CAMPING in Comfort

I “camped” in Psalm 91 throughout my entire trip to Africa.

 

A psalm of comfort treasured by those who are prone to fear, I read it, memorized it, and spoke it aloud in the days before our trip began. But I had no idea how God would use each promise in that passage and apply it directly to my experiences there.

 

It was, in fact, the literal camping that I was most worried about. For years I had been telling myself that sometime I wanted to go tent camping again, and apparently God heard me and was going to grant my request. But what I pictured in the comfort of my living room in Ohio didn’t necessarily transfer easily into the African wilderness. The travel information about the sleeping arrangements in the literature I read beforehand was a little vague on the subject. While I knew we would stay each night in a base camp, I had no idea what this would look like, and so had difficulty picturing myself there. Would we be in a compound of some kind, or in tents out in the open, and if the latter, what would be supplied for our nighttime rest – sleeping bags? Cots? It is the fear of the unknown that most works on our minds and makes us uneasy. I was a little nervous, to say the least.

 

I needn’t have been, of course. God had me covered… literally, in a canvas tent which I shared with my son, identical to all the others in the open-air campground in which groups of people from all over the world rested after each incredible day of sightseeing and adventure. Tent-camping was never easier, as the safari crew set up, dismantled and moved our tents for us each day as we moved from one place to another. The cots made sleeping comfortable, bedding was supplied and applied. Likewise there was an incredible meal waiting for us in the mess tent once we had deposited our day packs at our assigned sleeping locations. The only worry left was of course that there were no fences to keep the wild animals away… we were trespassers, our tents crowded together in their land in which they roamed freely, with no restrictions. Our guide warned us to pull our boots into our tents with us at night, as the hyenas would steal them otherwise, and said with a smile that if we heard a loud “huff” on the other side of the tent canvas, that would likely be a lion. Was he joking? I wasn’t about to take a chance and vowed not to unzip my tent opening from bedtime till morning light (advice I was given at the travel clinic I visited before I left), regardless of how my bladder might beg for relief in the middle of the night!

 

I loved hearing the sounds of the camps at nightfall, as each of the various groups found their way to their tents after dinner and discussed the day briefly with each other before settling in to sleep. The noise was loud but a dull roar, so many voices and languages together that it was impossible to distinguish one from another. Like an African lullaby, it lulled me to sleep as everybody gradually bedded down for the night.

 

I was never cold; others in our group weren’t so lucky. One young woman woke up shivering in the night and realized she hadn’t pulled the window covering down on her tent before reclining the night before, deciding to go out and loosen the straps in an effort to keep the night air from coming in. Bravely she stepped out to accomplish the task, and told us later of looking straight into a pair of eyes glowing back at her! She jumped back inside in a hurry, but the group consensus in the morning was that it was likely just a water buffalo, as some had been seen grazing around the camp the night before. They actually act as guardians that tend to keep the lions at bay we were told, thus a friend rather than a foe.

 

Amazingly I slept well each night, and loved rising early to see the morning light hit the canvas huts as it rose, as we did the same and prepared to enjoy another incredible day.

 

“You will not fear the terror of night… no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent.”

(Psalm 91:5, 10 NIV)