More Giraffes

More Giraffes!

This is a journal entry I wrote the day we saw the giraffes! It is much better to write the day you experience something, you remember so much more detail. To wait and write later, never holds up. So here we go… I promise not as long as the other e-mail.

We saw Giraffes today!! In the wild! We were 3 or 4 meters away and that’s it! We drove about 30 minutes away from Niamey. Picked up a guide, then drove down a dirt road another 20 minutes. Passed old, ancient villages. At least they seemed ancient to me. Their houses were SO “African.” Round mud huts, with thatch everywhere. They have these small round circular thatch structures, that are used to store millet, that are placed on raised perfectly placed pieces of sticks and wood. It is soooo cool looking, hard to explain. Don’t worry, I took pix.
Then we drove further into the bush, where the road gets sandy and the guide climbs on top of the car to start looking for the giraffes. He directs the driver farther into the bush on a beat up path. Not before long we pull up to a stop and to our right we can see a head of a giraffe up in the trees. Its ears separated by 2 horns on its head, eating some leaves of a tree, 6 meters high! It was amazing. We get out quietly, slowly, so as not to disturb them. We start walking toward them, we see 1…2…3…4…5…6…7!! All standing in close proximity of each other grazing in the trees or standing in the sun. As their enormous bodies emerged from behind the trees and I took them in with my eyes, I was awe-struck. I swear my jaw dropped. They were huge!! They look like Brontosauruses and I feel like I’m in Jurassic Park. These beautiful creatures living in the wild, as they like, here!! The same place we are. We stand in astonishment for a while, taking in their long elegant legs, which help them stand so tall. Their long elongated necks, their round bellies, their color (the round patches of brown and white.) The horns sticking out on their head, 2 horns is for a female and three horns is for a male. We take in their large eyes, which are covered with long, beautiful, feminine eyelashes, then to their long pointed snout, with big round puckered lips, which look like they’re ready for a kiss. Once in a while, their tongue slips out, which is a foot long black slimy thing. When they lick their lips, their tongue reaches to the back of their heads. It’s slimy and grose, probably the only grose thing on the whole animal (at least that I saw). Except on them it’s not as grose it only adds to them… the giraffe.
They are not aggressive at all. We were so close 3 or 4 meters, and they would just stand there 5 or 6 meters high, eating the leaves of the tree or standing in the sun. The big old daddy one was 6 meters tall, his head was in the biggest tree and his brown patches were faded obviously through time. He truly looked like a huge old dinosaur. Once in a while, they would turn their long neck and look directly at me, I swear I made eye contact, then I would stare away because I got the heebie geebie’s. Then the giraffe would ever so casually, without a care in the world, walk away and leave me pondering its existence. They move so slow and with such confident elegance. They are safe in this world, in this part of Africa; they are free to roam with their mates and their babies. They only have to put up with these ant-like human figures that come to stare at them and take pictures maybe once a day. But, the giraffes take it all in stride. It’s nice tonight, to think that those giraffes are out there, living their lives… free, as they like! It’s reassuring of something… what exactly? I don’t know.