The beauty of creation

On Saturday, I spent the afternoon at the Nairobi Safari Walk. The Safari Walk, which is adjacent to the Nairobi National Park, has a raised wooden boardwalk trial that allows you to walk around and see animals in a fairy open environment. The animals – such as lions, rhinos, zebras, hippos, crocodiles, ostriches and monkeys – are in fenced-enclosed areas, but the enclosures are fairly large and the animals are free to roam around in their respective natural habitats. The Safari Walk park spans about 27 acres of wilderness, so the animals are fairly, although granted not completely, free.  In addition, there are plenty of baboons that roam around in the park and will come right up to get you! While walking along the boardwalk (and occasionally sneaking in a little closer), I was able to experience the wildlife at close quarters – much closer than I would have ever imagined. I’ve been to a number of zoos in my life, including the San Diego zoo multiple times, but I have never quite experienced anything like this.

The Nairobi National Park is touted as being the only national park within the boundaries of a capital city. What a blessing to have a park like this so accessible within a city of well over 3 million residents. The park and the Safari walk are about a 35 minute walk from Consolata, where I am living while studying here in Nairobi. Some of the other students were heading into the city center to shop, but as I really wanted to see the park and am running out of time in which to do so while living right next door at the school, I decided to just go on my own. I am so glad I did. It would have been nice to have gone with others, but a tour guide, who is actually one of the animal caretakers, walked me around the park. He was awesome and really made the whole experience so special for me as I got to talk with him while he shared lots of information and ensured that I had the best view of everything – including venturing off the boardwalk and up really close to some of the animals!

I had such a good time at the park that I know feel a little bad about how I got in. The Safari Walk, like all the national parks in Kenya, has much different admission prices for residents of Kenya vs. non-residents. Case in point, the admission to the Safari Walk is the equivalent of about $35 for non-residents adults (about equivalent to what it would cost if a park like this existed in the US) and only $3 for residents (dirt cheap). I am currently in Kenya on a tourist visa and have applied for a work permit. However, things can take a long time here, so it might be a while before I actually have my approved work permit in hand. I was previously told that if I show a copy of my work permit application at the national parks, I would only have to pay the resident rate. However, when I got to the park, they told me at the ticket counter that just the application was not good enough to get the resident rate. As I was pleading my case with one of the ticket agents, a park official came up to me and joined in the discussion. In addition to showing him my work permit application and telling him that I was  previously told that I could get the resident rate with just the application, I also went on to tell him that I was a poor missionary (OK, at least true for my current state in life. I had to rationalize things somehow.) who will be living and working in Kenya for at least the next four years and that I would soon be moving to Mombasa, where I will not have easy access to the park. After a few moments, he told me that he would make a one time exception for me and as long as I promised not to use the ticket to also get into the National Park itself on a resident rate, to which I readily agreed. As the purchase of most goods and services Kenya involve bartering, a lot different than in the US, this was my first real victory since being here. Had I known how good a time I was going to have, I would have gladly paid the non-resident rate.  When I had looked at some of the reviews for the Safari Walk online, a number of people complained about the higher cost for non-residents and the fact that at times, a lot of the animals were not out and so not able to be seen. I did not find that the case at all and, in fact, if certain animals were not out, my guide would make sure that they came out to see me. Case in point, when we got the the area where the hyenas are, they were sleeping under a tree that was a ways away from the viewing area on the boardwalk. My tour guide told me not to worry and proceeded to  enter into the area where the hyenas live, grabbed a branch, and proceeded to use the branch to walk up the hyenas so that they would walk around and give me a chance to see them at a much closer distance. How is that for customer service?

I not only got a chance to walk along the boardwalk with the tour guide, but a number of times he took me up even closer the the animals. First, he had me go up to the monkeys and hand them something to eat. There are signs all over the place to not feed the animals, but hey, he is the caretaker who feeds them every day. Later on, we went inside the outer gate enclosing the environment where the lions live, and right up to the inner fence, which was the only thing separating us from the lions. As you can see in the pictures, the lions were right up against the fence and we went over to where they were lying down. He then somehow got me to sit against the fence and then to reach through the fence and touch the lions paw, which he did beforehand to show me, and I did for just a brief moment. I think because I was afraid to just leave my hand there and so touched the lion with more of a jerky motion, the lion growled a little. He told me not to be afraid and that I could touch him longer. At that point, I drew the line and told him that I would like to leave the park with all my fingers still attached. My guide was also able to get these awesome pictures through the hole in the fence using my cell phone camera. All these pictures were taken with my cell phone. No telephoto lens was used. My other up close and personal encounter was with a crocodile as my guide again took me off the boardwalk and up to the fence enclosing the reptile, where he had me reach through the fence and touch the crocodile’s body.

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I’m not sure if touching the animals was the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but after watching and listening to my guide, I had total confidence in what he was telling me, and in retrospect, I’m glad I went through with it. Thanks be to God I still have all my fingers intact! It is interesting how much more relaxed things are here. Could you ever imagine a zoo in the US allowing you to go right up to cage, let alone putting your hand through it to touch an animal. At home, just straying off the boardwalk would have gotten me thrown out of the park. Again, in my own defense, I only did what the guide asked me to do.

After the tour guide finished the tour, which took about 45 minutes, I was so taken by what I had seen that I decided to do the entire walk all over again. This time I did the walk on my own, staying only on the boardwalk, but going more slowly and taking even more pictures. All in all, I ended up spending about three hours at the park.

The beauty and wonder of the wildlife at the Safari Walk get me thinking about creation. It also so happened that a few of the Catholic online publications that I read also recently had some articles touching upon this topic, which only added to my thinking even more about it. I tend to think of creation in terms of its role in God’s unfolding plan and our responsibilities as stewards of this gift, which has been freely given to us. As I believe as a Catholic that God is being itself, I believe that creation, or you may also say the universe, unfolds in God as nothing exists apart from God. As the Prologue to John’s Gospel tells us, all things came to be through the Word, and without him nothing came to be. I see creation as the canvas on which the story of how God invites us to share in His life and how we respond to that invitation unfolds. Creation is a gift freely given by God as God is love itself and love can do nothing other than give of itself. So, God created the universe out of nothing as an expression of that love and as a manner in which to share it. Genesis tells us that God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. I’m not going to even attempt to tackle the question of evil here, but will only make the statement that the nature of love is that it can not be forced, it must be both freely given and freely received. Thus, creation is marked by freedom, not necessity, as God did not need to create, but we are blessed that He willed to do so.

However, creation was not complete without man in it and so man is not separate from creation, but part of it. How awesome that with man in creation, creation can seek to understand itself and ponder its own meaning. Man can wonder at the beauty of the universe and how everything fits together.  We also see that the world was not made complete from the beginning, but rather is in a state of journeying. That is, creation is an ongoing process. The Catechism tell us that creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created ‘in a state of journeying’  towards an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. As St. Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians, “so that God may be all in all.” So man, together with creation, are on this journey together.

I say all of this as a preamble to my reflections on my rereading and thinking about some of Pope Francis’ teaching on creation that my trip to the Safari walk inspired. Pope Francis tells us that there is a mystical meaning to be found in things, such as a leaf, in a mountain trail, or in a dewdrop, as well as, in a poor person’s face. We are called to not only discover the action of God in our soul, but also to discover God in all things. He says that our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us overlook the fact that each creature has its own purpose. None is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God. Pope Francis also warns against viewing different species merely as potential resources to be exploited, while overlooking the fact that they have value in themselves. That is, in God’s loving plan, every creature has its own value and significance.

Who would have thought that a trip to the zoo would be so transformative! God is good.