(Big) Five for five

Rhino – check.

Elephant – check.

Cape buffalo – check.

Lion – check.

Leopard – check.

Dang, I’m done.

Wiki sayeth: “In Africa, the Big Five game animals are the lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo. The term was coined by big-game hunters, and refers to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot, but is now also widely used by safari tour operators.”

No. 1 of Big Five

A successful day in Kruger National Park here in South Africa. The park, about the size of Israel, one of the guides told us, is filled with critters. We saw impalas right off, plus some other deer-ish thing that had a stripe, then happened upon three hyenas, which was one of my highlights. I don’t think I’d ever seen a hyena, even in a zoo. (Like I’d have come across one anywhere else.) A little bit later, we came across a mamma hyena with three hyena … pups? Cubs? Kittens? Not a clue, but they were so cute, it was sad to know they are going to grow up to be nasty predators that stalk on anything.

When we found a sick lioness (and by “found,” on this one I mean other people confirmed the sighting but I never did), the tour guide pointed out that the hyenas would get her if she didn’t get well.

But she was the second lion our group sighted. We came across a bunch of tourist cars in an area, and knew there was something cool there, but after waiting a bit, everyone decided they’d all missed it, so the cars started to disperse. Ours went in one direction, and all of a sudden, someone in the back called out that she sighted the male lion, walking through the bush. We followed him for a bit, until we lost him as he stalked impalas, but I really got a good view of the lion. At one point, he was walking in our direction. Granted, I was sitting  in a vehicle that could take off at any moment, but I had this moment of, “I’m calmly taking pictures as a lion is walking in my direction no more than 40 meters away.” But wow, what a moment.

As we were coming across all kinds of other animals – giraffes, elephants – the driver got a message over the radio and took off towards a watering hole.

Mandela's cell
at Robben Island

The tourist safari vehicles, like the dunebusters in the UAE, are all modified Toyota trucks. They seat 10 plus the driver – three bench seats that seat three (comfortably; the middle seat is just as good) and the shotgun position, which, since South Africa’s steering wheels are on the wrong side, are on America’s driver side.

My tour group of 25 (12 of whom are all together) has one person who’s 6-foot-8, so he got shotgun. The other eight in our Toyota group – the larger group was split into three – rotated seats during breaks, as we stopped and ate both breakfast and lunch in the park. And all the drivers, not just our three drivers, talk to each other to let everyone else know where the Big Five are.

Granted, I’m not sure what language Sinky, our driver, spoke, but I could tell he got a good sighting report when we took off all of a sudden to a watering hole. Across the way – far enough to identify it, but not close enough to get a good picture from an iPhone 6 – was a leopard! Holy cow, how lucky could we get?

Actually, probably a bit luckier. Two of the four “Houston 12,” who were seated in our Toyota, had gigantic cameras with lenses, no lie, that were over a foot long. One was sitting in my row, so every time he went to take a picture, I couldn’t see a damn thing. The driver kept asking if everyone could see whatever animal it was, and I would be like, uh, no.

African Penguins

Rant: NO ONE WANTS TO SEE YOUR PICTURES. Seriously, people. You do not need 9000 photos of Elephant No. 17 or Impala No. 672 (seriously, they were everywhere). You will never go back through them. You can flatter yourself by thinking that people care, but they don’t. No, they don’t. No one will look at your 80,000 photos from your two safari days. Take some photos to spark your memory, but don’t let taking photos take you away from being in the moment. Just sit back and observe – watch nature unfold. It’s a helluva reality show, I promise. And you will not go all Aunt Patty and Selma, forcing Bart and Lisa to watch vacation slideshow after vacation slideshow. People appreciate a couple. They do not appreciate 67 photos of the same kudo (a cool antelope) and then 81 of that bloat of hippos you saw sunning themselves. (Yes, I looked up what a group of hippos is called. Also acceptable: pod, school, herd. But “bloat” sounds best.)

