Grace Palmer Oct. 1, 1920 – Jan. 20, 20

My grandmothers house was immaculate and full of treats, but not too many, just always the right amount. The lawn was always mowed and we tore divots playing outdoors on summer afternoons. There were bedrooms for me and my sister and beds made up snug and tight without so much as a wrinkle. She kept us well fed and polite and the carpets were always clean for us to lay and play games on. At my grandmothers house, I felt safe, clean, and at peace.

In the room I stayed was a desk so full of stationary that I thought I won the Hallmark lottery. There were so many different sizes and colors and pens for every occasion and under her watch I drew to my hearts content. I received many letters and cards on that stationary, always assured by her pen that she loved me, heart and soul.

Experiencing peacefulness is a gift from my grandmother and a cornerstone of who I am. In this calamitous world full of uncertainty, one truth I could count on was that my grandmother loved me, heart and soul.

When I would see my grandmother over the last couple years, she always held my hand and recharged our bond. As I travel this world, I find peace imagining I am holding her hand and experiencing it with her. Finding her a postcard or composing little notes or even going somewhere on her behalf. In the Vatican City, standing in Saint Peters Cathedral, it was by thinking of my grandmother that made the experience more valuable. I believed she would appreciate walking those halls and that made me cherish it more. I looked more closely on her behalf and I felt peace.

In the forested hills outside Istanbul stands a modest home where Mary, mother of Jesus, was brought and looked after by one of the disciples of her slain son. Years ago, on a particularly warm autumn afternoon, I found myself with a rare moment alone in the room in which she prayed. In that magical context of history, as one is encouraged to do, I found myself speaking aloud to Mary. Hi Mary, I’m Jay, you probably don’t know me, I live really far away and have been a bit busy lately, but… but what I found myself settling into was a word or two about my grandmother and how it was for her that I made the trip to these hills and this home and that I thought Mary should really hear about her because I love her heart and soul.

I think my grandmother and I have different views on heaven, but I am sure she has found hers and I hope that Mary remembers my visit. As for me, I will continue to travel this world, carrying memories of loved ones with me, carrying her memory with me. I believe the soul is the memory of someone you love. And so I will recall her memory and let it enrich my experiences as it remains with me, her soul, in my heaven.

Serengeti Dreams

Five minutes into the park we saw a young lioness tearing apart a Buffalo. If you have never seen a grown lioness stretch and flex her massive figure, let me just note they are sculpted power. It left an impression.

Safari guides have a network of communication to inform each other of the animals presence, which is done entirely in swahili so as to surprise their clients. I learned all the swahili names for the animals in advance and it became a source of amusement between our guide and myself, because I knew that chui kwa mtoto was a leopard with baby and were were on our way to find one. I didn’t ruin the surprise for Darlene or our two swedish friends, Anna and Lina and the guide and I shared some laughs.

On the other hand, I also knew that the words simba, tembea, hapa, and sasa, when all used together in a single sentence meant lions were heading our way, toward camp, right now. It was getting dark. Our guide prepared to sleep in his land cruiser and the camp staff in a caged banda, but it was the clients that stayed in the little exposed vinyl tents. I should mention this safari was another “good deal” because we had a friend with a friend in the business.

Before crawling into our tents, a herd of six buffalo came grazing behind the banda. Everyone huddled inside until they were gone. The affable mzee, Daudi, explained that yes, as I had heard, there were three lions tracking these buffalo. He imitated a lions call so we would know it. No more then ten minutes later we heard this sound again, but this time he was pointing, hapo, there. If you hear the baboons, he said, imitating their calls, it means they are alarmed by lion. Then he demonstrated the hyenas cry, explaining that hyena follow lion. We started taking in all the sounds, registering them, and realizing that no sound was the best sound. Miraculously, we actually fall asleep.

Darlene woke at one thirty, do you hear that? No, I was asleep, mercifully. It’s getting closer, she said, and she also moved closer gripping my arm tighter. My attempts to fall back to sleep were denied. Clearly, she wanted to share this experience. All noises lead to lions, I reminded her, but she was way ahead of me on that one. Within ten minutes the baboons were howling and we could hear Anna and Lina’s anxiety in the neighboring tent. We never asked what to do if a lion starts sniffing at our door. The staff only advised no food in the tents, but hamna shida, the animals are accustomed to them and wont bother us.

That night, under the Serengeti sky in a little vinyl tent at the end of the road, we heard with absolute distinction, the rise and fall of hooves, the snorting of breath, and the cracking joints of six grazing african buffalo. We could hear grass from the patches between our tents, being gripped, torn, and eaten as we remained frozen solid in the dead center of our tent. Darlene categorically identified every sound, hyena, baboon, anxious swedes and the complete lack of aide coming from the staff. We remained wide awake until morning.

I was the first to venture out at the crack of dawn, luring our driver from his car, anxious to get the day started. Duadi pointed out the tracks of a lioness and a hyena that had passed thru our camp. Tracks also clearly showed that we had been smack dab in the middle of where the buffalo roam.

Before breakfast we set out in the land cruiser to take in the life of the early dawn. No more than a few hundred yards from our camp, we saw the six buffalo and three stalking lioness. We astutely noted that these three powerful ladies had no kill and must be a bit hungrier than yesterday. If we could have bought them a buffalo to curb their appetite, we would have and before we camped again that night, I dug out our headphones, though in retrospect those nights were full of sounds we will cherish forever.

Happy New Year

We took a dalla-dalla to Lake Manyara. A dalla-dalla is any form of vehicle, usually a minivan, into which they can cram about twenty people. That’s the legal number, but as they say in Tanzania, there’s always room for one more. And no, it’s not any different than any other minivan, it’s simply CRAMMED with people, they literally sit atop one another and hang out the sliding door, which is not often closed. But it’s cheap and gets one around. Usually. Actually, ours broke down halfway and after waiting at the side of the road for twenty minutes, we finally crawled into a smaller one and resumed our journey.

At the lake, we rented mountain bikes to tour the local village, Mto wa Mbu, which is literally translated as Mosquito river. It’s an unfortunate name as the area is beautiful with tribal culture and mosquito free in the heat of the day. We pedaled jeep road and single track thru banana plantations, sampled banana beer and capped it off with a ride thru the wide open grasslands bordering the lake.

We were surrounded by zebra and curious wildebeest. Gazelles sprinted around us in sport. There are giraffe, but we didn’t see any that day. At one point I stopped riding and watched in awe as four zebra galloped a half circle around me before they made their way off to the lake, which is so full of flamingos, it glows pink. The pool where the river meets the lake is so full of hippos one could not count them all. We kept a respectable distance, but were close enough to watch them emerge and wander the grounds. As a treat to ourselves, we took a bus home, splurging on the extra thousand shilling, or eighty cents. It was a fantastic way to finish up 2009 and we’re giddy with anticipation for 2010.