The Blind Man Society

Hi all, below is an excerpt from a story I am writing about Serengeti and my visit there.

The sky was strawberry and purple as we set our camp for the night. Giraffes and wildebeest watched from forty feet away as we erected our tent and Travis reached for a bottle of gin. We lit the fire, cooked our dinner and watched the sun set. The sun dropped out of the sky like a ball cut from a string.

The booze flowed freely, and talk soon turned to the wildlife. Stories of death from the resident hyenas and lions were being discussed when we realized we weren’t alone. A flash of the hand-held floodlight around the fire’s perimeter revealed dozens of sets of glowing eyes watching us from the bouncing shadows, just at the light’s edge. No fences, so it was very sobering. But, we were safe as long as we stayed in range of the campfire.

I didn’t drink. The rest did. Our guide warned us to seal our tent flaps before sleep because hyenas and lions were known to enter tents and tear occupants to pieces. A story told of a young boy and his mother who had heard hyenas laughing outside the tent. The boy opened the flap, believing they were his friends. The mother awoke, to find him decapitated. At this, I said goodnight, and went straight to the tent, closed the flap and watched shadows dancing like little savages outside of the tent. Travis and the others remained drinking and telling stories around the campfire, and I dozed off…

It was black in the tent. I was in my sleeping bag turned to the wall, when suddenly something very strong thumped my head and woke me up. I craned my neck, listening to the silence for several seconds, heard nothing, then laid my head back down to sleep again. Again, the thump came and this time I started up. My sleeping bag rustled, cutting violently through the silence like a bullet fired in a bank vault. I pressed my ear against the tent wall and an inch away there was an ear-splitting roar.

I froze. Gradually other roars sounded in the distance and I realized that the lions had found us. My tentmate chose that moment to snore loudly and the roar, less than a foot away, came again. I looked to the front wall and realized that the tent flap had been left unzipped. Pale moonlight shown on the ground through the tent opening. The roars closed in around us as Travis snored again loudly. This time, I shoved him to stop and he woke with a start – sitting up rapidly. I whispered to him that there were lions outside the tent and to shut the hell up. He froze.

We both stared ahead hard at the unzipped tent flap as the soft muted paws traveled swiftly around our tent. If they looked inside there was no place to hide. We both wore white. I leaned forward quickly grasping at the zipper and partially closed the flap just as a pair of paws were padding along the opening. The roars continued to sound all around us. There was pawing at the outside of our tent, and Travis and I looked at one another and exclaimed “that’s it -we’re done.” I asked him in a whisper how they would explain to our grandmothers that we got mauled to death by lions camping on the Serengeti.

The paws continued outside of our small, flimsy tent and this went on for a fair amount of time. I don’t know how long we sat frozen, listening, but I had to go to the bathroom so badly I was about to explode. We sat with our legs drawn up in identical fetal positions for God knows how long. Suddenly, the sound of an engine was in the distance and a faint light showed on the tent front. The invisible truck never came to our site before swerving away, but the sound and light made the lions disperse. I have never been so thankful for a ranger patrol.

Travis and I were awake until dawn, and cautiously opened the tent flap and looked around. There were paw prints on the ground around the tent, and we slowly emerged to assess the area. The others nearby slowly emerged as well. They had not heard a thing during the night and slept soundly while the bellows rang out. Because nobody heard, they didn’t believe us about the lions. Until we brought up the pawprints. So we had our breakfast, told the story, and then packed up the truck to leave the site.

Driving out slowly, about one hundred feet from where the tent had stood, five lionesses jumped out of a tree and bounded into the bush. They had been watching us the whole time. The very same bellows echoed in the air and the hair on the back of my neck stood rigid. Travis and I looked at one another and I said simply “Apparently, we still have things to do in this life.” We drove off, and the experience faded in the rising heat like colors wearing paint thinner.