Clearly, today’s been my highlight so far. This has something to do with Kruger National Park being awesome, but also because my planned cage diving in Cape Town got weathered out. The day turned out to be nice, but it was super windy the night before and they had to make the call, so no death by Jaws for me on this vacation. I’ll have to leave that on the bucket list.

Cape Town’s a very nice area, too. We spent four night there, and it seems like it was so long ago. We had a penguin outing and went to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was jailed for 18 years.

Just up from the Cape of Good Hope – the most southern part of Africa – we went to visit the lighthouse, which is where one of the explorers and now I can’t remember – said was the most beautiful sight on the planet. And, being an explorer, he would know, even if I can’t remember his name.  It was pretty amazing.

Botanical gardens.
Straight out of
Dr. Seuss

By sheer coincidence, I managed to run into a colleague, too. We were both wearing sunglasses so I wasn’t completely sure it was her, but when my salsa buddy from the Australian embassy sighted me between bites of her pizza, she shouted my name. Cue “It’s a Small World After All.” An American running into an Australian she knows from Baghdad while visiting the southernmost point of Africa. And neither of us was totally shocked.

I’m still mid-R&R, but this tour is winding down. We head to Jo-berg tomorrow, and it’s a long, long travel day. There are a couple stops along the way, such as at the third-largest canyon in the world. I really am not paying a whole lot of attention to the upcoming attractions; I booked the tour at the last minute because I had to go somewhere and didn’t read past “cage diving,” so everything’s a pleasant surprise.

Once this tour is done, I am scheduled to travel to Victoria Falls with another small group, and then it’s back to work. Except I still don’t know where that’s going to be. As it stands now, it’s DC, even though my current flight is back to Baghdad. I’ll need to change it, but there’s still a chance that our post’s status could change and I get directed back there. I’m really not sure when to make the call, but I’m not going to worry about it now.

More change

Made it to R&R. The last two weeks have been such a back-and-forth of “to go or not to go” that I’m just emotionally exhausted trying to deal with it.

As I told Leila, I don’t think it’s stress, but it’s just that everything is up in the air and every time we think there’s a decision, something changes.

What seems like a couple of weeks ago but probably was maybe seven day, everyone at post thought the people who’d been sent home (or who haven’t made it out yet at all) would be back this week. That didn’t happen, which shocked everyone and crushed a few souls, I’m sure. Acting on the information they’d received, people had gotten flight tickets issued and had them in hand, only to learn that they wouldn’t be returning or would have to postpone their arrivals.

It threw a wrench into my R&R because with the assumption everything would go back to normal, I knew with a relative degree of certainty that I’d be able to head back to Baghdad but nothing went back to normal. As result, if we’re still in the same status, I won’t go back to Baghdad until it goes back to normal.

And I have no idea which scenario will play out, so, instead of just taking a little carry-on for a two-week tour, I had to prepare my apartment to pack out (again) and bring enough to where if I head to DC, that I would have clothes to wear to report to work.

It monkeyed up the packing for sure. I had set aside 15 of each vitamin I take daily, but given the possibility/probability of not returning, I couldn’t just leave the rest of them there. I had to pack them up and mail them to either Florida or Minsk, toss them, have them shipped to Minsk a different way, or take them with me. And multiply that by every bathroom item there is. Yeah, I’m taking a two-week vacation, but it could very well turn into a two-week vacation followed by 10-30 days in DC. How do you know how much to pack? I didn’t want to ship everything forward, because I can still very well return to post as originally planned. I didn’t want to leave all the stuff on the magic donation table, either, because I’d hate to get back to post and suddenly not have any OneADays.

In the end, I threw in three work outfits and about 2/3 of the toiletries; the rest are in still in my apartment with a “to donate” sign in case I don’t get back. It’s a plan.

