The perfect after dinner location.
The first was about a group of Japanese tourist. This in itself is not unusual. What made this group different was none of the 14 spoke much English and there was only one translator in the group. On the day of the story the translator was not on Baba’s truck. The game drive was going great and the group was up close and personal with a pride of lions. With the previous days experience with the lions, I knew well just how close, up close and personal was. The camera shutters were clicking away, when from the back of Baba’s truck an elderly male voice asked in very broken English if he could go see now. Baba thought he was referring to being unable to see the lions clearly so he moved the truck slightly and told the gentlemen he should be able to see now. Problem was the elder gentlemen was not asking to “see”, he was asking to “pee”. When he received the ok from Baba, he climbed out of the truck and proceeded to relieve himself in the middle of a pride of lions. Baba did not see him climb out of the truck, but he did notice the whole pride of lions become instantly on the alert and start moving around like crazy. Only when he turns around to check on his passengers does he notice the gentlemen outside of the truck completely oblivious to the danger he was in. Baba does his best to tell the guest to get his a_ _ back in the truck before one of the lions takes a bite out of it. Since the guest speaks little to no English and Baba speaks no Japanese, you can imagine the difficulty. Eventually Baba relates the need to be in the truck and the gentleman makes his way back into the truck no worse for wear and still painfully ignorant of the danger he just escaped. The rest of the day goes as planned and the whole group leaves the next morning. The next two days were uneventful until Baba is called into the manager’s office for a discussion about the Japanese group. Baba figures he is about to be fired as he made his way to the office. Sure enough, the boss had received a call from the Japanese group concerning the elderly gentlemen. The call was to make the manager aware of the situation and to relay a message to Baba. The message was not what Baba expected. The message the manager received was “Baba was the best guide ever and if and when the gentlemen came back to camp he wanted Baba to be his driver because he spoke perfect Japanese and took very good care of the whole group”. Needless to say, Baba kept his mouth shut and grinned rather broadly as he left the office to go back to work.
