Meditation in the Serengeti

“It was amazing, it was absolutely amazing.”

Herds of gorgeous lions lounge in the glow of the rising sun. Rhinos grace your view when the sun sets, majestic and rare, bathing in the water. Out in the middle of nowhere, and yet in the middle of everything, life blossoms around you and you stop and stare, awed by the sight of animals you’ve never imagined you would see in their natural habitats.  

            The African Serengeti was a place of meditation for Vera as she contemplated retiring from her work in the Department of State. She had spent years touring the globe, working in embassies in Syria, Iran, Italy, England, and many other countries. While stationed in London, she and her coworkers flew to Nairobi, Kenya to go on Safari in the Serengeti. She told herself, “I’m going to go on this trip and I’ll have time to think about retiring.” And so she packed her bags and embarked on yet another journey.

            During her career, Vera had been to Kenya three times. She described Nairobi as “a big African city with not much there.” The adventure Vera was about to have in the Serengeti would be very different from any of the other journeys she had experienced in Africa.

            While on Safari, Vera and her coworkers stayed in “very nice lodges with all the modern conveniences and swimming pools and food coming out of your ears.” After dinner each night dancers and singers would come and perform native songs. “They had all sorts of alcohol,” she recalled, “they had anything you wanted practically…it was living!”

            Luxurious lodges aside, what they really went to the Serengeti to see were the animals. Typically they would only stay in a lodge one or two nights depending on what type of animal they wanted to see. They would see the animals during sunrise and at dusk. Vera recalled some of the types of animals she saw, including elephants, wildebeests, leopards, lions, dik diks (small, antelope-like creatures), gazelles, monkeys, rhinos, flamingoes, hippos, zebras, lizards, geckos, warthogs, cheetahs, elephants….

            At one of the lodges, every night when they returned there would be a giraffe standing at the entrance. At another one, the lodge was elevated; if you walked down a small flight of stairs “there was this outdoor bar and there was a leopard that used to come out every night… He would just crawl on the trees and they had a man that had a big, long stick with meat on it to keep him occupied.” Vera is convinced the leopard had been trained; there was no netting surrounding the bar, so the leopard was no more than a few yards away.

            There was one lodge they went to specifically to see the rhinos. In the middle of the night a bell would ring to wake up the guests to tell them to go out on their balconies. Once out there, overlooking the water, they could see the rhinos in the night.

            “It was amazing, it was absolutely amazing to see how beautiful they are. I mean, we’ve seen these animals in zoos but to see them in their natural habitat, I mean you’d see prides of lions, maybe a hundred of them,” she recalled. Vera decided to retire while on Safari in Kenya. However, her adventures did not end when she retired. She was called back on contract work, travelling only three or four months out of the year. The Serengeti was an enchanted place for Vera and an experience to which she looks back fondly, remembering the magic of the African landscape as she made her life changing decision to retire.

My name is Jillian DiPersio and I am a sophomore at Windham High School. After learning the stories of my own grandparents, I have been interviewing the elderly. Through my research and interviews I have been able to dig up some incredible bits of history from the lives of local residents, as well as learn about people who are the products of a different generation. If you or someone you know would like to share your stories, please contact me at jillian@dipersio.com.