I had a very strange dream last night – strange enough that I remembered it, which is not normal for me. In my dream I found myself inside my old high school in Pakistan, an old british garrison church. However, in my dream, the building itself seemed to be about eight times the size of my school divided into two sections. Inside the building were a great number of trees and bushes, growing like a small jungle within the walls of the building. All very strange and dream-like.
The very strangest thing about the whole dream though, was the fact that a friend (I have no idea who it was) and I were trying to escape from a raging black rhinoceros. Black as the night, and with a thick strong body, it would wander around the trees, charging at us when it saw us. I can remember running as fast as we could to duck behind the trunks of trees, trying to get away from this frightening beast. I even climbed up into the thin, spindly branches of a tree to get up away from it at one point, scared to death that this rhinoceros would kill me for sure. I can remember desperately searching for some way to capture the rhino, and do something about it, but the only thing in the building was a cage, which only big enough for a large dog or something of the sort. I never did manage to get a hold of anything though.
The whole dream was somewhat terrifying, and I woke up in the middle of the night, heart beating a little fast, to puzzle over why I would dream something like that to begin with. What on earth goes through someone’s mind to make him dream of trying to escape a black rhinoceros in a jungle inside their Pakistani high school? What on earth is wrong with me?
The biggest shock, however, was something that I learned this morning while on my computer. Much to my surprise, today, September 22, is World Rhino Day! Unlike a fear-filled dream about a black rhino, World Rhino Day is designed to raise awareness of the ongoing poaching and illegal trade of rhino horns. With five different species of rhinos, some populations are facing endangerment and even extinction, and the World Wildlife Foundation and other organizations are trying to put an end to the killing of rhinos and the trade of their horns. I still have no idea why I had a dream about a black rhinoceros on the same day as World Rhino Day, but for all those who didn’t know – today is World Rhino Day.
To find out more about World Rhino Day, visit http://www.worldrhinoday.org and http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/rhinoceros/world_rhino_day/