We’re getting to the end of the Uganda Special for photography – I believe this may be the penultimate of my favourite photos from the trip.
Once we had finished our community project, we trundled (through bumpy landscape and barely-there roads) into the Queen Elizabeth National Park after about a three-hour journey. However, we were granted no such rest after the travel, for, that afternoon, we ventured onto safari across the grasslands of the Park.
Whilst we would also go on to get up at 5am for Gorilla trekking in a forest (I have no clean photos from this adventure, as the Gorillas were too high up for my camera to properly capture), and 6.30 for two more treks, the above picture is one of the first I took, from that first safari.
Kobs are beautiful creatures, like deer. Lithe and sprightly, they tend to move in packs, like any herbivore – except for those who have lost place as alpha males, aptly known as ‘losers’*, so our guide said. Perhaps oddly, what I find most fascinating about these animals are their ears, the ways these organs flap back and forth in picking up every soundwave from every direction.
Watching these gentle creatures made for hard photography, as they were clearly unsettled by our truck, but I caught this male as he turned and surveyed the grassland for somewhere to run.
I love nature.
*This is also apt as Walster‘s theory of relationship maintenance works on equity – if a relationship is inequitable, a ‘loser’ is created out of the couple.
Alexandrina Brant 