Between Blogs, Between Continents - Life After Tuskers

Let's face it; the only reason ANYbody reads a blog is for the photos, and I realize that when I got this camera, I set the date wrong, so these photos actually haven't been taken yet!  Even though I am home, preparing to go to Taiwan to give a paper at a conference, I can still pretend Africa isn't over.  And it isn't!  I loved the animals and things one goes to Africa to see, but I am always compelled by the domestic, the personal and the mundane; how do people live?  OR, for that matter, do their hair?

     

 Is he not beguiling?

     The interesting thing about Kenya is the way the doors and windows are painted and spaced.  In these long strips of housing, each family seems to get a door and a window, and I surmise that more than one family live in these abodes; actually, the one below was a classroom at a little school we visited.

Even the birds build snuggy nests right next to others.  These are weavers' nests, and they were flitting busily in and out, finalizing the interior designs to ready for new families.  You can see a glimpse of them in brilliant yellow on the wires.  Usually these nests dangle precariously from the Acacia trees and look almost as though they were growths on the tree limbs, as indeed they are!

     And so, I bid a fond farewell for the time being until I am next inspired to add more images and remember a time that now seems very, very far away; I surmise that after the 16 hour flight, I looked rather like this lumpy, wrinkled, baggy fellow...

Imagine...

being woken up at 11:30 for tea and biscuits and knowing that in this  pitch dark you will begin to summit the highest peak in Africa after you put on your wicker shirt for winter, a sweater, a down vest, a down parka, long under wear and fleece pants on the bottom, with all weather pants on top. Three pairs of socks, books, a wool hat and your head lamp, and you are ready to go.

The stars are SO brilliant an so close that it looks as though the big dipper - or is that the small on? - is dipping into the streams on the mountain.  We begin single file and notice other headlamps streaming out onto the field of skree which we negotiate pole, pole (Swahile for slowly, slowly.  Then we get to the practically perpendicular part, which we climb in switch-backs,one by one, but I notice these big men lying on the side, only their big whites of their eyes showingp; it is way belowfreezing.  It turns out they are army men who were high and cannot go any higher.

Pole, pole, we step until we get to the r0cks that we negotiate swiveling,climbing and swerving around,over =.  Each time I look up, there are more rocks behind the last set, and it looks as though it goes on forever.  I have never liked the dark, and here it feels interminable; when will I EVER see the light again

By 4:00 we read Gilman's Point.  I say that I've really done enough, but I realize that I will have to wait there by myself while the others go to the summit at Uhuru Peak.  I trudge on. By around 5:30 I notice there is a glow at the horizen.  By 6:19 the sun is really coming up,and we are at Uhuru Peak;  I notice that I break away from our pack and race to the top.

This is the smile my guide captured as we arrived.

More later, but my legs collapsed on the way down, and I thought I would never make it, but I am back in the hotel, showered and ready for my first Tuskers. XXOXOXOX

Time for Tanzania!

Arrived last night around 9:00 where we stepped off the rickety puddle jumping plane onto the runway, walked across the runway an into the airport where I could get a visa right at the counter and met one of the passport officers who had a daughter named Faith.  Nice.

Room is noisy, pulsing with energy and excitement as young people and geeks begin or return from their climbs.  I meet with my guide at 5:30 tonight, and today is a day to myself for a change; I've just spent two weeks with the most wonderful people, but it was people nonetheless, which means constant chatter, something I need long respites from.  I am in many ways drained, and so I begin my one day to myself where I shall walk the2 kms into Moshi Town to visit a coffee shop (good coffee, I hear), read my book (I brought two but have just entered one), and look at birds, flora and fauna...

I dare not attach another photo as the internet AND computer are unreliable.  More when I return...

I see that for some strange reason a photo of me and Grace partially uploaded.  This is the young woman I am sponsoring, and the woman who organizes these sponsorships claims that I have saved her from an early marriage in her Masai community.  She hopes to become a heart surgeon and return to help her village of only 57 people!  She is articulate and sweet.

Massai Mara to the Serenghetti (sp?)

