Namibian Safari Fable.. By Hadi Eltonsi

By Hadi Eltonsi - Former Ambassador and Medical Doctor

Traveling to the animal kingdom to present credentials to the lion king, I said people bored of hunting and slavery delegated me.They discovered that no peace nor freedom can prevail among them if animals are not included; that we are all but souls even when bodies vary, and that all is one, so no harmony with exclusion.

The king responded that we are alike; we kill to eat or to live, that he may out of fear hurt man for lack of common language. I said words can mislead us or build up barriers, may serve for infighting and cheating. The king taught me transparent non-verbal communication guided by feelings. With royal permit I roamed the territory, bedazzled at plants and trees, more breathtaking than cities innovated by human imagination, each had a meaning and a purpose the feeling can capt, as it reaches out to all, no discrimination nor ignoring. Being a master king, the feeling is yet a learner in the school of life.

It toured the world to absorb human experience, but before leaving the Earth to explore space, it thought of its animal friends of their experiences and life lessons, the common conduct and instincts, whatever variant were the style, environment or perception...

Here is a sort of small deer, who gives up affairs forever if its mate passes away, with loyalty hard to find in mankind, and there is a graceful, charming, cute springbok jumping ten meters wide and three meters high, not racing nor training for a prize...

A leopard runs faster than a speedy car strongly gracefully flexibly decisively erasing our pity for a horrified victim...up tree a bird with a certain call alarming with rare solidarity other near by animals from an approaching wild beast... At a distance a group of giraffes looking the same direction at a tiger two miles away... In the middle of the road stands an angry self-contained elephant, blocking every way, provoking all others, till it finds its mate... A jackal got domesticated by those who feed it...

Birds eluded by a stagnant water surface got panicked by a crocodile... A frog engulfing an insect to be swallowed by a snake... Males and females of animals competing to seduce each others, even breaking up long standing friendships... Sharp big ears capturing noise of subterranean insects to feed a fox surviving in a nature whose only constant are changing seasons,and when it gets dry flocks and herds emigrate without passport, visa or destination...

A group of female elephants guarding together youngsters,another of squirrels, walking, shouting, saving siblings from an eminent danger, reacting quickly, moving fast up and down and everywhere... oryxes play and fight, hitting horns, moving in a group with discipline... Animals like us, searching for food and shelter, playing around, cooperating, competing, fighting and coexisting like us and with us in the same planet, to fill it with harmony through the dialectic of good and evil, created by God, to live within souls, and for creatures to interact, so life, emotions and ideas fill the Earth, building and destroying... All is part of one, a role and a chapter of life...

For more articles by Dr. Hadi Eltonsi press HERE