Okay, here are the three most important things you need to know about why I continue to travel with my Zanzi-buddy Ron Reason, who I met 25 years ago at the Washington Post when we were both greenhorn Midwestern interns with no possible clue that we would both be media consultants working extensively throughout Africa one day.
*Last week during our Lamu Island idyll, one evening we were enjoying a delicious dinner highlighted by grilled red snapper so fresh, it almost still had a pulse. We'd already had yummy fried snapper coated in a delectable coconut batter for our first day's lunch, so I just couldn't help extolling my heartfelt passion for that particular genre of fish.
Ron looks up, stares a few seconds and says, "I didn't realize you were such a snapper whore."
*About the only thing missing from our relaxing, peaceful stay at the Kipungani Explorer lodge was Idris Elba reclining in my hut, ready to rodger me senseless at a moment's notice. I'll admit to being a bit obsessed with Mr. Elba lately, since seeing him in the movie "Sometimes in April" while I was in Rwanda, AND reading about him in the August Essence magazine. Just like for millions of women around the world, at the moment he is now my ideal dream lover.
Well, Ron is clearly no respecter of passionate middle-aged girl crushes. He refused to remember the correct pronunciation of my beloved's name, and wound up referring to him as "Excedrin Elphaba."
*In recent years, Ron has become obsessed with the fact that elephants can swim, after seeing some documentary about the phenomenon. Lately, a major life goal for him would be to photograph a herd of elephants swimming towards a shore, with fez-wearing monkeys astride their backs. If Ron said it once, he said it a dozen times during our vacation. I had to repeatedly threaten to stab him in the eye with a fork if he didn't shut up. But he wouldn't. So I wound up admitting that it WOULD in fact be cool to witness that sight. And if we hadn't run out of the gin and lemongrass and ginger vodka we'd smuggled in empty water bottles, we probably would have seen it eventually.
Other than those three major reasons, Ron is just cool peeps. So we've decided until our respective Divine Right Life Partners show up, we're just gonna keep on exploring the world at every available opportunity. And the best news is that Ron is really cool with the fact that when Excedrin Elphaba shows up to claim my heart, I will drop him from my travel itinerary like a bad transmission.
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