When you get a chance to travel, please visit Kenya- located in the east of Africa with breath taking scenery and nature. Specifically, Tsavo National Park tops the charts as a safari destination if you want to look at lions. In the beige and caramel brown savannah lives a lion and lioness whose love for each other is enviable as well as the desire to hunt. For the past ten years they sired cubs every twenty-four months. Currently their youngest cub-Kaka is a joy to watch as he clings to the mother. News of his birth reached rangers who volunteered to give him milk often showing them to tourists like proud grandparents.
On a rainy afternoon when Kaka was four-month-old, he was lured by cubs from other prides to escape from his parents to do play time with the “boys and girls” This particular day play-time led the cubs to the valley. Upon returning, Kaka looked at the sunset with shadows of his parents’ bodies in disbelief. Torn flesh, blood flowing and a swam of houseflies was all he could see. He felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach.
Pain mixed with numbness was met with luck when a Masai warrior looking for pasture for his sheep saw Kaka. “Should I take him or leave him?”, he thought to himself. In the end mercy triumphed, Kaka was taken in by the warrior. He spent his days with the Masai sheep from then onwards.
For the next seventy-two months, Kaka the cub fed on fresh milk, and meat while staying in the confines of the farm house. Kaka grew into an energetic, playful lion without a thought of the world. He played with the sheep like he was one of them. After seventy-two months, Kaka had grown into a lion but acted, sounded and responded like a sheep. He had become a sheep by association.
Thunder doesn’t strike twice but this time it did; One day while the sheep were grazing, the Masai shepherd went off to rest in shade. While there he napped. In this time the sheep wandered to a far place where they were killed by a pride of lions.
One of the devourers noticed someone like them among the carcasses of sheep. He stood with feet shaking, it was Kaka. He had witnessed tragedy before his own eyes. Kaka looked exactly like the lions yet his behavior and attitude were contrary to who he was; he ate grass and generally behaved like sheep.
When the King of the pride noticed what the rest of the lions had seen, he held Kaka by the head, led him to a nearby stream making sure that Kaka could see himself;
“What do you see?” the lion asked Kaka.
For the first time Kaka realized his true identity and saw his kind. From then onwards he followed the pride and did as they did, learnt the way of the jungle and lived as a lion.
Moral of the story: “Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.”
