safari safari safari

we went on safari this weekend, not the normal group that i hang out with but a random sort of group of people all without the people we usually hang out with. we went on the short safari - two nights. not really enough but yet enough. by the end, after five flat tires and two nights of freezing weather, i wanted nothing more than a warm shower. fortunately, the power and water were both on when i got back home.

this is the crew who went on safari:

b - germany
m - CA now NY
ie - canada
ir - CA now NY
f - london
j - china now CT
me - who knows

we saw lots of animals, mostly everything you would want to see. we kept getting bored with the big name things.

"more lions. whatevs."

then we wanted to spend an hour watching the pelicans.

i went on safari before with 19 and 20-year-olds when i was in college. it was not as juvenile as this trip with law students. this is a quote:

"we came on this safari to see death and sex and all we've seen is shit."

not that it wasn't accurate. we stayed in tents and used pit latrines and wazungu with stomach problems apparently do not aim well at a hole in the ground. after two days i stopped wearing my jeans because i was sure that the bottoms of the legs had dragged through poo. ir accidently brushed her scarf against the poo and she took it off and left it.

b and j are housemates and they constantly harass each other. j speaks at all times in a fake german accent that, when filtered through his chinese accent, is quite amusing, although not to b. every few minutes he asks b how to say something in german, which he repeats, badly, and proceeds to use in normal conversation for the next three hours until he's forgotten it. then, as we were driving along, we were checking off animals - "lions, check. deer-like animals, check. zebra, checkcheckcheckcheckchechechechechecheche." b suddenly said, "j, check." j wanted a picture of himself and b on the edge of the ngorongoro crater and the photo turned out to be j trying to put his arm around b and b pushing him away. later, in an all-the-boys picture, m tried to put his arm around b and b said, "I think it is not good for boys to touch my shoulder." he told the girls that we could.

the stars were amazing the first night. we all leaned back and looked up at them for a minute and then ie said, "the sky doesn't move. it's boring. let's do something else."

the third time the tire went out, it was getting dark and we were just climbing off the serengeti plain up to the crater and we didn't have another spare. the driver and b walked off with my phone (because it had battery) and ie's phone card (because celtel has better coverage) to try to find a place where the phones worked. ie's card, when i put it in my phone, showed a message, so i told her that one was waiting for her. for the next forty-five minutes, while we were stuck on the side of the road in the deepening darkness and b and the driver were off seeking help, ie kept saying, "i hope they don't get eaten with my message." (it was from a boy ;-)

f is british and near the beginning of the trip, when we arrived at the first campsite and saw all the tables with tablecloths and white people sitting around them while tanzanians cooked, j started saying, "that's so british" about everything that was colonial. f might have been offended, but he had to give it up after two days because someone said it about every thirty minutes, sometimes alternating it with "that's so colonial."

the next day, about two hours into the driving around the serengeti, j said to me, "is there always so much time in which you don't see any animals?" when i said yes, he started another of his frequently used phrases. "elephants." he would say, "overrated."

"serengeti. overrated. africa. overrated."

classic quotes of the weekend:

"overrated."

"whatevs."

"that's so british."

"don't put your shoes on that, they have shit on them."

"shyza"

"i want to pet it."

"why do i have to tell you why?" - our guide, godfrey, when ie refused to close the window when the lions walked up to our car.

"twende!" - let's go (whenever we got sick of the current animals - usually long before any of the other cars)

"how do you say... in german?"

"why doesn't something kill something else or have sex?"

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I'm tired now.