Trip Of A Lifetime ••••••• Ann Clough, City of Yankton’s Deputy Finance Officer, has had a dream of going to Africa since she was young. The dream all started with the movie Born Free. The movie is about a real-life couple, Joy and George Adamson, who raise a lion cub and then release it back into the wilderness of Kenya. The T.V. show, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom also furthered the dream. But the thing sealed the deal for Ann was the 1985 movie Out of Africa. Out of Africa is a movie about Karen Blixen and her time in Africa. The movie is based on a novel of the same name by Isak Dinesen, which is actually a pseudonym for Karen Blixen. This book has also become Ann’s favorite book. The movie’s portrayal of Africa made Ann fall in love. “I fell in love with the scenery.” After this, Ann knew that someday she had to go to Africa to experience it all in person. “I wasn’t sure of the who, what, or how but I wanted to go.” It took almost 30 years from that moment, but finally Ann was able to live her dream. In June of 2013 Ann was making a deposit at First Dakota when she saw a flyer in the window for an upcoming trip to Africa; Kenya and Tanzania to be exact. The trip was being put together by Jane Pugh, someone Ann trusted and knew. “It’d be the dream trip of a lifetime.” Seeing this flyer, Ann knew this was a sign that this was her opportunity to live her dream and she jumped at the chance. In February of 2014, Ann lived out her lifelong dream and went on her first trip to Kenya and Tanzania. The trip consisted of national parks, game reserves, but they also visited places to help them submerge into the culture. Ann was immediately hooked. At the time Ann truly believed it was only going to be a one time trip but it was so magical and she loved it so much that as soon as they left she knew she had to go back. Jane Pugh started putting together another trip for 2016 and Ann decided she had to join this trip. Her second trip was to Kenya and Rwanda. On her first trip they had met a guide named “Batsi” and he had told them all about his home country of Rwanda. They were eager to see it and told him that he should plan a trip to see his country and the gorillas in Rwanda. He planned the trip through sites in Kenya and then into Rwanda, which made Ann’s second trip. Batsi took them to the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, and among the many things they did was visit a memorial for the Tutsi Genocide. In 1994 almost a million Tutsi people were killed within 100 days. Almost every community has a memorial as almost every person, every family, was affected by the genocide. Ann likens the memorial to something similar to the Holocaust memorial in D.C. “It was a powerful experience.” Ann’s third trip will be in 2018 and the itinerary will be more like her first trip as they will be visiting Kenya and Tanzania again. The trips vary between 14-18 days and it takes almost 2 days to get there. They leave on Thursday morning, flying out of Sioux Falls where they head to Minneapolis. From there they fly to Amsterdam for a 4 hour layover. And then it’s a straight flight to Nairobi, Kenya where they arrive on Friday night. Ann loves the undisturbed feeling of the parks, saying it gives that feeling of before mankind. When they are out in the parks they rarely see other safari vehicles and often times it feels like they are the only ones out there.