The Great Elephant Chase

The generator wasn’t working a few days this week. We ate dinner by the light of our lanterns. I liked this. I enjoy the simplicity. I enjoy not hearing the buzz of the motor. I enjoy not smelling the exhaust. The generator was fixed yesterday.

Teaching here in Kitete has been very interesting. There have been some challenges, some unique circumstances. For instance, there is an animal barn about four feet outside the first year classroom. I am interrupted often by the goats. They sure can make some noise. When the grass gets long, the “lawnmowers” are let loose; I really enjoy the cattle that pass by the window every now and then. My clothes are covered in chalk dust. We’ve lost another computer. Not only are we down to seven now, but I noticed that the cord that runs from the generator to the computer lab was spliced the other day. No computer class that day. I took the students outside. We played Old Maid and Go Fish instead. They had a good time, so did I. I’m teaching the second year class some basic geometry. I explained the relationship between the diameter of a circle and its circumference. We’ve been calculating the area of a circle using 22/7 to approximate pi. There are, of course, no calculators. After class one of the students asked what the homework was. I said there was none. He insisted that I gave him some problems to work on. I gladly drew some circles in his notebook, giving him some equations to solve. He asked for more work! Imagine that.

My clothes are (arguably) clean again. They dried before any rain this time. Having clean clothing, showering, and shaving have become grand occasions. What was once the norm is now exciting. I feel refreshed and renewed each time. Somebody will have to explain to me how a washing machine works again after I get home.

The hills were once all forest. (Just as the tall hills in the horizon are mountains to me, the forests here are the jungle.) Much has been cleared and burned for agriculture. The school rests right in front of the fire line, where the wheat fields meet the entrance to the forest. Along the fire line are small huts made of branches and dried brush. There is a little cot inside and a fire pit. One hut for every couple hundred meters. Men post watch in these huts at night. Watching and listening for the elephants. Last night an elephant was spotted near the fire line. This is big news. The elephants can ruin entire fields of wheat or corn pretty quickly. Fr. Comfort found Charlie and me reading last night. He said that if we wanted to see an elephant out back, now was the time. We ran outside and there was a lot of commotion and excitement. The little Ford tractor was running, and we were told to jump on. There were seven of us clinging to the tractor, but the front bright lights wouldn’t turn on. We ditched the tractor and jumped in the back of the pick-up. We raced to the trail along the fire line. We would turn abruptly to shine the lights in the fields. We had our flashlights, too, looking for the elephants. We held on tightly to the rollover bar, dodging low-hanging branches as we sped down the trail. I could hear the elephants just within the trees. When they walk, branches snap and small trees are pushed to the ground. The elephants themselves are quiet, but they make a lot of noise. The flashlight showed the tops of trees swaying as the elephants moved past them. If our job was to scare the elephants off, well, we were successful. I never actually saw an elephant last night, but the hunt was exciting and exhilarating nonetheless.

Charlie and I walked back out to the fire line with the man who was staying out there last night. The night was cool, but not yet cold. I was wearing shorts, and I felt just fine. We stood out there with him. He was listening for the elephants. Charlie and I were looking at the stars. The moon was already out of sight, so visibility was perfect. It’s almost poetic (and ironic) to think that there are more stars when there is less light to interfere. More light when it’s darker. The Milky Way looks like a line of white puffy clouds in the night sky that don’t move. No airplanes. A few satellites. A few “falling stars.” I said the stars looked beautiful. The man with us said, “Uh-huh.” I don’t think he knew what I said because he speaks Swahili, but he understood.