5 Life Lessons I Learned in the Mara
I still can’t believe that just four short months ago, my family and I landed at our final destination in Kenya, the magical Maasai Mara which is home to the famous annual wildebeest migration and the warm and inspiring Maasai tribe. As I began filtering through the hundreds of videos and thousands of pictures (still don’t have the photobook done ;^>), I started to reflect on the magnitude of the experience and realized just how much I had learned about life in the 10 days we were privileged to spend in East Africa. Most of the takeaways from the trip were extremely positive and motivating but there were definitely some stark reminders of how skewed life in the modern world can be.
Hakuna Matata
While the phrase made famous by the song didn’t originate with the Maasai, they are still quite fond of it and bring that attitude to everything they do, even towing one of our Land Cruisers out of a ditch.
If at first you don’t succeed…
Every form of life in the Mara, the smallest termite to the largest elephant, is super-adaptable, resilient and persistent. Kinda like this baby baboon:
Definitely makes you think about bolstering your own resolve and imparting the importance of “grit” to your children.
Why can’t we all just get along?
One of the things that’s so striking about the Mara and which was continually pointed out by our guides is how the animals generally coexist and respect one another. We saw numerous examples of this:
In fact, most of the tussling we did see was between animals of the same species:
So it’s clear from what’s going on in the human kingdom these days that we still have a lot to learn from the animals.
Data is a Drug
Nothing like being fully disconnected in the bush for 3 whole days (we had connectivity in the first and last camps, though I use that term quite loosely ;^>) to bring out the “beast” in everyone. Here’s my nephew and two older boys after one of our guides found them a “Wi-Fi oasis”:
Kudos to Jana Partners and CalPERS for bringing this issue to the forefront of the media with their recent letter urging Apple to take action about cell phone addiction among children (hint: children aren’t the only ones addicted.)
Stop complaining about healthcare
Yes — I know that healthcare is a big problem in our country. But trust me, one visit to a Kenyan hospital 2.5 hours away from your camp in the middle of the night will make you appreciate the kinds of facilities to which most of us have relatively easy access. The short version is that my niece had a terrible allergic reaction which, due to her rings, was cutting off the circulation in her finger. Thankfully the whole thing ended well and she is fine. However, the conditions and patients inside that hospital (which was the best of 3 options in within a 4-hour radius) were so sad that I couldn’t bring myself to take any shots. I did take this one of a closed registration window to have some memory of the experience:
So the next time you’re kvetching about a having to visit an emergent care facility, remind yourself:
- It’s probably unbelievably close/convenient (walking distance for us, actually).
- It’s almost definitely nicer than the overwhelming majority of full-fledged hospitals in many third world nations.
- The reason for your visit likely pales in comparison to those being admitted to emergency rooms at the exact same moment in underprivileged countries across the globe.
If you’re so inclined, the complete photo library is here and the videos here. My five favorite shots:
