July 19

Okay, I’m getting cabin fever. I know we’re camping in the midst of thousands of miles of open land but we can’t do anything or go anywhere alone. Its so difficult to look around me and see just acres, millions of acres of open land, with no humans, nobody, no houses, no roads, and it meets the sky and I follow it up and even in the sky, there’s no planes even. If there is a plane that goes by, the guides can usually tell us who is piloting and where it is going. So I see all that open space but then remember I’m in a car and can’t get out except to go pee a few feet away from the car after checking for lions. And at night, someone must walk with me to my tent because where we’re camping, called Masi Mara, there are leopards in the trees and buffalo who apparently come busting out of the trees charging, and hippo grazing who are surprisingly vicious and despite their bulbous appearance, can run 35 miles an hour. And theirs mouth, when open, can fit a grown man in the fetal position (so thats not a good defense when being charged at by a hippo). So the only possible place to be alone is in my tent. Which is nice and all but right now, there are crickets and tree frogs and all these cool weird sounds that I want to explore and I’m so frustrated with so many things going on in my head and I just want to go outside and walk! And we eat these epicly awesome meals, buffet style, and everything’s delicious, so I always eat plenty but I’m not doing anything physically active because we can’t go anywhere.
My mom and I were itching to go running and Ninian told us that, at the last place we were staying, (Lewa- a rhino conservation) it would be safe. So we woke up early and went down to the lodge in our running shorts and thermals and two rangers drove me, my mom, and Ethan- the only guide willing and able to run- 20 minutes away until we got to a straight away that the rangers deemed relatively safe. The longer and longer we drove the more and more I felt like a moron for all the fuss just to go for a 40 minute run. After much heated debate in Swahili (of which I only picked out the words for Lion, Cheetah, Rhino, Right here…), the rangers decided we had arrived at our running destination. My mom and I got out of the car, exchanged embarrassed guilty glances and hesitantly jogged off. Throughout the run, our guide ran beside us and the truck drove a hundred yards in front. The Boulder, open-space-loving trail runners would have been so jealous. Not everywhere can you see zebras, rhinos and elephants on a run. But it was pretty ridiculous too. On the way back, the rangers stood up, pulled out their binoculars and, after scouring the land, pointing and debating some more in Swahili, the guy in the front seat in camo with the radio and the AK47 decided it would be safer if he ran with us.
It reminded me how much I love running though, so thats good. But I also realized that if I do go back to Kenya (which is the plan) that itll be really hard for me to resist running off into the plains- so I might get trampled by something or gorged.