Thursday, December 13, 2007

A Hair's Breadth Away...

By Anonymous...

One by one we dropped like flies. My family and I were on safari in Botswana, and had all picked up a local stomach flu. My two cousins and I, sharing a tent together, were the first to go. It was a harrowing night filled with intense and repeated cycles of vomiting and diarrhea. Hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor and unable to sleep through the nausea, I began to realize that death was not an impossibility. Meanwhile, even though we had been strictly forbidden to leave our tents at night, my family braved the lions, elephants and hyenas (all very much audibly present out there in the bush) to sit with us and refill our water bottles.

Fortunately we all survived the experience. The gift was a potent reminder me that though surrounded by creature comforts and the illusion of invincibility, everything can come crashing down in an instant. A sudden car wreck, a cancer diagnosis, or an economic disaster...and suddenly you're out (metaphorically speaking) in the African desert, exposed to the toughest of what nature can hurl at you.

Another gift that I treasure from the experience is the knowledge that even though life can seem mundane and even trifling on occasion, there are people in my life who would risk life and limb to be with me in desperate times.

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