Greetings from Uganda!
A lot has been going on in the last 10 days or so! I have travelled to Kenya and back where I went on a safari in the Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru. The safari has to be one of the most incredible expereinces of my life. It was awesome to see all the animals you would normally see pent up in a zoo outside roaming about the wilderness. We saw lions - male and female - and a pride of 9 females, cheetahs, wildebeest, zebras, antelopes, elephants, giraffes rhinos, hyenas and so many more beautiful animals. We saw a zebra giving birth! We saw lions eating zebras and wildebeest! We saw hyenas and vultures eating the left overs! We saw a dead impala stuck in a tree! We solved the mystery of the dead but uneaten wildebeest!
Lake Nakuru, home to the flamingos, is an incredible sight - a sea of pink! We spent the first night in a 3 star hotel unfortunately there was no hot water! We spent the next 3 nights camping out in the Masai Mara! We had on our second night an elephant enter our campsite. Our night guards were Masai men who protected us with a stick. On our last evening we meet some German girls and we spent the evening sitting by the campfire chatting. I lay on my back staring into the starry sky for hours! Its incredible how many stars there really are out in the wilderness - where there are no clouds or pollution to hinder the view. We saw a spectacular but unusual perfomance from the moon - indeed we wondered what on earth was happening! The moon was only just above the horizon whereas I have only ever seen it far above the horizon in the 'top' of the sky, then it slowly started to disappear finally it vanished behind the horizon. We asked the Masai what had happened, they explained that it was completely normal! It wasn't an eclipse though. The Mara is 1510 sq km of open park which joins the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania.
We had some interesting Czechs with us on the safari tour - they had done 3 safaris in Uganda already, climbed a few a mountains, were at the Masai with us then were off to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. They were very pleasant people at first, then they started to cause trouble. We spent the first full day driving to the Masai Mara national park, we didn't arrive there until 4pm, they then decided to go on a tour of the Masai village, whereas the rest of us didn't want to because we knew that the park closed its doors at 6pm. So they spent about 2 hours in the village looking around. Needless to say that we didn't get our game drive that we had paid for that day. The next day we spent the whole day from 6am to 4pm driving around the park looking for various different game. (By the way, they spent our last 4 hours looking for a leopard - which they were determined to find - however the leopard is very illusive and shy and can rarely be seen at the Mara.) As we drove out of the park the Czechs insisted that we continue our game drive since we had missed yesterdays! So poor Steve (our driver and guide) had been driving around 12 hours in total - he was not impressed and we were not at all impressed. The next day the Czechs returned to Nairobi and we continued our safari.
The Masai culture is very interesting! The boys tend to the goats as young as 3 years old, then at around 7 years they tend to the cows. The women cook, look after the kids, do the usual chores that African women do but however they also build the entire villages! The men...well, lets face it theres not a lot left to do really is there! In order to become a man the boys must first go through the circumcision rituals, they are then sent out into the bush from anything upto 5 years! Whilst out in the wild they must kill a lion in order to prove themselves. If they do kill a lion, they get to choose the most beautiful women from another village to marry and don't have to offer cows in return since they proved their worth by killing a lion!
Our last night in Nairobi was rather dramatic! We had gone to bed at about 9pm after driving back from the Mara all day. Suddenely we hear about 15 gunshots! We lay there very quiet wondering what on earth was going on. After a few moments I went out of my room and asked the guard what was going on. He told me that some people had been shot - he was very calm adn unperturbed about the whole situation. Then I went back to bed and we heard 4 more! The gunshots were so loud we could even hear the caps falling down onto the ground. I stuck my head out the window and could see lots of people mulling about. It turns out that 4 people were shot right outside our bedroom window! The next morning we left for Uganda!
Things are going well at the baby home. 3 children have left us. Tolofina is 3 years old, she was found severely malnourished, she is the youngest of 12 children, her older brother who is about a year older than her is a healthy well cared for little boy - she has been obviously neglected by her parents. So her parents have now given up legal guardianship of her and she has been fostered by a Ugandan lady. Joyce one of our toddlers has gone to a different orphanage where she has older siblings. Philip a 18 month old has gone to a Dutch family who are living in Uganda for 3 years. Our numbers are now down to 55 children, the lowest we have been in a while. We are still waiting to hear from the judges about the 10 pending cases. Its so sad, these children should have gone home about 1 year ago, and yet they are still here waiting to go home. I missed the kids so much while I was away especially Nathanial Elliot.
I love watching the kids here going to school in their smart uniforms - u can see groups of children from as young as 3 walking to school together - it's so cute! and they are really excited about going to school - since here you have to pay for school not all children are able to go, unless they recieve some kind of scholarship or someone can sponsor them. The kids in Kenya and Uganda are so hard working! They wake up early to do their chores, probably walk at least 2 or 3 miles to go and get water, then walk a long way to school, then walk back from school, have lots more chores to do - fetch water, feed the cattle, bathe the younger siblings, help cook etc etc. They barely have time to play, I'm sure a lot of them - especially the girls dont have time because they have so many other jobs to do.
Pre-school is going well, I walked in the toddler house today (saturday) and I saw all the Mamas sitting with the older kids playing games and helping them with their alphabet and numbers - it was so nice to see and reassures me that they will hopefully continue this when I leave.
That's enough 4 today,
Asante Sana
from left to right: wildebeest; elephant; cheetah; rhino; lion; Nairobi; lion eating wildebeest; Masai warrior; Masai hut; Joseph & Junior; Joyce; Philip; Tolofina; Musa; Nathanial Elliot
No comments:
Post a Comment