitting in the car heard the horrible screeching noises from the front right tire. The car was pulling over that way when the wheel stopped working. We creaked and slid our way into a more populated area where a man on a motorcycle offered to help (for a small fee). He and the driver proceeded to insist on opening up the rear right wheel to try to fix the brakes there. They were sure it was that wheel because we’d just had the rear brakes fixed, even though everyone in the car, from Mark (who knows about things like brakes and filters and spark plugs) to me (who knows that cars should probably have brakes and filters and spark plugs attached to them somehow), tried to tell them it was the front wheel. They opened up the back wheel anyway, making horrible noises clanging things on the metal casing as they tried to pry it off to get to the brakes. They did succeed in cutting the brake line (I think that is a thing) and losing all our brake fluid (I also think that is a thing). We started driving again, to make the mechanic feel like his hard work was a success, and broke down completely a few miles down the road, conveniently in front of a lady who was making mandaazi (a local donut-type thing). I called the man we were going to see in Yei, and he sent us his Land Cruiser to pick us up. He got a special deal on the Land Cruiser because he was a child soldier for the LRA and someone, maybe the Land Cruiser company or some government trying to make good, was selling them cheaply to former child soldiers. But we were still about 40 miles outside of Yei, so we had to wait about 2 hours. Yes, it takes 2 hours to go 40 miles here. It takes time to decide whether or not to dodge potholes the size of Jacuzzis or just plunge right through them. And 2 hours is the amount of time it took a Land Cruiser at its fastest possible speed of 70km/hr (If you want that in miles, you do the math. Don’t be lazy.). It would never have been possible to go that fast in our old car, even if we had it in peak position. But I will say: it’s just as painful going slowly over a bumpy road as it is going fast.

You can't go over this bridge, so you ford the river.

Anyway, we made it to Yei, visited our places and people, and tried our hardest to get me a seat on an airplane going to Mundri to no avail.  I was a tiny bit disappointed, because while I really like long road trips as a general rule, I was feeling a bit sore and I was concerned that our car wasn’t going to ever be ready for the return drive. But it did get ready—just not until 3:00pm the day we planned to leave. Knowing that the drive was 6 hours at best (and our car was still very far from best), there was no possible way to make it before dark. But we didn’t want to wait because Jeffreys wanted to be back for his youngest son’s birthday (the next day), and that was important since he’d missed his son’s birth (see, Josh Frizzell: it doesn’t just happen to militarians—sometimes it happens to humanitarians too) while traveling to the US to help bring some more work to South Sudan (that visit helped solidify his relationship with Neverthirst).

We hopped in the car at 3:00pmish and off we went. We made it to where we broke down about 3.5 hours later, and I knew it was going to be a long night. There had been some rain in the area, so several streams we’d passed over relatively easily on the way to Yei were much higher. The driver had to go test the depth and current before we could cross. He never drove faster than 40km/hr the whole trip (really, just do the math yourself if you care at all: clearly 40km/hr is really slow).

This photo was on the way there-on the way back this was a river.

About half-way through the trip, we stopped to pee (one of the many times I always wish I’d been born a boy), but I couldn’t go into the bushes because it was dark and muddy and possibly dangerous. So I just had to squat down behind the car and hope no other passing motorists came by (they didn’t). Back in the car and on the road again, I was getting tired of the trip until the driver started flashing his lights and swerving. Clearly illuminated in the light, I saw a spotted animal with gleaming yellow eyes. I started screaming, “Oh my gosh, it’s a leopard! It’s a leopard!!” And Jeffreys and the driver started laughing at me for being so excited. When I calmed down enough to see that I had phone signal so I could update my Facebook status accordingly for people who would be impressed and not laugh at me, I realized that the animal we saw was too small for a leopard, so I asked Jeffreys what it was. He said, “It’s a fox.” I scoffed at that because foxes are not spotted, so he conceded that it was a jackal. I decided to name it the Spotted Jackal, and it is probably a new species, which no one has ever seen before, so that will be its official name now. Since my phone doesn’t take good photos at night, and I don’t take good photos in swerving, bumping cars while screaming excitedly, I didn’t get a photo, but I’ve take the time to draw you a picture, which I have posted for your benefit:

Notice the large glowing eyes. They should be yellow, but I don't have any colored pens or markers.

For the rest of the trip, I kept my eyes carefully scanning the road, to make sure that our driver didn’t squish some other probably endangered, possibly never before discovered creature. I was rewarded by seeing some wildcats, a small alligator, and a large puff adder stretched out in the middle of the road (we even avoided squishing that because we care about all God’s creatures—and because it might have punctured our tires). Every time I got excited about seeing something and yelled, “Look, look, what is that?!” The driver laughed hysterically (he was tired to the point of laughing at anything, I think) and Jeffreys patiently said whatever he wanted to, knowing that I would believe him unconditionally.

Clearly that is a wildcat--see how ferocious it looks hiding in the grass?

So the moral of the story is DEFINITELY travel at night to see all the cool animals. Also, be more careful in the future when peeing by the side of the road, knowing that all the cool animals come out at night and might try to take a bite out of your bare butt. And just because your dad is an artist, does not mean you automatically inherit his talent for drawing. 

We did not see the alligator and the snake at the same time, but I didn't want to waste paper.  Notice the driver looks slightly insane. Also, the status of my hair is accurate. When you drive with the windows open, that is what your hair looks like. And I am screaming and pointing and standing up in my seat. It's a pretty good likeness of our car too: some  lines and circles haphazardly strung together.