I suppose some kids learn to drive in an empty Wal Mart parking lot, trying to avoid stray shopping carts and maneuvering around reserved parking signs and construction cones. My experience was different.**
The Nairobi Game Park is located on the outskirts of Nairobi, in the shadow of one of the fastest growing cities in Africa. We could pay an entry fee and leave the smog and noise of the city for a few hours of driving along dirt roads and no fences. We often spotted tourists. If we were lucky, we’d also see animals. It was a good place to practice driving because there were long stretches of relatively smooth road surrounded by the tall grass of the savannah. The skyscrapers lined the horizon behind the sprawling cardboard city of the surrounding slums.
One morning when I was about 15, my dad and I ventured out to the game park for an early morning driving lesson. I was finally old enough. My older brothers had done this before me. Now it was my turn. We drove our small blue Peugeot with rusted floor boards and dust-covered windows through the big metal entrance gates, waved at the guards and the park rangers sitting on plastic chairs around open campfires warming up their morning chai. When we turned off the pavement onto the dirt, my dad pulled the car over. “Okay,” he said, “it’s your turn.”
Hesitating, I sat for a minute looking out the window at the field of grass on all sides. I’m not sure I’m ready for this. My dad came over to my side of the car and opened it. “Come on,” he said again. “It’s your turn.”
Our car didn’t have any seatbelts, so the driving checklist included checking mirrors, locating the clutch and differentiating it from the brake, and doing a practice run through all the gears.
“Start in first,” my dad’s quiet voice guided me. “Check your mirrors. Push the gas in as you release the clutch.”
I’m sure I stalled a few times as I searched for the right balance between pressure and release. But isn’t that often how it goes? Eventually I felt the car start moving forward and my heartbeat slowed down to normal.
“Look up. Keep your eyes on the road,” my dad’s voice drew my attention as I tried to shift from 1st to 2nd gear. I sensed before I saw two shapes in the periphery of my vision. Two female lions were meandering alongside our car, one on each side, curious about this morning driving lesson.
“What do I do?” I asked my dad.
“Keep going,” he said. “Just keep going.”
Holding a steady pressure on the gas pedal—or trying to, anyway—I kept my focus on the road. But I could sense the lions on either side of the car, keeping up with me. If I sped up, they sped up. If I slowed down, they slowed down. It was like they were reminding me that I was in their space, but they were encouraging me on in my learning.
After a time, the two lions sauntered off, and I had the road to myself again. I slowed down going into a curve and sped up coming out of it. My dad grunted and grabbed at the handle above the window as I hit a pothole a bit too fast, and the car growled in frustration when I didn’t slow down enough before changing gears. Before long I heard my dad again. “Look. Up there.” A ways down a smooth patch of paved road, a giraffe was standing in the center of my windshield. Tall. Still. Uninterested in me and my desire to finally speed up enough to shift from 2nd to 3rd gear.
As I got closer to the giraffe, I let my foot off the gas and the car tripped a few times as I shifted down to 1st too soon again. The giraffe looked at me, more gracious than my brothers who would definitely have teased me for almost stalling. For a minute that felt like longer I stared at the giraffe, standing in the middle of the road with the city skyline behind it. It stared back.
I don’t remember much more of that driving lesson. But I remember looking up and seeing the lions walking beside me. I remember the giraffe standing silently in front of me. And I remember the heartwrenching beauty of the sunlight breaking through the skyline, shining on the devastating poverty of the slums and casting a shadow that connected the city to the vast grassland. And there I was, part of it—learning to drive with the lions and the giraffe as my witnesses.
**this story was initially written in response to a prompt from instructors in a class on Theology & the Climate.