An Ode to the Wildebra

It seems like everything I do here pulls my emotional core in all different directions. Some days I feel invigorated and free from the greed of the Western world while others I feel trapped. Sometimes I wonder if I'll be ready to leave in June and on some days I wonder if I should change my flight and call it early. The last two weeks were no different, though they were filled with new experiences and amazing memories.

My parents and friend Lindsey (aka Elektra) all came to visit. It just so happened that the time they could all come overlapped, so I jam packed my 6 months of visitors into one trip. It was amazing. And it was also hard. For the first time in over two months, I was able to fully be myself. I didn’t have to worry about social niceties or making friends or exposing my vulnerabilities. I just got to be who I am and I think after taking two months off from that raw honesty, my heart was a little overwhelmed when it got to be its real self again. I could talk about my true feelings and I could shed tears when I felt sad. It made me quite aware of the fact that while I’m learning new things every day here, my emotional self isn’t being stimulated much at all. So I stimulated it. In good ways and bad.

My parents were here for six days before Elektra arrived. We spent a day in Arusha eating good food and soaking in the urban African flair and then headed to my little part of the world. The unfortunate thing about traveling to Mto wa Mbu is that there’s not much to do. We have one proper restaurant (and I use the word proper lightly), no coffee shops or cozy bars and no taxis to get out of town. My biggest challenge here is feeling constantly socked in, so when my parents came, I instantly felt anxious about them getting bored. For the most part we kept busy, visiting the school for them to meet the kids and work in the garden, taking long walks and tuk tuk’n back and forth between my house and their hotel. We just barely kept our eating schedule full, considering the lack of food options, and luckily they were jet lagged so nap time took up much of the slow, hot afternoons. My mom knew I was anxious and kept telling me to relax about it, but I couldn’t help feel a responsibility to make sure they had a great time. Isn’t that what a good Jewish hostess does? Despite the down time, I know they came away from Mto with fond memories. They loved the kids and the school. They loved the local people who were friendly all the time. And, without a doubt, they loved the prices! 

But when safari time came, boy was it a relief. I knew that we’d be busy for the rest of the trip so the pressure was off. Elektra arrived Wednesday night and on Thursday we headed to Lake Manyara National Park for a day trip guided by my friend Sheb, who went to wildlife school but is now our school’s operations manager. He’s a bird lover like my parents, so a large part of the day was spent bird tracking, in addition to chasing down larger game all over the park. The highlights of the trip were seeing more than 40 bird species, locking eyes with an adorable lion cub from just 15 feet away and getting into an elephant stand off in the middle of the road.

As we were driving, a baby elephant crossed the road in front of us with her mama following right behind. Watching elephants protect their young is absolutely magical. At the threat of nearly anything, the whole herd crowds around the baby and stands in the way of the predator. We saw it time and again in different situations, but this time mom was standing alone and she was mad. She blocked the road and stared us down, walking a line back and forth, daring us to make a move. Earlier that day Sheb told us that in wildlife school they have to learn to drive backwards quickly and for long distances. When asked why, he told us that once on a tour he had to reverse for 2km to escape a charging elephant. With that story fresh in all of our minds, Sheb sat silently with one hand on the reverse gear and the other on the ignition. Apparently our silence worked because elephants don’t see well, so after the longest, most heart-pounding 3 minutes of my life, she decided the threat was gone and tromped off into the trees after the baby. I felt confident in Sheb because he’d done this before, but what really made me nervous were the elephants I could hear in the trees to the side of the car. I kept thinking about the velociraptors in Jurassic Park and wondering if these too were "clever girls." I half expected the rest of the herd to attack us from all sides while mama stood in the road roaring and fist-pumping her trunk in triumph. Luckily, when the mom stepped off the road, Sheb bolted out of there and we cheered and laughed as our blood pressure dropped.

A post shared by Kelsey Friedman (@bangerangkk) on Mar 9, 2017 at 8:38am PST

The next morning we began our three day overnight safari. Our guide Ben, a friend of Sheb’s, and our cook Habib picked us up early to start the long process of getting into the park. There are gates and fees all over as you enter, so we had to make many stops on the 3 hour drive before we found ourselves in the Serengeti at last.

I’d like to start this part of the story with a bold statement: We had the most incredible luck and I feel forever grateful that the African stars aligned to give us such an amazing weekend. 

First of all: We had perfect weather. I knew that we were skirting the edge of rainy season when my parents booked their trip, but because this has been such a dry year, the rains held off. A wet season safari is still possible, but African rains are downpours and the roads easily wash out, so we wouldn’t have made it to half the places we were able to go. Every day leading up to the trip was a gamble of whether the rain would come and as it turned out, it came a few days after we finished. We had the benefits of low season, meaning little competition for animal sightings, without the serious downfalls (see what I did there?)

Secondly: We saw the famous Great Wildebeest Migration!  I mean, come on!? How did we accidentally, unknowingly plan our safari for the time of year the wildebeests would be starting their exit from central Serengeti? Most people go their whole lives without seeing this, or even knowing it exists, but just by chance we happened upon it and I get to check off this “seven new wonders of the world” event. 1.7 million wildebeests, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of gazelle, zebra and eland, make an annual circular migration, following the rain and the greener pastures it leads to.

