18 Wednesday, July 29, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon Commentary... Intimate is the African night By Chris Morin Columnist The young British woman sitting next to me in the dark was on her hon- eymoon and wouldn9t leave me alone. Clutching my arm and groaning, she was abso- lutely ruining the moment. I felt anger rising within and turned to confront her, breaking my absolute focus on the three lionesses begin- ning to probe and test the young adult hippopotamus they9d happened upon in the open. Impala and puku also watched those proceedings 40 yards away. I snapped my head around, looked straight into her eyes, opened my mouth to admonish her and found her eyes looking back into mine, delirious. I hesitated. She opened her mouth, forc- ing out UMPFF! DWAQ! ZHHNN! & ? Her eyes somehow growing ever big- ger, she began frantically pointing to the side, behind us. Swiveling my head in that direction, another of the lionesses from The Pride of Nine sauntered toward us, less than seven feet away, closing the remaining space. Kathleen sat in the middle, her new husband, Tony, to her right, I was on her left in the last row of tiered benches for this open-air safari jeep. It was so