Two Truths, One Lie

(DAY 3: a memory. Or two.)

I’ve ridden a camel.

I’ve ridden a donkey.

I’ve ridden an elephant.

Two Truths, One Lie 

Did anyone else play this game as a kid? You make three statements about yourself -two of them true and one a lie- and the other participants in the game have to guess which one is the lie. I used to have fun playing this with people I didn’t know very well using scenarios like the one above, becos no one ever guessed correctly what I was lying about. 

I’ve Ridden a Camel, Truth 

After living for two years in a central African desert where our thermometers measured into higher 40’s•C, I thought the Sahara would be a breeze. But on a stutter-stepping camel at Giza surrounded by ochre-red sand reflecting the brightest sunlight of all time, I experienced the hottest day of my life. When I was handed a water bottle full of warm water, I felt like desert Pete must have felt stumbling across that proverbial well. The blurry sky above me, bluer than any sky blue, reflected the light until the wavy mirages ahead looked as blue as the sky and the sky looked as wavy as the mirages and everything blurred into everything else and everything looked like everything else. And the stutter-stepping and rudely burping of my majestic desert ship were an oddly soothing lullaby.

 

In retrospect, I think I was almost delirious with heat and thirst and exhaustion and sensory overload. That camel journey feels like a blur of desert and blinding sunlight and lots of Arabic. I distinctly remember straining to focus my eyes when we approached the ancient pyramids and Sphinx and being a little bitter that tourists were not allowed to enter those sacred piles of stone, not even to escape the menacing sunlight. 

When we finally arrived back at the tarp shelter we had started from an hour or five years before, I was a little ashamed of my intolerance and tried to pretend I hadn’t been counting the camel steps back. Our guide, Akhmed, pointed to some devout women from the UAE who were dressed from head to toe in black robes. “They think this is cool,” he said in response to our complaints about the heat. “They came here for a vacation because where they come from it’s really hot.” (And becos I remember this comment and because I  remember being taught in school that the Sahara desert is the hottest desert on earth [teachers!], I did some googling tonight. According to the internet, the Arabian Desert is actually hotter than the Sahara Desert. When you hear my planning my next trip to the Middle East in the middle of summer, remind me to wait until winter.)

Don’t misunderstand me, please. This is not a bad memory. It is actually one of my favourite ones. The strangeness and fogginess of it are what makes it so real to me still. Egypt was my favourite place of all the countries I’ve ever visited (>10 last count. Can’t quite remember exactly.) and I have only the happiest memories of Cairo: welcoming friendly people, a night market with the most delicious spices, my first ever taste of falafel, the many marriage proposals, midnight shawarmas, the most beautiful scarves and dresses for sale in every shop window, luxurious mint lemonade in a strange restaurant.. I still want to move there. I haven’t told my husband that yet. 

I’ve Ridden an Elephant, Truth 

It was under a different African sun that I rode an elephant. That ride happened  a few years before the camel one so it’s not nearly as clear in my mind. The elephant was massive and we had to climb up big wooden stairs to get on its back. It walked really slowly and the elephant skin felt exactly like it looked like it would feel. Maybe if I had known that one day I’d want to write about it I would’ve paid more attention that day. But I didn’t. It was just another day in the life of a missionary kid and the next day we went to Victoria Falls, the end. Oh and once I was chased by a charging wild elephant.  

A note to my Mum. 

Mums, this is written from my perspective as a teenager. If You disagree with any of the details please post a comment with your version. Or just private message me. 😘😘

The Lie 

I never rode a donkey.