Post for Tuesday

Tuesday  11/10 @ 11:00pm at the Masaai Mara in Kenya (2:00pm CST)

Jamba (hello in Swahili)!

It is Tuesday night and we don’t have internet at the moment here on the Masaai Mara in Southwest Kenya (we are supposed to by tomorrow night…. I certainly hope so).  Today was the day we left Rwanda and returned to Kenya.  We left at 5:30am for the Kigali airport where we flew back to Nairobi, Kenya.  We had some time before our flight to the Masaai Mara so we went to a nature conservation area and visited where they fed the baby elephants; it was quite fun and the staff was very knowledgeable.   After that brief visit we had lunch at a local pizza place before heading off to a different Nairobi airport called Wilson Airport.  We eventually boarded our small, 50-person plane headed for the Masaai Mara.  By this time it was about 5:00pm so we had travelled all day and were exhausted, but this place ignited each of us!

First, we landed in the middle of the Masaai Mara which is basically an extension of the Serengeti (the only difference is that it is over the Kenyan border from Tanzania – where the Serengeti is).  So we fly into a landing strip in the middle of nowhere with this beautiful resort, called the Serena Lodge. Mark and I quickly unpacked and then asked at the front desk if they had any binoculars we could borrow…. We got the last pair.  We started looking off the deck of the lodge out into the Masaai Mara and we started seeing amazing natural wildlife.  We saw about 8 elephants including 2 babies, many zebras, gazelles, & impalas, warthogs, and some marmot (we think) that were coming near the lodge a bit like prairie dogs.  A few others from their rooms saw things like lions and water buffalo (yes, they have the pictures to prove it).  We are getting up tomorrow morning to leave for a 6:30 “game drive” where we will watch the sun rise over the Masaai Mara and hopefully see a ton of awesome animals.  One group that has to leave early tomorrow was allowed to catch the late drive tonight and they saw a ton of stuff including something very rare, a cheetah with 3 cubs.  They also saw a hippo and several giraffe, in addition to the stuff we saw.  We heard that the morning game drives are even better.  I cannot wait!  We saw one other wild animal and that was a gecko in the wall of our closet… sorta cool / sorta creepy.

Throughout the day, we informally found other people who went to other areas and shared our stories.  The stories are similar, yet different; the heart change is evident in each one of us.  There was some stuff that was very, very hard to hear, but seeing what we saw, we believe it.  There is a lot of poverty and struggle to go around.

After watching animals for quite a while, we had an amazing dinner followed by dancing by people from the Masaai tribe…. They danced in the lobby of the lodge and one dude jumped amazingly high.  Their singing and jumping were pretty cool.  After that our entire group gathered to share one “mental picture” from the trip for each group.  On behalf of our group, I shared my mental picture of Jean and Nadine from the HIV & AIDS association – Jean was the leader of the group & Nadine was the young girl next to her who is living with HIV.  The entire story is amazing and inspirational.  I have a TON of mental pictures, but I tried to share one that wouldn’t make me cry (too much).

With that, it was bedtime.  We are laying here listening to strange noises outside our window… birds, frogs, lizards, etc… who knows.  Tomorrow will be a great day of enjoying the beauty of Africa and sharing even more stories of what we all experienced in our different areas.

Good night (or whatever it is when this finally gets posted).