Instead of my handy little carry-on bag, I have a gigantic, 50-pound suitcase. I’m going to be so popular on the tour. I look like a diva, except when you open what in there, it’s nothing glamorous. It’s just whole bars of soap and regulation-size toothpaste, plus all kinds of vitamins and medicines. Not much of most, but I didn’t want to condense them into smaller containers because, well, it’s probably not a good idea to carry around bunches of unidentified, random pills. Yeah, in the end, it can be proven they’re Vitamin D and Advil PMs, but that would be a really scary scene.

So for the second time this calendar year, I packed up my apartment. Since I had a little more time this time around, I bought souvenirs and stuff.  We have a little PX here, and they deal in USD, cash or credit. But not a lot of change. Instead, change comes in the form of these little pog-type disks that tend to pile up. I gathered together all of what I had and came up with about $2.50, so when I went to buy the souvenir T-shirt, I used them all. Well, except for one cardboard nickel that must have been hiding under something on my table. Found it the next morning. Of course.

My splurge on myself was a “Duck and Cover” little stuffed duck. We have weekly “D&C” drills, and, with the exception that the real drills have an alarm-tone prelude, sound exactly like this, if you turned the sound up 8000 percent. I think this little guy is just so cute. His name is Baghdaddy.

He’s crammed into a suitcase now, sitting in my pile of stuff in my apartment. I hope I can liberate him myself, but I’m not really hopeful about returning to Baghdad. I was for about 72 hours, but those 72 hours were alternated with about 48 of them knowing I wouldn’t return. The odds are even about now, I think.

Anyway, I’m on R&R now, although I haven’t done anything yet, not even meet up with the tour group. I think most everyone else must have met at the airport earlier or something; there’s an itinerary posted in the lobby that says I get a wake-up call tomorrow morning to get going.

Somehow, I wound up in business class on the way up and holy cow, that was so nice. I even managed to sleep a little bit, maybe three of the nine hours of the Doha-Cape Town flight.  I’d make a terrible diva, though, because I had a hard time adjusting to the “special” treatment. Even in Baghdad, they tried to offer me the lounge, but I’d ridden over with a couple of colleagues and I didn’t want to bail on them.

Once at the gate, the agent told me I should stand off to the side s I could board with the business class, and I told him I really didn’t care about boarding early and would just sit with the others, but he must not have believed I was serious. I was sitting down, reading a book, and he came up and said, “Business?” I got pranced through everyone, shoved to the front of the line and given deferential treatment. It felt weird, especially because there was only one other person in business class to Doha.

There were more on the longer-leg flight, but only one more in my little section. I felt like I had a private bathroom, even, because there were so few people using the two closest to me. I never had to wait, and I brushed my teeth twice. Although I brought my own toothbrush (with regulation-sized toothpaste), they had them available for us, and little shaving kits, too.

The seats were amazing, and reclined to flat so you could sleep, and, if you pushed the right combination of buttons, did a little massage thing. My own TV, about 13 inches, with real headphones, not just earbuds. On the Baghdad-Doha flight, I had an iPad with movies. Dinner was on demand and I ate early (my choice – seafood soup) so I could try to sleep, which I did a bit. They set the table, complete with a tablecloth (really cloth) and a battery-operated candle. I felt it was over the top but nice. I had a “mocktail” fake margarita complete salt but ginger ale instead of whatever alcohol is in a margarita. 

The little gift bag had a blindfold thing to shut out the light (although the windows were automatic and with them closed off it was dark enough), those flimsy socks, face spray (?), lip balm, ear plugs and hand lotion. The bag itself is a real brand name (there was a card discussing the company), as are the pajamas they gave us. Not kidding. They look prison-issue but not because they’re coarse; they’re just black and gray. Came in a little gift bag. I didn’t change into them, but the bathroom probably was large enough to do so.

The flights went fine and I cannot believe I have to return to coach for the trip back. Not a lot of fun. But in the meantime, I’m going to try to forget work and have fun on R&R.

