Life has been busy...

At one point I was going to be good and blog every week, regardless of whether anybody actually wanted weekly updates of my life here in Kenya... Needless to say, since the holidays, that has not happened. However, life has been busy, so before it gets overwhelmingly much, an update is due...

I think I mentioned our newborns. Two weeks ago we got four new babies, and I even got to play nanny for the weekend until the nursery was ready. They are doing very well. There is a picture on facebook but uploading to here is painfully slow on my connection, so I have given up trying. I think all the nannies have rather fallen in love with them.

Meanwhile, teaching continues to be a full-time job. I am in the system, and finally, through some trial and error, have learned more of what that means. It means in part that if my students don't perform well, I answer to the board... yikes! I have faith in my students though. Also, it meant I got included in the teacher meeting yesterday with the Madam. She called them all, and me, for tea. It was pretty funny. Everyone is pretty shy, especially around the Madam, and I don't think the primary and secondary teachers know each other at all(I really don't besides one or two secondary) so the bulk of the meeting was going around the circle saying names and then going over a few issues. It was really nice to be included.

Other highlights include my skipping school and going to look at animals. Two weeks ago our two Canadian visitors invited me to go to Lake Naivasha with them, expense covered. While Naivasha is our biggest nearby town and my general transit point when going to Nairobi, I had not been to the lake. It is the second largest in Kenya, has a very large bird and hippopotamus population, and in the middle is an island/peninsula that we took a boat to to see giraffes, zebras, wildabeasts and other 'prey' animals. There are no real predators there, so they have a pretty good deal and it was incredibly beautiful. We saw two baby giraffes less than a month old which were very cute. Then, as is one of the woman's custom, on her way back she picked up icecream for all the children. It is a great treat, and they were thrilled.

The other woman, who was here for the first time, meanwhile wanted to go on a full safari and Madam worked her charm and got really good rates, and somehow I got thrown into the deal. She has been great working with the babies and teaching everyone, myself and the nannies, how to take care of newborns... None of us are mothers, so we really don't know, but she has grown children and knew the ropes... Anyways, this past week she and I went on safari to Masai Mara, the big game park here in Kenya.

Masai Mara was incredible. We left here Monday morning early, and the drive to Narok and the game park took some five hours but was stunningly beautiful as it took us through the Great Rift Valley. Even as you drive, you pass a stray zebra, giraffe or ostrich along the way. It is very dry, and would be very hard to farm, which is probably why the Masai who live in that part of Kenya are traditionally herders, with their special humped cows who need less water.

We arrived at our rather nice tented camp(everything around the park is overpriced and luxury...) in time for lunch, and then once the afternoon started to cool, our driver took us to the park. Shout out to Kenya. Because I am here for a year and have my residence card, I can pay resident rates to get into parks and museums, so instead of paying $120 as a foreigner, I paid 2000ksh, or the equivalent of $25. Not only is this nice for me, it makes most of the parks and museums accessible not only to wealthy foreign tourists but to locals as well. Our driver was saying even the accomodations have resident rates, but we already had a really good deal.

Safari vans are cool. It is a pretty good industry here. They look like white minibuses used for mtatus, but have a really big gas tank so you don't run out of fuel in the parks, and once you get to the parks, the drivers can raise the roof, so you can stand and look out over the top of the bus but still have the shade from the raised roof. You bounce along these dirt roads, and are so close to the animals! It was like being in a National Geographic video, and we saw practically everything.

Our first afternoon we and around 10-20 other vans were circling a pride of sleeping lions, and at the very end as the evening began, they began to wake up. It was incredible to be so close to such an incredible animal. We took a lot of pictures... okay, I didn't as my cameras zoom is not ideal for animals, but my friend did and I stole all her pictures once we got back and they are incredible! Again, I can't put any here because I am not patient enough... We took some funny pictures of the other tourists too...

The next morning we were blessed by lions again, finding some finishing off their breakfast of bufallo near a tree where a whole bunch of babies were lounging. Baby lions really are just big kittens. It was incredible.

While the lions were probably my highlight, we also saw and chased a rather shy leopard, saw several lazy cheetahs, saw ostriches in their element(which was a nice contrast to the ostrich farms I stayed on in South Africa... they are such an old bird), saw hippos and crocodiles lounging in their muddy river, all sorts of gazelles and zebras and wildabeasts and water bufalloes grazing peacefully, as well as giraffes, elephants and an assortment of rather remarkable birds whose names I don't remember. It was very much like being in  a National Geographic video...

Unfortunately, my stomach was on the rocks for part of my time, but even with that, it was an incredible experience and totally worth going. The teachers did a great job of covering my classes and were really sweet about it. I wished I could have taken all the children with me. On top of their resident rates, the parks also have student rates, but we don't have a school van yet so school trips are hard. One day...

I had the thought though, once back here and watching my students play football for PE... the lions were incredible, but this, right now, is the real deal! I'm not sure how I will be able to say goodbye to these children come July...

So life continues in its fullness here, always rich, at times hard, and I am excited to see what the next five months have in store. At the same time, I miss friends and family back home, and seek to live in a tension of place and time. As my mother said the other day, rather summing up my emotions and some of my struggles here... 'life is real. Praise God!'