The Weekly Shriek: Morning on the Serengeti

We dressed in the dark. The hotel electricity wouldn't be turned on for two more hours.

"There's nothing to keep the lions from getting us," I said as I opened the door and peered out into the blackness.

"It is Africa. What do you expect?" Johnny gripped my hand and we hurried along the sidewalk leading to our hotel's lobby several yards away. The Serengeti loomed to our left. "I'd rather be struck by lightning." I shivered with delicious excitement. "The lion thing is so bloody."

"I hear they clean it up right away," he joked. "It's bad for business when lions eat the tourists."

The hotel perched on a ridge above the plain. We'd seen elephants and giraffes as we drove up the hill the evening before. Clouds of swirling vultures indicated the demise of something large not too far from the road. From our balcony, we'd watched buffalo graze on the grounds below us. That was before our guide reminded us to keep our sliding glass doors locked lest prowling leopards find their way into our second story room. We went to bed early, but between listening for noiseless paws on our deck and giggling about our own suggestibility, neither of us slept much.

The dining room must have had its own generator. The lights blazed.

Leo greeted us with a cup of coffee in hand. "Do you think we'll see them migrating? I saw them on National Geographic. Migrating. You know?"

I shrugged. "Maybe."

"Let's take pictures." Johnny raised his Nikon to his eye while Leo and I posed together. Then Leo took one of Johnny and me with our arms around each other.

"Three?" A strange man came through the glass doors. "For the balloon?"

"Here!" I called, although there wasn't anyone else in the lobby at four in the morning.

"I'm Peter."

"I'm Joyce, Peter."

He shook my hand. "You're a daring one, aren't you, love?"

"We all are." I gestured to Johnny and Leo standing behind me.

Out front, a Japanese version of a Land Rover waited for us. Peter helped me into the high truck. Johnny climbed into the backseat with me. Leo sat up front.

I leaned forward and grabbed the back of Peter's seat. "How long?"

"Couple hours."

"Will we see any critters?"

"All kinds of nocturnal animals out there right now," he said as he put the truck in gear. "I'll show you."

"Cool." I leaned back and whispered to Johnny, "Is this the neatest thing we've ever done or what?"

He kissed my sunburned forehead. "Definitely."

I smiled to myself. I'd wanted Africa. He preferred Ireland. We'd compromised and come to Africa.

It was the first time we'd been out in the bush at night. Branches slapped against the windshield and scraped the fenders. The truck bounced over ruts and rocks. I held on to my safari hat to keep it from flying out the open window.

"What's that?" Leo screamed over the noise of the engine.

Peter swerved. "Hyenas, mate."

I turned to watch about thirty shadowy bodies trotting beside the road. "Where are they going?"

"Probably up here." The truck fishtailed in the dust as Peter stood on the brakes. Something flickered in the headlights. We heard a deep rumble -- thousands of hooves. My eyes focused. Ten yards ahead of us an endless line of lowing beasts crossed the road.

I grabbed the front seat again. "Wildebeest?"

Peter nodded.

"It's them?" Leo stuck his head out the passenger window to get a better look. "They're migrating? Even at night?"

"Might oughta keep it inside, mate," Peter cautioned. "Never know what's chasing these fellows."

A calf stopped in front of us -- staring at the idling truck. Its mother rushed on with the bustling herd.

I gripped Johnny's knee. "Oh no, he's lost."

"Not good." Peter gunned the engine to scare the little guy away. It didn't work. The calf sniffed the front fender. Peter beeped the horn. The tiny animal startled and backed away.

In the woods to our left, we heard the cow calling to her baby. He didn't move.

"He won't find her until we've passed," I speculated to Johnny.

Peter must have had the same thought. He inched his way forward, forcing the wildebeest to stream around us. Once on the other side, he accelerated away from the crossing.

"What'll happen to him if he doesn't find his mother?" Leo asked.

Peter's voice was low and sad. "He won't find her now, mate."

"The hyenas!" Johnny whispered to me.

I turned to look behind us, but darkness and distance hid the inevitable from me.

"Nothing we can do, love. It's natural."

Facing forward again, I sensed Peter watching me in the rear view mirror. I nodded. Something has to die so something else can live. It's fundamental. Only thing we could do was to try not to be lunch ourselves.

The sky was a lighter shade of gray as we pulled in behind two other Land Rovers. Several tourists leaned against them. Two large wicker baskets lay on their sides in a meadow beside the road. A dozen Africans worked to unroll the balloons and set up huge fans to blow air into them.

Peter opened my door. "Here's how it works, love. You are going to crawl inside those baskets, sit on some little benches inside and grab hold of the straps."

I watched a very young man walk around the balloons checking the lines.

"That's the pilot. Once you are inside the basket, you'll be on your back, hanging on. He'll start heating up the air inside the bags -- and those guys will play out the lines which will bring the basket upright...and then, if all goes well, it's up you go." Peter grinned and helped me out of the truck. "Understand?"

Actually, I didn't have a clue what he was describing, but I figured it would make sense when it happened.

As the colorful silk pouches began to swell, a couple of the other tourists headed off down the road.

"Hey, hey, hey -- where ya going, mates?" Peter's voiced boomed and I jumped.

"Gotta pee," a young man called back. "Looking for some privacy."

"There's a pride of lions finishing up their breakfast about a hundred yards that way. I think I'd stay here if I were you."

The two boys looked down the road and then back at me.

"I won't look," I assured them, wondering when Peter had seen said pride of lions -- and why he hadn't pointed them out to me.

"Stay close." Peter warned us.

That was fine with me. My interest in looking for a bathroom had vanished.

I nodded and faced away from the young men relieving themselves behind me. I pondered how such a simple act of nature could have turned them into prey -- or how a moment of distraction could turn deadly in the blink of an eye, like what had happened to the little wildebeest we'd left behind on the road.

The pilot pointed at me.

"Time to get in now, love." Peter guided Johnny and me toward the balloon. Leo trotted along behind us. We got situated inside the wicker basket and several of the other tourists joined us.

We lay there joking about cobras spitting in our eyes.

"I'd like to take pictures of the migration," Leo said behind me. "I brought my movie camera -- so my wife can see, you know?"

As the air inside the balloon warmed, it floated skyward and the basket went from horizontal to vertical.

"Wow," I breathed.

The lines connecting the balloon to the basket grew taut.

An orange ball caught my eye as the balloon began pulling us upwards. I nudged Johnny. "Look!"

He squeezed my hand -- and we rose into the sky along with the sun.

Below us, crews released the lines and we drifted away on the morning breeze.

Leo covered his eyes and squinted. "Where are they? Are they migrating?"

Below us, a warthog hurried along, tail in the air. In the distance, a hippopotamus raced across the plain toward a large pool of water. Zebras snorted and stamped as beams of orange light turned the ground fog gold.

I rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands -- first one and then the other. I wanted to tell Johnny something, but no words formed.

He jerked as if I'd touched him. "What?"

I pointed to the Serengeti below us.

Then I realized that his cheeks were wet too. "I know," he said. "I know."