Safari, I've deduced, means "destination" in Swahili. I figured that out on the 8 hour flight from London to Nairobi on Kenyan airways. The screen kept flashing how long we had to our "safari" and tracing it on the map. They alternated between English and Swahili, so I took it as a little language lesson. That sort of thing can keep me entertained for entirely too long (8 hours to be exact).
We've had some great safari's in the past week. June 25th was Mozambique's independence day so the MCCer's had a day off...and the five of us stumbled into a pile of fun (see picture). Well, actually, that's elephant poop which is as big as it looks and sometimes bigger.
The mountain we wanted to climb was closed so we ended up driving around a vast wilderness in the National Park looking for lions, crocodiles, elephants, anteloupe, warthogs, and flocks of exotic birds, to name a few. Alas and alack, the lions and elephants eluded us, but we tracked their evidence. *Editor's note re: the photo: the human foot pictured is 10 inches long.
A community we visisted where the MCCer's are working, fed us lunch and let us camp there for the night. Here is Jenny and I before our lunch of sadza and chicken, where Hannah bravely ate flabs of chicken skin with very tastey sauce.
The woman pictured below is Maria, a young energetic community leader. With her baby on her back, she taught the morning preschool activities, cooked and served us lunch, participated in the community savings group initiation, showed up at the communitygarden planting, and visited us around the fire that evening. Impressive. She's one of two wives of the community leader.
That night we were treated to live music of a marimba made with gourds for resonators and dancing. It was such fun.
