Adnan Rashid – The Elephant, the Bird and the Giraffe

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			few months ago, I was in Africa to assess our progress in Tanzania and Malawi, and I had a flight
booked from Tanzania to Malawi. But then the ticket got canceled. And we had to make a decision. I
had two options either to return back home or to continue with the journey by road. And as we are
taught in IRA Never Say Die, you know, we should never give up we should try and find a solution. So
we decided, three of us myself, brother Todd, from Tanzania, with the Adil nadie, we decided that we
will drive to Malawi. Of course, with driving comes a lot of tiredness, a lot of challenges, a lot
of difficulties. African roads, some in some places are not the best roads, from darussalam. To
		

			Blantyre, Southern Malawi, it is almost 2000 kilometers so that that's a long journey. If we
traveled nonstop, we would have covered all of this in possibly two to three days. But it took us
nearly five days. Imagine sitting in a car, okay for five days, sitting in a car driving driving
from dar Salaam, in Tanzania all the way to Malawi. Why was that the case because we had our vehicle
broken down we nearly died we nearly had a crash in Malawi there was a huge pothole in the middle of
our road and our vehicle hit the pothole and the vehicle jumped very very high. And it nearly turned
over and we could have all been dead but Alhamdulillah protected as our vehicle got damaged. And you
		

			know that was one of the challenges we faced in Malawi when we enter Malawi but before we entered
Malawi at night we were traveling through a Wildlife Area in Tanzania What a beautiful scenery we've
seen many different animal within zebra within giraffe everyone Guess what? Look at that.
		

			I'm not talking about the hippo I'm talking about the giraffe
		

			we were in a car at night where our couldn't see anything at that time. So I was praying your Allah
let us see something visible. Something that we can see at night is quiet is just making growl. I
want to be an elephant. Lo and behold, while I was praying, a big elephant came across and he
thought he saw the elephant. And it was a huge experience for me. I had I had hardly seen wild
elephants in the wild. Right? So that was a very pleasant experience. Then another incident that
occurred was that while we were traveling on the same road, this time it was daytime.
		

			And a bird hit
		

			the the air vacuum system of the vehicle. I mean on these big Jeeps, you have these big pipes, and
the bird got stuck in one of these pipes. It hit the pipe and it got stuck in one of these pipes and
then the brother while he was driving the car, he took the bird out and we thought the bird is dead.
And as far as he was concerned, the bird was dead. I took the bird into my hand. And I was talking
about the beauty of the bird and how beautiful it was and how beautiful Allah's creation was. Look
at. Look how colorful, it is still alive. As you can see it. blinking is blinking. The eyes are
blinking, still alive. But it's injured, I think is badly injured. Certainly the bird came back to
		

			life. And he started to fly around inside the car. We had to basically catch it again and let it go
outside. So that was a very pleasant experience we had on this journey. I at one point, had severe
temperature I got ill on this journey. And then we got delayed on the border as well about why we
were at the border. While we at the border. Something happened because we don't want to wait any
time. We sat down with some people shared the message of Islam and this individual. He listened to
the message but he didn't become Muslim. We went to Blantyre on our way, way back to passing the
border going back guess what he called us and he wanted to be Muslim. And he said eyeshadow Allah
		

			Allah Allah wa shadow Anam Hamad Rasul Allah, Allah. So this is a very short summary of our journey
from Daraa Salaam, Tanzania, to Blantyre in Malawi, a journey of nearly 2000 kilometers just because
our flight got canceled and we made the decision to go by road