Aside from the sheer magnitude of animals (we counted exactly one million of the 1.7 wildebeests I think it was), it was completely fascinating to see the symbiotic ecosystem the migration creates. Zebras and wildebeests stick together because they eat different parts of the same grass and because with the beests’ killer sense of smell and the bras’ bad-ass sight, together they can sense predators and help each other live. Elektra and I affectionally named this relationship that of the “wildebras." Look out for the new Pixar movie about overcoming animal species prejudice coming soon (and our Halloween costumes next year)! There was also an amazing effect of disgusting dung beetles feeding off their poo and spreading nutrients across the grasslands, helping fertilize the soil for next year’s migration. For hours, the windows of our Land Cruiser seemed as if they were a television screen airing the latest episode of Planet Earth.

We basically saw it all: more elephant moms protecting their tiny babies, which walk under their bellies until they are too old and tall to fit, while teenagers battled each other in tusk-pushing competitions, preparing for the fights they would eventually hold to determine the alpha male who would move on to another herd.


In an amazing stroke of luck on our first afternoon, we happened upon a leopard viewing of a lifetime (the only thing more unbelievable would have been to watch a kill). An antelope leg was dangling from a tree — a quick sign to the guides that there was something to be seen. As we approached, we saw that a mother leopard was gnawing at the antelope's open flesh while a tiny cub watched in admiration from another branch. As she ate her meal, she continuously adjusted the position of the body so it wouldn’t fall from the tree as the weight of the meal shifted. We watched her for twenty minutes as she ate and adjusted and ate and adjusted. When she’d had her fill, she dragged the remaining carcass into the highest bows of the tree, apparently to hide it until she was hungry again. Ben told us that in seven years of guiding, he’s only seen this one other time.

We saw two more leopards during the trip, bringing the total to four — some people don’t even see one! We saw more than 60 lions (dad counted), 17 of them at one time snoozing together in the shade and another pride of at least 13 lazing in the trees as the sun went down. We saw four rhinos in Ngorogoro Crater, another “Big 5” animal of which not every safarist catches a glimpse. We even found cheetahs, which are Ben’s favorite animal and a personal mission of his to track. In an absolutely insane showing of tour guide genius, he spotted one sticking out from the brush a couple of football fields away. To the rest of us, with the naked eye, it looked like bushes. With our binoculars, it looked like a stick. How he spotted it is still completely incomprehensible to me. If you go the Serengeti, he’s your guy. It turned out there were two cheetahs, popping up and down, scanning the land for prey. 

We sat and watched for almost an hour, hoping to see them make a kill. It was exhilarating waiting for nature to strike — in the end we didn’t see the carnage we were hoping for, but there was a different payoff of the opposite kind. Instead, we got to witness the rescue of a stranded baby wildebeest, who’d been separated from the migration and was sure to become some predator's dinner (shall I mention the part where we were egging on the cheetahs in its direction?) The WB was sticking close to the car because it felt safe near us and it was quite devastating to watch it wander around alone in the empty, vast stretch of nothingness. By the end of our fruitless cheetah stalk, a pack of adult WBs passed by and gathered up the lonely baby. We cheered as we watched their reunion. That animal would live another day — or perhaps it would lose the pack again within the hour; we saw many lone babies across the savannah, which makes it pretty clear that Darwinism runs rampant out there.



Though we didn’t see the cheetahs eat, we did eventually watch them run across the grassland on the horizon when they got bored. It's pretty unbelievable that we saw a leopard, famous for its fierceness and strength, drag an entire animal up a tree and we saw two cheetahs, the fastest animal on land, race each other into the sky. Again, I feel like I can say we pretty much saw everything and Ben agreed. Afterward, he told Sheb that it was one of the best game drives he’d ever guided. Sheb confirmed for us that we’d had a once in a lifetime safari.

It was magic. After two months of living a slow, simple life, I had a weekend of intense and fulfilling adventure: inside jokes and delicious food and the best entertainment you could ever ask for, right in front of our eyes. 

Returning to Mto was difficult at best. The entire town was out of power and by some crazy cosmic coincidence, the pump that fills our water tank broke while we were gone. My parents had power and water at their hotel because of a generator, but Elektra and I were stuck being truly basic. The next day, on which the three of them were leaving to Arusha to catch their flights, we were still waterless and powerless and then the last straw came when our kitchen propane ran out. I couldn’t cook, shower, flush, see or charge anything. It was one of those days where I said to myself “what in the hell am I doing here?” The visit I’d been looking forward to for so long was coming to a close, the house I live in was becoming uninhabitable (I haven’t mentioned the rats and fleas yet have I?) and I was suddenly facing the reality of having to revisit that emotional chasm I started building when I got here. I cowered and ran to Arusha with my visitors, staying for one last night with Elektra while the power/water/gas situation resolved itself. 

They’ve been gone for four days. I’m getting used to my life again. The house is livable and I’m settled back in to work. But my heart is still lonely and I think until I’m back home with my people, it will remain that way. It’s one of the challenges I knew I’d face coming into this and while I expected it, I know now that it’s not something I need to feel again in the future. At least I’ve got the memories of the Serengeti and my beloved wildebras to keep my going until I can surround myself again in love.

Note: I have 1,200 safari photos to go through but once I do, I'll update this post with a link to an album somewhere.  Playing wildlife photographer was amazing.