O P I N I ON
TINY WHITE BOX
By Keith Howard
Today, our big trip flips. This isn’t just pretty deserts or cold coastlines anymore. This is Africa the way every kid imagines it. Wide-eyed, lions-on-the-savanna Africa. And in some freak stroke of genius (luck, really), we’ve saved the best for last. Cake after dinner. Ice cream, maybe even sprinkles.
Five days in Etosha National Park. Big Five territory. Lions, rhinos, elephants, the stuff from picture books and cheesy kids’ cartoons. We’re talking five days of creeping along dirt roads, binoculars glued to our faces, inching past things with claws and tusks like we’re walking the aisle of a zoo but forgetting there’s no glass between us and the teeth. This is living with animals we’ve known since before we could talk. Animals that shaped our earliest dreams.
We’ve been crashing out by 8:30, maybe 9. Old man hours. At home, I sleep 10:30 to 6, like clockwork, with a nap tossed in. Rob, though? Rob’s a different breed. The guy’s sleep schedule is straight from Dracula. Sleeps from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. It’s unsettling. In Namibia, though, the options are simple: sunlight or dark. No phones, no dependable Wi-Fi, no pinging notifications. No late-night anything. Just the rising sun and falling stars.
And when Rob nudged me awake at 10 p.m., my first instinct was fatherly. He’s only a few years older than my daughter, so it clicked. Instantly, I’m 25 years younger. I want to tell him the shadows are just that—shadows. The nightmare’s gone, the monster never real, don’t drink water now unless you want to piss your pants later.
But no. He says, “Zebras.”
I grunt. “Zebras?”
“Yeah. Zebras. Outside the tent.”
I sit up. We’ve got this 4×4, rooftop tent, so I peek out the window. Zebras. Everywhere. Grazing in the dark like it’s no big deal. They’re lawn ornaments, only they move. They chew grass and act like we’re not even here. And Rob and I? We’re back to being kids, eyes wide, marveling at stripey ponies like we’ve never seen Discovery Channel before.
This morning, I woke up before Rob. A little before 5 a.m. Still buzzing, like a kid waiting for Santa. I checked the window. No zebras, but fresh piles of dung. Fist-sized. Maybe zebra poop, but I’ve never been the scat-expert type. Still, I believed. Didn’t need proof. Just a glance last night, that was enough. Sometimes, believing’s just easier.
Rob finally drags himself out of bed. Says he stayed up late, got pictures. Blurry, grainy stuff. Tabloid-level quality. UFOs, Bigfoot. Proof? Sure. Proof of zebras.
But the thing is, I didn’t need his proof. Not really. Because I already believed in the zebras. Proof is just noise. Belief? Belief makes life better.