How A Safari in Kenya Changed Me

The day before I left on a long-planned, dream trip to Kenya, a blogger friend sent me a bon voyage message. In part, it read: Let it change you. Indeed it has, in ways I’m still discovering. A wildlife enthusiast my whole life, a former docent who once led tours at the Los Angeles Zoo, I’d dreamed for decades of seeing the astounding animals of East Africa — especially the large mammals — in their own habitat instead of in captivity. Now, after two weeks of visiting four major Kenyan game reserves and two of its lakes, traveling in between on roads that ranged from truck-clogged single-lane highways winding through mountains to bone-rattling jeep tracks (“the African massage,” our driver said), I am still processing all that I saw and experienced. <h2>It’s not easy to put into words</h2> Most of the animals I saw on safari are ones I’ve seen in zoos: elephants; the big cats (lions, cheetahs, leopards); antelope and gazelles (impala, Thompson’s gazelles, waterbucks, eland, topi); Cape buffalo; and troupes of baboons, vervet monkeys, and the spectacular colobus with their black coats festooned with long, white fringe. I beheld ostriches, herds of wildebeests, and so, so many zebras. Tiny dik-diks darted through the brush while doe-eyed gerenuks stood upright on their slender hind legs to reach the tops of their favorite bushes. <a href="https://medium.com/on-reflection/how-a-safari-in-kenya-changed-me-12bc3caf502b">Read More</a>