Day 7, The Moment of Truth

March 17, 2009, Tuesday

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, but you wouldn’t know it in the bush. It’s just another day. The early wake-up call came so early after such a long day before. The good news, you can always go out later than intended or not at all. That is pointless for us, since every moment is an opportunity! We eventually climbed into the truck around 7:00 am. There wasn’t much going on this morning. Some lionesses were rolling around with their cubs in the grasses.  Others were playing a little game of ‘keep away’ with a bit of skin from the previous night kill with a group of hungry black-backed jackals. We watched the game for a while and laughed at all the jackals’ strategy. The lionesses won, naturally.
The giraffes were nibbling the sweetest leaves at the tops of the acacia trees, and out on the plain was a group of fairy feathered ostriches courting in a whirling dervish. The jumping and swirling were very entertaining. We stopped for our morning bloody mary’s. Nicole still wasn’t feeling good, but she went anyway. We finished up and made our way back to Sasaskwa Lodge. We got the news on arrival that our bags had been dropped off at the main airstrip in the Serengeti Park. This is a long trip of 3 and one-half hours one way, so a truck had been sent for the bags immediately when the radio call came to the lodge. At least we would have our bags that afternoon. Steve and Nicole were glad to know they would have fresh clothes! We went directly to breakfast under a open patio area overlooking the expanse of the great Serengeti Plain. Eggs in Africa are THE MORNING MENU.  You can order sausages, bacon, pancakes, French Toast, cereal, yogurt, fruit, anything any full line top restaurant will serve for breakfast. You can have steak and eggs! Do not pig out on breakfast, because lunch is fast on its heels. Be careful about what you order that is different. Have the chef come out and talk to you. Maybe or maybe not, your request will probably miss the translation and not come out looking anything like you expected. They try really hard, but it is not American food. We returned to our cottage. Nicole went to bed, Steve had a beer and a nap on the veranda, and I had a shower. Everyone gets to do their own thing. I had a little more time to check out this fantastic lodging. This place had made it to the top of my list for the ultimate African experience in real homes. Rested, relaxed, and scrubbed, we walked down to the lodge for lunch, and more food. One thing for sure, no one misses any meals here unless they are on their death bed! During lunch, we received news that our bags had arrived and were in our rooms. The rejoicing did not last long.

After lunch, we headed back to our lodge to inspect our lost bags. The first thing I did was to cut the pink zip tie off Steve’s roll along. The tie was pink and all things looked normal. Zipping open his bag, I found that the Canon 5D Mark II was missing from the camera bag. The other items missing were:
Canon 5D Mark II- value $3,000
Sigma lens 80-400, 77mm-$1,500
Filters, Skylight and polarizers for Sigma-$500
Canon macro lens-100mm, (58mm), $100
Tamron 28-300 lense-$1,000
Tamron filters-$500
2 iPodsand cords, 8gb-$1000
8 gb card for the 5D-$100
battery-$100
Canon 1.4 teleconverter-$300

I discovered this and went into shock. I shouted for Steve to tell him the bad news. I had known this was going to be bad, but not this bad. Interestingly, the search and theft was carried out with time and great care. How did I figure this out? The roll along contents were not dumped out and shoved back in a mess. The thief was probably a woman, going through everything carefully as to not move the leftovers from their spot. The items missing were on a specific list, as Steve’s Bose headphones were still there. It takes time for reality and loss set in for me. I think about it for a time until it penetrates my soul. Having your valuable equipment stolen is such an invasion that the thief only thinks of themselves first. We are all losers. I hate to think our equipment was stolen so a family could eat. What made this hurt more was I bought Steve the camera for a Christmas present with the only small money inheritance from my mother who died from breast cancer. My mom was gone along with the camera. Such a loss. My strength lies in the recovery from this ordeal. Steve and I became on edge and did a small amount of adjusting by backbiting. We love each other very much, and strive to take responsibility for our actions. I work with as much equipment as I can handle and carry. At barely 5′2″ and 120 lbs., camera equipment can overpower me. The thieves left my roll along alone with the new Canon Mark III D inside. Losing that would have put me into psychiatric therapy and credit card counseling. In life, you take your punches, but I was about out and down.

One thing for sure, at least everyone had a camera and lenses on use, so the trip had not been completely destroyed. After morning drive and the discovery, we went to our camp manager at Sasaskwa, Susan, to get us in touch with Kenya and Precision Airlines about the theft.

I went on with my usual business of downloading the cards from everyone to get myself centered. Work is good, because you can totally focus on business, and hopefully, not outside problems.

We tried to decompress from our discovery before the afternoon drive. The thunderclouds again developed over the great Serengeti for a huge downpour over our truck. We talked with Toti about his family. We had dinner on the outside patio with hot waterbottles in our laps. The wine was great. I fell into the featherbed bed gathering the information from the day knowing I would never see the stolen equipment again. I cried.

Tags: Canon Cameras, Kenya Airlines, lost equipment, Precision Airways, Sasaskwa Lodge, Tanzania