Love at First Night

After a tranquil afternoon of our first day in Harar, Ethiopia we went for a night walk in the clean and peaceful main street. It was a feeling that I never experienced before, the weather was perfect with a light breeze, lights were everywhere, the music coming from a big speaker by the side walk were just perfect, the company around was wonderful, love and harmony were truly in the air or as I put it at that very moment; it was love at first night.
Our most anticipated adventure that tested our adrenaline was feeding the Jegol pets, the hyenas. They are given names which they respond to. The master would sit with his bucket full of treats and sticks and calls them, whistles, makes some bizarre sounds and there come the hyenas limping, somehow startled with the presence of strangers eager for the show, frightened or tempted to scream and run away, some confident and sitting next to the master as if he will protect them if the beastly side of the hyena kicks in. With our urban instinct getting the best of us, we were too nervous to get near them and stretch our hands to feed. But then again, we rode solid eight hours from Addis for this, to quench our adventure thirst. So we breathed in and dived in the pool of hyenas that were circling around the master. We squatted next to him, took the stick and put the meat as he does, and stretched our hands. One hyena started to walk to us sniffing and trying to adjust his site as if he was going to jump on his prey, we sat there nervously waiting for him to snatch his food from one of us. We kept waiting, not moving a muscle thinking of the consequence if we scare it. It came closer, only few steps away until one young rebellious hyena came running and chased it away. It is needless to say how much adrenaline we produced with that split of second but it felt great! Half of our group was dispersed away from the circle and stood little further to escape in case the angry hyena goes for us next. But it was only angry at his friends for some unknown reason. It did not even bother to glance to us but he just kept chasing his friends away. The more it kept scaring them, the more aggressive they became around each other and it was best for us to leave then. We thanked the master, shoved a good tip and left.
“Naughty!” we all thought of the angry hyena for it ruined our adventure but it was impossible to cease our smile on our face as we walked away teasing each other for being a chicken.