Edson went to the back of the car, almost confirming my suspicions, but then turned into the dusty bushes.

"Whistling Acacia," I interpreted “whi-tling” as he actually whistled and pointed to the black, bulb-like thing on a thorny bush. Edson hit the black bulb with a pebble from the ground.

"Ants reside in it to protect the plant. They will come out when I hit it. You will see them."

He tapped the black pod again, harder this time. The woman co-passenger and I recoiled in our seats, fearing a million black ants would swarm out. At least that was what I expected, but I didn't see anything moving on the dry bush. Edson tried again and pointed out something almost invisible on the branch. He pointed urgently, shaking the branch, almost slipping on the fine soil. I saw a tiny, golden ant.

"Thank you," the woman and I said in unison. We laughed. "I was expecting a lot more of them." Her pale, sunburned cheeks rose in amusement.

"Me too," I said.

We continued on the dusty road flanked by brown bushes, flat plains shimmering in the distance. After several minutes, we came across a group of women and young girls all dressed in bright red fabric. "Maasai," Edson announced. A few more bumps down the road, we saw three men dressed in varying shades of red, the color of fresh blood to that of clotted. My husband yelled, "STOP!" After thirty seconds, Edson stopped and backed up. Neel, my husband, clicked away. One man from the group ran toward the bus. I was scared. I jabbed Neel. "Is he going to be mad at us? Is he going to ask us for money? Will he yell?" Thoughts ran through my mind, matching the quick footsteps of the bright red-clothed man. He talked to Edson for a minute, smiled at us, and said bye before running off to his group. Edson informed us that he had invited us over to his village where they wanted to perform a dance and show us around the center they were building. They would love our support.

Edson chuckled. "I told him I will bring you all on our way back in three days." We continued making clouds of dust and passed a marker declaring that 10 kilometers from here was the site of early human fossils. But we didn't turn at the marker. "It is not part of the tour," Edson informed us when Neel inquired why seeing a 1.84-million-year-old original fossil was not on the list. "Everyone wants to see the lion," Edson flashed his perfect white teeth at us, his smooth dark skin glistening with sweat. "I will get you to Serengeti very soon, and you will see. It is harder to spot a lion here, although there are some too."

I went through a list of questions as we drove as fast as we could, jostling in our seats, excited. What were the group of women doing almost in the middle of nowhere? What was the center the Maasai man was talking about? How had the lions and Maasai found a way to co-habit? But before I could yell my questions over, I was distracted by the thrill in the van. We had spotted something. I stood up on my seat to peer down at the "cycle-of-life" scene unfolding in gory detail. A mother cheetah with her cub was feeding off a bushbuck, its fatal wound on full display. I couldn't look away. We observed the spotted bodies of these glorious cats going over to the fresh kill for almost ten minutes. The questions about the Maasai were still floating in my head, but they went away completely when we spotted eight lionesses and one magnificently asleep lion. Neel asked Edson to move several times to click them from different angles. At last, when we had had our fill of the king of the jungle, we called it a day.

In the camp, I asked Neel if he recalled that the Maasai women were carrying buckets. I finally started to figure out the answers to the questions I had for Edson before the dramatic wildlife scenes distracted me. Neel looked up at me, his face clueless. His attention was still on the camera, where he was checking if he could capture the cub walking to its Mama to drink milk.

"Balti, bucket," I repeated. "Maybe," he shrugged. "I think they were collecting water." When Neel didn't respond, I did away with the list of my questions. I instead thought of the young girl who waved at me. I'd waved back.

What was she thinking? Her smile big. I shrugged to myself. "Who knows?" I said under my breath.

"What?" Neel repeated, his hand still over his camera.

"Nothing," I said, smiling.

My wave was the oldest human emotion, a desire to connect. A simple joy of seeing another human who was happy to see me. Did the fossilized humans share this with me and the Maasai girl? I'd fact-check this if I had the internet, though I doubt there'd be definitive evidence whether the earliest bipedal humans, dating back millions of years, bonded with their fellow beings. Still, if I were to guess, I'd say they did.