BNI SuccessNet - May/June 2004 - BNI Happenings

Steve and Fran Lawson, Executive Directors in Toronto, and son Dan, recently vacationed in South Africa, where the most exciting thing that happened to them was not their visit to a local BNI chapter. It happened instead at the Kruger National Park, a large and world renowned game reserve, where they experienced, as Steve says, "a day that we will never forget."

Steve tells this story: The area has had three consecutive years of drought, which means that the animals are much more visible. Not only is there less foliage in the bush so you can see them better, but they come out to the water holes more frequently, where you get great sightings.

On previous visits, we have never been very close to the animals, but this year, for some reason, we had animals coming right up to our car the whole day. By the end of the day, we had had four of the "Big Five" game animals (lions, Cape buffalos, elephants, rhinos and leopards) less than 15 feet from our car.

But the highlight of the day was our encounter with the elephants. While driving down one of the gravel roads in the bush, we came across two elephants feeding, only about 20 yards from the car. Naturally we were excited and parked the car, with windows down, to watch and photograph these magnificent animals.

There was only one other car around, and it had stopped in front of us, facing us, to also take photos. Then to our amazement, an entire herd of elephants came out of the bush, and started milling around behind the two feeding elephants. We counted 36 elephants, including five small calves.

One of the feeding elephants then sauntered across the road between the two cars, which was a real thrill to see. It did not seem too interested in us and started feeding on the opposite side.

While totally absorbed in watching the herd, we saw the vehicle in front of us suddenly go into reverse at high speed and back away from us up the road. Thinking they saw something else of interest and moved to check it out, we didn’t think any more about it and continued to watch the herd.

Then all of a sudden, I looked out of the window on my side (the opposite side to the herd we were watching) and all I could see was the end of a large elephant tusk, about 15 inches from my right shoulder. That was when I realized why the other car had backed away from us so quickly. They had seen the large bull elephant of the herd come out of the bush behind us and that it was walking up to our car.

We sat frozen in the car, and I whispered to the others to not move a muscle or make a sound. We thought the elephant would just walk by us as the other one had. But this one was different. He stood next to us and sniffed all over the car with the end of his massive trunk.

Then he stuck his trunk into the window and waved it around about 4 inches in front of my face. For about a minute (which seemed like an hour!) I could not take my eyes off the hairs on the end of the trunk waving back and forth as he breathed in and out and sniffed the air in the car. We could hear every breath he took, and I was absolutely convinced he could smell the Kentucky Fried Chicken we had had in the car the day before.

Finally he withdrew his trunk, and I couldn’t believe that he hadn't hauled me right out of the window. But that was when he started to get us really nervous. (On a scale of 1 to 100 we must have already been at 95, but now we went up to 99!) He put his trunk on the trunk of our car, and started to rock the car. Nothing too violent, but then even a gentle rocking from a 5,000 lb elephant towering over you is pretty scary.

No problem, I whispered out of the corner of my mouth, he is just checking us out. Was I wrong! Next thing we felt a sudden violent bump as he gave the car a shove with his foot. I was now beginning to realize that we were in trouble. I had heard stories before of elephants pushing cars over and then sitting on them. How would we explain that one to the car rental agency?

The question now was, do we start up the car and drive away or will that get the elephant mad and make him flip us over? Then another violent jerk, he kicked us again. That was when I called it quits, carefully slid my hand onto the key, put my hand slowly on the gear shift lever and at the same time that I turned the key I slammed it into gear and floored the accelerator. To this day, I am still not sure who was the more surprised: the elephant at seeing our car literally fly out from under him or us when we realized we had got away with it.

We stopped the car about a hundred yards down the road, and all of us started shouting and laughing with relief at the same time. During the five minutes that we had sat in the car with the elephant next to us, we hadn’t realized how dangerous the situation had gotten.

Then we saw the other car approaching us, and they stopped next to us to talk. It turned out that they had seen the elephant coming up to us—hence their quick exit—and they had been watching the whole episode from a safe distance and had photographed the whole thing.

One of them had a very expensive high resolution digital camera and promised to e-mail us a photograph. He did, and that is what you can see: one of the most extraordinary pictures of an elephant that you will ever see. We're the ones in the car. The elephant is resting on his trunk on the ground for balance, and you can see that he is standing on only three feet, with the other one in the air. He had either just shoved us with that foot—or was just about to—when the picture was taken.

We were later told that the elephant would not have left our car on the road. The herd wanted to cross the road, and for some reason, he saw us as a threat. He would have tipped us right over and pushed us off the road.

We have had this photo blown up into a 36-inch x 24-inch poster. It has a place of honor on a wall in our home as a permanent reminder to us of what must surely be the most exciting, adrenalin pumping five minutes that anyone could ever experience.

BNI HAPPENINGS — Israel
Israel Welcomes Two New Chapters


	Haifa-Krayot leadership team: Gil Yonai, VP; Rami Cohen, Chairman; Ruthie Eldar Horev, Treasurer; with Bonnie Kutnick, National Director.

	Guests attending the Haifa-Krayot opening.

	Guy Radar, the Regional Director of Shoam, introducing BNI to the many guests.

	Shoam opening.

On March 11, the Haifa-Krayot chapter held their grand opening. This is Israel's second northern chapter and the first in the Haifa Area. Congragulations to the Haifa-Krayot chapter.

The Shoam chapter had their grand opening on March 22. Seventy guests attended the opening. As a special gesture, the whole Modiin chapter came to support their newest neighbors.

Membership Campaign Spreads across Israel


	Tel Aviv Morning Showcase.

	Jerusalem Morning Showcase.

During the months of February and March, Israel held its membership campaign with "Morning Business Showcases." Over 500 visitors attended the eight breakfast meetings—from Nahariya in the north through Tel Aviv and on to Jerusalem.

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