Yep, the Nile River.
That Nile River.
The same one Moses floated in a basket on. The same one that God turned into blood. The same one that Cleopatra...
...didn't Cleopatra do something on the Nile River? Suddenly the tenth-grade world history escapes me.
Anyway, toward the end of our Uganda trip, our blog team headed out on the African savannah for a quick weekend safari. It was a time to decompress, rest and fellowship. (There was also fabulously geeky tech-talk about "search engine optimization" and "Google algorithms". Ah, it's a good thing when bloggers come together.)
The safari was a culmination of such a mind-boggling, surreal experience, that Sophie and I found ourselves frequently shaking our heads at each other, trying to process what we were seeing.
"Um, Sophie? We're eating breakfast looking at the Nile River."
"Um, Shannon? We're flying on an airplane over Africa."
"Um, Sophie? We're sitting in a safari jeep behind a game warden with a loaded AK-47."
"Um, Shannon? We're looking at a giraffe and we're not at the zoo."
We could just never quite get over all that.
Our friend Randy has documented beautifully all the wildlife we saw (grab the kids and pull up a chair to watch his video here.) The lodge where we stayed was straight out of a Hemingway novel (seriously! Hemingway stayed there once!)
"Um, Shannon? We're sleeping under a mosquito netting without air conditioning."
And the airstrip for the safari lodge? Only a video will do it justice:
"Um, Sophie? We're waiting for an airplane under a mango tree."
Did it all really happen? I finally finished putting away all my luggage this weekend, and when I wiped the African dust out of my suitcase I just shook my head. Was I really there? Did I really go on a safari? Did I really fly over the North Sea and the Alps and the Sahara desert all on the same day? Did my heart really break? Did I really see that much hope?
Will it ever seem real?
