The elephants march on

I used to think I knew the best place to find peace for my mind. It’s a place in France, a farm tucked away in the most northern parts of the Provence. I have been going to that farm since my parents bought it with two friends when I was six. I have been there as a child, as a student and as a father and over the years I have learned that whatever pressures I bring to this decades-old family hideaway just melt away on the ancient hills. A friend once wrote a poem about the place referring to the power of the ‘mountains that would always be there.' Indeed there is relief in finding things in the same place and order year after year. Somehow the rapid changes of modern life pass by this farm and its surrounding hills. When I sit in a chair gazing into the horizon that stretches 50 kilometers and beyond, I know that as much as change is good and necessary, there is a deep value as well in things staying as they are.

Much to my surprise I recently found an experience that seems to bring my mind even more at ease than our annual retreat to the Provence. I had been to a conference in Arusha, Tanzania. It had been an exciting experience being together for four full days with an enlightened group of people from all over the world who shared a passion for Africa. We heard stories of promise and hope that put shades on the usual news of despair about the continent. Africa is much more than disease and poverty, which the media only seem to report about, it turned out. We left inspired and energized with a bag full of uplifting African stories for Ode. And yet such conferences are exhausting as well. We spent late evenings meeting and talking with new friends, only to get up early again to listen to the morning’s first speaker.

After the conference, ‘the love of my life’ Helene and I had planned for two more days together. We were not much enjoying the idea of spending the better part of these days traveling in a car to see some of the amazing wildlife of Africa. So we were happy to find a lodge just inside one of the smaller parks just two hours driving from the venue of our conference. The lodge was beautifully located on a ridge above a river. When we arrived in the evening we enjoyed the view so much that we decided to cancel our earlier plans for game drives the next day. We would just sit on the deck of the lodge and enjoy the view over Africa’s plains, come what may, wildlife or not.

The next day we had an unforgettable experience. While we were sitting on our deck, the giant animals of Africa were passing by just 100 or 200 meters below us. Elephants, giraffe, zebra, impala, baboons, buffalo and other wild animals walked by in all their undisturbed splendour. Halfway the day I took a deep breath and I felt what these animals were bringing to me. I had been on safaris before but this time I realized that these wild animals were passing by as they had been passing the same place for centuries, even milliennia and longer. They brought the peace of ‘no change’ even more deeply than the mountains of the Provence. The animals move and yet their lives don’t. Somehow that experience brought a deep sense of relief. While we are changing the world – for the better, of course – they just continue their lives as they have been forever. The Chinese would probably speak about the need for a balance between yin and yang. Just after a day in Africa’s age-old nature we went home refreshed and energized, knowing that – whatever we do – the elephants march on.