You just never know

Well, it looks like I’m going on R&R, whether I like it or not. Fortunately, I like it, although I still have to see if the tour I’ve been looking at is available. It’s still listed on the website but apparently if you sign up with less than 45 days before departure, the hotels might have sold the rooms, so I’m waiting on the final word there.

Assuming that’s positive, I have to then chase the flight, although I’m now debating adding on another three days so I can see Victoria Falls. I feel like this might be my only shot to visit that Wonder of the World, but in this life, who knows, right? It’s a pretty steep add-on – it includes a RT flight from J-berg and two nights in a fancy schmancy hotel – but I’ll check.

This whole thing came about fairly suddenly, too. Basically I got pulled aside and told to go, and to go pretty much now. But the caveat is that I might not come back. I know there are no guarantees in this gig, but I had hoped for a little more … confidence, I guess, from TPTB. If anything, I got the impression I’m not coming back.

It’s looking pretty positive that we’ll cross one step on the staffing issues, but there’s another step that’s kind of exclusive to just a few of us, and I’m, of course, in that mix. No one has any idea what the end result is going to be. Well, I take that back. No one at my pay grade knows. Probably someone knows, but not me.

The advice to me was to go ahead and pack out before I go on leave, which would be the week after next. But if I were to come back – if – I’d be here, inchallah, for 4-5 weeks after that. Definitely livable from a suitcase, but not a lot of fun. Especially considering my amazing mattress pad (some kind of bamboo thing that’s made in the U.S.) is bigger than any given comforter and would not fit in a suitcase.

As I was looking at my stuff, I thought I’d send another box ahead to Mink, but … what would be in it? The flat-rate boxes, at $20 for the biggie, is fantastic, but I can’t scrape up enough stuff that I can live without until about Halloween. I can’t put medication or vitamins in my ship-from-here stuff, but I’m not about to part with my “Migraine-B-Gone.”

It’s winter in South Africa, so I’m trying to pack for that and keep in mind that I could still get diverted to DC. What do I pack for that? Or would, if that happened, I just go buy a new wardrobe of LL Bean Perfect Fit Pants. I don’t have room in my bag for South Africa winter, DC winter and work clothes.

Looking ahead, I’ll be arriving in Minsk in late October, which isn’t winter but pretty dang cold. That means, if I get back to Baghdad, I’ll have to bring my winter coat with me to Florida so I can bring it with me to Minsk.

The options on packing really are enough to make my head spin, because there’s no winning combination. I’m not going to follow the advice to pack out right now; instead going to do what I did when I left last time and just pile up everything in the living room. If I don’t come back, it’ll be easier for someone else to just ship it all to me – wherever.

In other randomness, I really don’t like the turn “The Handmaid’s Tale” is taking this season. I’m getting really bored with close-ups of Elisabeth Moss’ contemplative looks.  I feel like there should be a way I can Hulu on fast-forward.

I do (or at least did) like the series more than the book itself, which I finally read. Meh, but good for someone for seeing about 15 good episodes of TV in it.

Loving the e-book and library card thing. I stepped it up with the Crazy Horse and Custer book and am now reading The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee. I have an autobiography on Sally Field and a biography of Julia Child (Dearie) in the queue, too. If I make it to my R&R I will have to sit and plug a bunch in because the tour would a whole lot of time in a bus.

Did I mention the tour? I’m waiting to see if I can get on it, but it starts in Cape Town and goes to Jo-berg with a diversion in Mbabane, eSwatini, which is not a typo but is the new name for Swaziland. Cape Town has a city tour, a day of cage diving (or wine, but guess which I picked) and a visit to Cape (or maybe Camp) Robben, where Nelson Mandela was jailed.   

I suppose I should look closer at the itinerary, but I’m fine with whatever it is. I opted for this one because of the cage diving and it turned out to be cheaper than ones to Germany/Belgium/Luxembourg/Amsterdam and England/Scotland, if you can believe that. Of course, contemplating a 3-day add on to the tune of close to $2k sort of negates that, but it’s so close.