Tanzania Safari May 2008

Ngorongoro Crater   Email sent from Ngorongoro Crater Serena Lodge's funky computer. May 14 2008 How I wish you were here to share this wondrous African journey. I write from the lodge at the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, world heritage site. The others in our group are still having a merry dinner, so I have snuck away to send you this postcard email from the beginning of Time!   It feels like the Garden of Eden. We spent the day on the crater floor which drops 2000 feet into a bowl of constant life creating itself.  From the jeep we saw wonders to remember always!   The lake is pink with flamingos in their exquisite watery dance, now swimming, now flying.  A lone elephant holds the Silence on the horizon.  A hundred zebra, as one, turn their heads together as though attuned to the same All That Is around them.  The full-bellied lion lies at the roadside, well feasted, nourishing the flies as he sleeps.  We do some yoga poses beside the hippo pool and sound OM to honor and participate in this beautiful timeless place.   Hakuna Matata! means No Problem!  This is what we hear and see around us.  I know the world is full of problems,  Here in the crater we can experience Beingness so readily.  Can we learn to always trust, as do the animals, the flowers, be present and feel wonder.

The Masai welcome us into their village.  We dance with them and visit the cow dung huts and see the school room.  The women work really hard and appear to have a very tough life.  Still their smiles are radiant. We were amused to see the use of cellular phones in this most rural of settings!

Zanzibar After the heat and vast expanse of the Serengeti, we fly to Zanzibar, jewel of the Indian Ocean, aka the Spice Island.  We replenish with beach yoga,  fresh foods, naps in the  beach front cottages, and met the locals who, as one of our drivers described as a Pilau - a delicious dish with many ingredients:  Arab, Indian, African and Europeans have blended to form  wonderful community. We saw undeniable poverty, but with Africa's irrepressible and ubiquitous smiles

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