We left early for the Massai Mara and here we are at the Mara River with MANY hippos who are snoozing, grunting and swimming.  Two crocodiles were sunning  in the same spot.  We wallowed in brilliantly colored birdlife, chased a cheetah through the high grasses and stumbled upon this sleepy hyena who could not have cared less about us.

We stopped for lunch right on the hills of the Mara where I took this photo of my favorite guide who is a MASTER birder so we have seen all sorts of exotic birds, as well as the big animals.  I asked him if he would like to have my half marathon shirt, and he said he would, so I am having it washed and will pass it on which is really what T shirts are for!!
We crossed over into Tanzania and saw this magical  lizard at the entrance to one of their parks; I forget its name, but on the way there we saw a mother lion carrying what looked to me like a dead baby; however, I was told that the cub was newly born and the mother was tranferring all her cubs to a safe location so predators, including the male lions, wouldn't get them.

I tried to load a photograph of  a secretary bird with its wild spiky feathers poking up out of the top of its head, but alas, I cannot find it.  You get instead a mama elephant and her baby.
Tomorrow we travel to Massai village, pick up Grace and have her spend the day with us/  I am nervous as a blind date!!

Massai Mara and me...

 

At lasr I am in the Massai Mara and will try to update this bloggie, which is VERY difficult with slow internet and my very, very fundamental littlecomputer...  Here I am at our camp with my Kony shirt and an armful of Massai bracelets...

We have beenonb game drivesw, seeing elephants, girafrfes, lions, zebras and the most amazing array of birds that anyone can 9imagine; I feel very blessed to be with friend Sherry who is a MASTER birder, as is our driver/guide.  As we drove through the Mara this afternoon, we had grand spotting, and this little fellow under a lone Acacia tree looked like a good sampling...

Actually, the giraffes were lithely slinking across the ro0ad, and this one just couldn't get himself moving; as the animnals have the right of way in the reserves, we allo had to wait.  And wait.  I thought the size difference between the car and the giraffe was startling, and even though I began this trip with more enthusiasm about the Kilimanjaro climb than the actual safari, I have become mesmerized by the country of Kenya, its people and animals.  The terrain is sublime, the temperature  is perfect, and the air is so clear and clean that my lungs feel very happy (nothingLIKE a happy lung), Tomo0rrow I might meet a Massai girl named Grace who is a promising student and needs a sponsor; if I like her, and we click, I will take her on so that I can help her receive an education instead of having genital mutilation and marryingsomeone in her tribe.
I will try to p-ublish this post, and if it works, I shall write again tomorrowto give some ideas of where we have been, what we have seen and what we have done.  All I can say is that coming to Kenya is life changing!!!  Hugs to one and all.

No lawyer in there...

Okay, this is a test; the photo memory card works, the blog site works, and I find NO LAWYER in this bag.  For those of you who actually do the reading, I applaud you for noticing that I said I had packed a lawyer inside.  WONDER what I was THINKING?

We are off tomorrow morning;  don't believe Best Western at Dulles Airport when they said "free parking."  It means only whle you are staying here... PANTS ON FIRE!!!

It all seems like a lot of STUFF to me, but I got me here a day pack and the duffle that couldn't squish down if you had a 900 pound gorilla on it!  I was told to bring this instead of a backpack, my usual traveling gear.  The bag is jammed with sleeping bag, down parka, down vest, wool socks, mittens, lawyer, rain gear, headlamp , long underwear, books, pens, pads (presents) and a small towel.  It still worries me, and God only knows what the heck I will wear for the first part of the trip on safari.  My leader, Sherry, told me to bring some dressy pants for evening.  HA, thought I, but then rolled up a pair of silk cargo pants and shoved them into a corner.  I'll be dressy alright - silk pants and hiking boots!

I KNOW that Matt and Toby will be wonderful to our prince here, Shadow, seated on the sofa, surrounded by pillows.  Ah, the life of a dog!

Tonight a stay at Best Western at Dulles airport and then off on Ethiopian Airlines tomorrow, heading for Addis Ababa and then on to Nairobi.  I will jam a wee computer into my day pack and try to keep this blog going; if you don't hear from me, I'm probably on a savanna somewhere or skittering across the snows of Kilimanjaro.

Stay tuned!  Hasta luego, con abrazos, Faith