Looking Back

Eight Years Ago in South Africa

My journal reminded me of a magical trip that my family and I were able to go on eight years ago.  It reminded me of the trip with a photo of this leopard that we saw towards the end of our trip in Kruger National Park.

I received a sabbatical grant that paid for my family and me to travel to South Africa for a month that summer.  During that trip we went from Cape Town to Kruger with many stops in between.  The core of the trip was learning more about the end of apartheid and the progress of the country since but there was also a lot of other experiences in there including some amazing animal encounters.

This leopard was the only one we saw during any of our game drives and it was only for about 30 seconds when our daughter, who was sitting in the back of the truck, happened to look behind her and saw this leopard walking out of the bush onto the road.  I swung around my rented 600mm ultra zoom lens (which also had a magnifier on it which made it closer to a 750mm lens) and I was able to photograph this beautiful animal almost as if I was right next to him.  It was an incredible moment and I am so grateful for our daughter looking back at that exact moment.

Looking back is a gift.  I love the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures of how a core part of their identity was remembering where they had come from ... “Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the Lord redeemed you from there.”  This phrase is shared time after time in the Hebrew Scriptures.  There’s an echo of it when Jesus shares the Passover meal (where those sharing that table would be remembering that they were slaves in Egypt...) and breaks the bread and shares the cup and tells them to do those things in remembrance of him.

Looking back reminds us of where we have come from, how far we have come, and speaks to where we are going.  When I think back to that trip to South Africa, I remember not only the moments with those amazing animals and the reality of the care that we need to have for all of God’s creation.  But it wasn’t just the animals, but I also remember the stories of our tour guide at Robben Island who was imprisoned with Nelson Mandela and was able to share first person stories including the story of a seemingly simple pile of rocks in a quarry.   I remember the story of Neuwa, a man at the District 6 Museum in Cape Town who shared with my son and me his first-person experience of being forced from his home by the apartheid government who wanted the land decades before.  I remember the owner of a guest house in East London who, after seeing us watching the BBC reporting on the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, asked us “what’s wrong with America?” to which we had no response other than shared heartbreak.  I remember spending a day with World Vision volunteers in Mthatha as they took us to meet a young girl who we were supporting and we were blessed to visit her school, her village, and her family.  I remember the emotional power of the Apartheid Museum in Soweto and feeling the weight of all that was memorialized.  And most of all I remember returning from that trip changed and knowing that there was work that I needed to be a part of here in our country.

So, just sharing some more photos of all of this and remembering.