My face grows hot with embarrassment, and it takes everything in me not to kick his ass in front of the tourists. After everything we’ve been through, how dare he mock me like that?
“Yes, I see that, mmhmm,” a tourist observes.
Quickly leaving the enclosure behind, I swing around as soon as we are out of earshot. “What the hell was that?”
The Drill Sergeant slides into the truck, shaking his head.
I am seething. “You made me look stupid!”
“You were being stupid,” he said, his voice rising. “You know you can’t let your guard down for a second with wildlife, especially cats. You could have lost your hand in there. Tourists see you do that, and what happens? They follow your lead. When we make stupid mistakes it’s the animals that suffer. They get blamed for our stupidity when they do what comes naturally to them.”
“Well you didn’t have to embarrass me!”
“I merely stated the truth. This is not a petting zoo, nor is it a circus. You were giving those tourists the wrong impression about wildlife. They don’t have the one-on-one training you’ve had.”
What he says is true, but his delivery stinks. I’m more embarrassed at making such stupid mistakes this far in than I am angry with him. But there’s no time to dwell on it. I have to lick my wounds and get moving, since the sun will be setting soon, and there’s still much to do.
We head out on the reserve to find Inyanga. The roaming cheetahs wear electric collars, and we have antenna to track them, but that doesn’t guarantee they’ll be found quickly. We have spent many a day tracking in the past only to come up with nothing.
We arrive at the spot where the cheetahs were seen earlier this morning. The Drill Sergeant climbs up onto Harrison’s hood, holding the large tracking antenna in one hand and the radio in the other, turning in circles trying to pick up a signal, but no luck. He jumps down onto the ground and tries again, but there’s only static on the radio, no beeps. He huffs and throws the antenna into the back of the truck.
Tracking a cheetah is the final task at the reserve, an easy send off after three weeks of physically and mentally grueling work. I use to think the crappiest experience was cleaning out the elephant stables every day, but over time that job proved beneficial in clearing out my own crap. Had it not been for those monstrous balls of dung and the Drill Sergeant leaving me to do the work alone, it could have taken me a lifetime to uncover and eliminate my demons.
The crappy chore had caused an internal shakedown, a fundamental butt-kicking of old habits. For most of my thinking life, my mind had the habit of filling itself with non-serving thoughts and beliefs. Bits of random useless data were able to run freely, completely occupying my consciousness, and my autopilot brain just took them as reality, never questioning, never blocking, just blindly accepting them as is. But in the last few weeks, every morning, at the crack of dawn, I was forced to spend time one-on-one with my thoughts, catching and deciphering this useless data. It was like an internal fridge clean, and I found myself picking up items and thinking, What the hell am I holding on to that for?
The human mind is much bigger than a fridge, or elephant stable, for that matter. It is easy to keep stuffing it with stinky, smelly, useless beliefs that don’t leave any space for anything of real value, like compassion, openness, courage, understanding, and the highly sought after delicacies of acceptance and forgiveness of oneself.
I probably never would have done this mental cleanup had I not come to volunteer in Africa. The stable cleaning required all my physical attention, but none of my cognitive skills. All I had to do was shovel and toss. I couldn’t distract myself with the phone, TV, email, traffic, or even the ultimate mind-numbing distraction of the 20th Century: Spider Solitaire. My mind was left completely undistracted from its own senseless ramblings, and as much as I tried to avoid it, it was eventually forced to confront itself, for there was nothing else.
During this resistance, things that had previously held a permanent position in my consciousness (like the mysterious contents of the Chinese take-out box) were slowly eradicated, one heavy shovel load at a time. And I do mean heavy.
One of the first to go was the fixation of my physical appearance, particularly my butt, and whether it was expanding in all the wrong directions. I literally kicked that obsession in the butt and out of my mind for good. If it is expanding, so what; it will give me something softer to land on the next time I hit a bump in the road. If people want to stare at it, point and laugh—which I don’t think has ever actually happened—then let them.
The precious real estate in my mind can no longer be wasted housing a ghetto of self-deprecating thoughts. Those thoughts have been evicted, and that space is now on the market, but only for seriously committed thoughts, thoughts that will enhance the neighborhood, not pollute it.
Other beliefs were hard to remove. I questioned if they were really meant to go, or if I should hold on to them just in case I needed them one day—like the expired bottles of rare condiments that take up all the door shelf space but serve no logical purpose. These beliefs were rooted deeply in a place that was kept dark, making them hard to find, and even harder to excavate. These beliefs kept me in my comfort zone of safe and predictable routines, and even more predictable outcomes. They had to go. Those stubborn beliefs were the ones that, once gone, left me feeling lighter and relieved to have that valuable space back for something useful like all the good times I had with my family, or these new memories of Africa, where no outcome is predictable and I’m so far away from the boundaries of my comfort zone that I can’t even see it with a telescope.
Some were old skeletons that had been mummified by complicated clutter, being hoarded only to serve as a reminder of mistakes from the past. It felt awesome to kick the crap out of those skeletons.
Then, there were the cleverly disguised false truths that were so entwined in stubborn habits that it made them nearly impossible to throw out. Those were the ones that required me to roll up my sleeves and give it my all. I use to complain about what I didn’t have, thinking I didn’t have enough and that I would just be happy if… Africa has shown me how rich I am and that “things” don’t make me rich.
Then there was the fluff that served no purpose whatsoever other than to feed the false beliefs and fear monsters my mind had spent years creating and housing. Some were there since longer than I can remember, placed there by my earliest influences: parents, siblings, and teachers. The fluff was the easiest of all to remove; in fact, I found myself laughing aloud as I noticed just how ridiculous it was. Like being afraid to swim in a pool alone for fear of being attacked by a shark. Or fear of smiling at a stranger on the street or, heaven forbid, actually complimenting a stranger.
And when everything else had been cleared away, there was just one thing remaining: that mystery Tupperware container hidden deep within, the one that has always been there. The lid tightly sealed, hiding the contents within. Everyone has a mystery Tupperware container. The one we push to the back and block with fancy mustards and olive jars that are rarely used—mere distractions to what’s hiding behind.
Having the courage to remove that Tupperware and exposing the revolting contents within—the parasites, the maggots, the vile moving bacteria that have been able to fester for years—are necessary for a complete cleanse. Because once exposed with all its raw ugliness, it can finally be tossed, flushed, and forgotten for good because who in their right mind would put it back in the fridge? A lot of us do—after all it’s always just “been there” and the shelf feels lacking without it.