Yestreday Helen and I asked each other what we hope from this trip. I feel a desire to experience unexpected. Untamed. Unplanned.

You can't plan your own surprise party. It doesn't work to seek the unexpected. So, I am interested in hearing about how surprise happens, that feels authentic.

Authentic surprises are tricky, in general. There's something inauthentic about choosing to climb a mountain in a snowstorm, then portraying oneself as a hero for surviving. I don't really know what kind of story I'm actually talking about here.

Anyway, here's a story that might be related to the theme above.

The Honeymoon Story

Yesterday at our school camping trip, I just met another Josh, who told me about his honeymoon in Botswana Where Shit Went Wrong, a ripping yarn of wasps, hippos, crocs, cranes, elephants, the "myth that holds true" that lions never take people from zipped up tents... but his room had no door... so he just lay there by his fiancee all night, clutching the sheets... a ripping yarn, best told in person. (Ask me if you like, but in the timeless tradition of oral storytellers, I'll get half of it wrong and make up the other half.)

He described Botswana as "the only African country where you aren't required to ride in a jeep with armed guides."

His story made me want to lie in our ecotourist treehouse listening to the mighty jaws of an elephant, six inches from our headboard, rocking the entire tree, raining nuts down on our roof. I want to look down and see crocodiles lurking beneath our feet, balanced on slender poles of our sleeping platform above their swamp.. i want our tiny, macho black local guide, arm withered from a Mambo bite, to peer at me and say, Oh yes, white lady died here last week. Hippo rolled boat. You go?

I go. Africa. Yes. Someday. I go.