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Abigail FitzGibbon

Period 3

Memoir

October 8, 2014

A Glimpse of Africa

Ready to go, folks? The energized, grinning face of our tour guide, Ben, poked
out at us from behind the drivers seat of the jeep.
Ready when you are, my mom answered, yanking a piece of grass from the
strap of her flip-flop. On the bench opposite her and me, her yoga friend, Stephanie,
tightened her hold on the hand of her five-year-old and nodded an affirmative.
Mommy, youre hurting my hand, Claire complained, big blue eyes blinking
petulantly.
Sorry, sweetie. Stephanie loosened her grip as her husband, Bill, reached in to
take Claires other palm.
I shifted on the leather-padded seat, trying to ignore the way my shorts and T-
shirt were sticking to my skin. This Louisiana weather was proving deadly to a born and
raised Alaska girl. I certainly hoped this trip would be worth all the trouble we were
going to. Not only was this place way humid and a temperature that I personally didnt
think should be reached anywhere on Earth outside an oven, but wed had to take a
five-hour plane ride and a three-hour car ride just to get to this natural sauna. Anything
you had to travel this far for was guaranteed to be amazing...right?




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Here we go! The engine revved, and Ben gently eased the car forward.
Growling and sputtering in bitter complaint, it bumped and bounced over the tall
grasses, slowly picking up speed.
Look over there, folks, Ben yelled over the jeeps racket, straddling the seat
like a cowboy and clinging to the wheel with white knuckles. To your right is
His narration was abruptly drowned out by another coughing fit from the car, but
that didnt matter. None of us would have paid attention anyway. We were all too busy
staring at the motley band of creatures meandering along a few feet away from us.
Small, spotted fawns galloped alongside sleek gazelles. Stolid, square cows
clopped patiently forward while wildebeests the size of small trucks plodded
ponderously through the grasses, heavy heads lowered in contemplation. At the front of
the herd, five horned heads pricked up, swinging toward us. They began to trot towards
the jeep as their compatriots followed eagerly behind.
Claire squealed in delight, eyes wide with rapture. Horsies!
Those are deer, sweetheart, Stephanie corrected as Mom took out one of the
small plastic cups wed all been given and began scooping corn into it from the
enormous tub in the trucks center. The bin was the size of a small wading pool and
contained an ocean of grain. When Stephanie had asked why we could possibly need
so much, Ben had given her a knowing smile and replied, Wait and see.
We were all following my moms example when an enormous head thrust into the
car. It was a gnu, with long, twisted horns that looked like an illustration out of a Dr.




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Seuss book. Slobber dripping eagerly from its oversize mouth, it leaned forward,
rubbery lips closing around Bills cup, and yanked it out of his hand.
Hey! Bill cried with partially faked indignance, shaking his fist at the retreating
creature. I could swear it was smiling smugly at him.
Ben chuckled as he eased the jeep to a stop and tossed Bill back an extra cup.
A velvety head poked through the window on my side, delicate ears twitching.
Holding my breath, I slowly reached out and tipped some corn into its waiting mouth,
running my right hand through the fuzz between its ears. The deer took no notice as it
slowly crunched its food. This was definitely amazing.
As I gently stroked the deer, I thought back to the articles Id read online about
this place. The Louisiana Global Wildlife Center had been started when a man in
Folsom, Louisiana, had inherited a large farm and decided to purchase some exotic
animals to live there. Hed bought two giraffes, both of which quickly became favorites
of the townspeople; this gave him the idea to make the entire farm a home for wild
animals where they would have a spacious place to roam. Before long, his undertaking
had turned into the GWC, a nine hundred acre nature preserve where over three
thousand animals native to Africa lived freely.
This park had been a major tourist attraction for decades, and when my mom
had found it online, shed discovered the perfect bait to use on me. Shed been planning
a trip to New Orleans to meet up with some friends for ages, and I had stubbornly
refused to come along on the grounds that jazz, tasty pastries, and glittery masks were
not worth going to the other side of the continent for. I loathed travel with all of my heart,




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and I had remained firm on the issue until she showed me the Global Wildlife Center
website and the tour tickets shed bought for us. Confronted with pictures of giraffes
nuzzling small children, my resolve had fallen like a house of cards. A park where you
could feed and touch the animals looked better than the African safari Id always
dreamed about. The whole thing looked too good to be true, in fact; Id spent the three
weeks leading up to the vacation thinking of increasingly dire predictions for how our
excursion could go wrong. The webpage could have been erroneous, our tickets could
be invalid, and there could always be a freak plane crash or tornado or wildlife rampage.
As the seconds had ticked down to our journey, my last concern was that the
whole experience would turn out to be anticlimactic. Would seeing this unbelievable
fauna in what was basically an enormous petting zoo diminish my long-held awe of
them? What if this unique experience turned out to be a disappointment?
As it happened, that was the dumbest worry of all. As I ran my fingers over the
gleaming horns of the oryx that had butted its way to my window, it seemed perfectly
clear that these animals could have been wearing tuxedos and clown noses and it
wouldnt have been able to hide their majesty. Id never seen anything so graceful and
noble, and the looks they gave you made it clear that you were being honored by their
acknowledgement of your presence. Peace came over me along with the awe, and I felt
like a shaken can of soda that had finally been opened, although my bubbling
nervousness had dissolved rather than exploded. I could fully enjoy the rest of my
encounter.




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The creatures of the next hour soon seemed to blur together, although a few
faces stood out. The zebras had teeth like blocks of enamel; I was scared to feed them
for fear of them crushing my hand. The cows were unfailingly polite, tipping their heads
back to receive their corn and twirling their long blue tongues to the side. The giraffes
were everyones favorite, with their Hollywood-glamor eyelashes and long, spotted
necks, while the gnus became a constant, slobbery annoyance.
As time wore on, I began to see what Ben had meant. The amount of corn had
seemed enormous at first, but with all the animals we met and were compelled to feed,
the tub was running on empty by the end of an hour. We all scrounged up every morsel
we could find, extricating kernels from the cracks in the seats and the soles of our
shoes.
With Ben whooping enthusiastically as he spun the wheel, our jeep rattled
through the rusting metal gate and into the nearest parking space at the end of our tour,
The door slammed shut behind us, just inches in front of a particularly gluttonous camel.
We were barely parked before Ben was ushering us out and shooing us towards the gift
shop with zealous determination. It seemed best to comply with his wishes.
You can pick one thing out, Mom called to me as we entered before Stephanie
drew her over to look at the animal-print purses. Nearby, Bill examined a display of
Swiss army knives and Claire darted through the stuffed animal racks with glee, her
wide eyes and chubby-cheeked smile nearly identical to those of the fuzzy effigies.
I wandered through the store for a while, enjoying the air-conditioning and
browsing through the racks of cheap, creature-themed candy and safari survival kits.




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Finally, I settled on a miniscule kangaroo figurine. Weighing the plastic sculpture in my
hand, I thought back to the whipping tail and liquid dark eyes of the live one Id seen
bounding through the grass not twenty minutes earlier. This store seemed like it was in
a different universe from the savannah outside, but what gift shop could hope to
compare to the glory of nature?
As I bounced the toy a few times in imitation, I heard Claire calling my name from
the other side of the store. Turning and heading for my waiting comrades, I stowed my
souvenir in my pocket and my memories of our safari securely in my head. This was
one vacation I could never bear to forget.