Misc Africa

So I wanted to share a little of the trip, that you can't really capture in photos, but I'll add a few of those as well. I told you that we ate and hung out at Dr. Jim and Beth Blessman's home, here are a few pictures.
The office:

The kitchen:

Looking upstairs:

The living room:

The thatch roof:


It's a beautiful home that they designed for themselves, but they always plan on having people stay with them, so there are 3 other bedrooms for guests. This is a loving, caring, Godly couple that seem to have a model marriage. I never saw either of them get frustrated or annoyed with each other. That may be an act, but I definitely got the feeling that it was 100% genuine. On many occasions I saw them hugging, holding each other and always verbally encouraging each other. While Jim may have been the face we saw at the job site each day, Beth was preparing food for us (really good food I might add), and even did some of our laundry while we were working. There were others in the house that were helping, but this is Beth's service and I for one was so thankful. She was doing everything she could to make our stay comfortable, and she succeeded. I heard Jim refer to Beth as his "beautiful bride" on numerous occasions, it was really cool.

So every morning, we loaded up the Kombi, seen here with our chauffeur Chad,

and headed down the mountain for breakfast and daily instructions. The drive was always eventful, do mainly to the fact that the van had no heater, which means it had no defrost for the front windshield. Whoever the passenger was, now was also the interior windshield wiper. Here is a shot of one of my times in the seat we liked to call, "first to die." (more on that later)

You will notice that Chad doesn't seem to be looking where he is driving, that happened a lot, could be why we bottomed out all of the time:)
I mentioned in an earlier post that we drove this 2 wheeled van down roads that weren't suitable for 4 wheeled vehicles, which was a slight exaggeration. Most 2 wheeled vehicles, not loaded down with 1500# of people, would probably fair just fine. If any of the girls in our van are reading this and getting upset by the 1500# number, I figured your weight at 90#, the rest is me, hope that helps. The van would rub on the rise in the middle of the road and we were pretty sure this was going to remove the oil pan and leave us stranded an hours walk from help, in the dark, on a farm loaded with animals that we didn't want to walk up on in the dark. Luckily, all went well, but I'm sure the trade in value dropped considerably after our week. Now driving on the road was only the first battle for Chad. When we go to El Paso/Juarez, I'm the driver, but I only have to dodge a person here or there or maybe an over aggressive driver or two or a dog or 100. Chad, had to dodge big game. We were on our way down one morning, doing a pretty good speed since we were now at a "level" part of the road, when a kudu jumped out in front of us. Like I said before, these things are like an elk, so not something you want to hit with a 1986 VW bus. (I don't know the actual year, but 86 sounded like a good year.) The drive up at night, might have even been more fun. I'm not sure if we were tired and a little punchy, or if it was all of the alcohol we drank, but the rides up were awesome. (we didn't really drink, just threw that in there) I think we all laughed more on those van rides that we did the whole rest of the trip, and that is saying a lot. This group was so much fun and everybody had a comment that would send the van into hysterics. I thought about typing up a few for you, but as I thought it out, there were very few that the humor would carry over to a non-kombi experience. Maybe it was the African air that was making things so funny, hard to tell. Let me give you an example that will have Chad and anybody else from the trip laughing if they read it, but maybe not anyone else. First, the set up. I mentioned the road we drove on was questionable at best, but I didn't mention that there were side "roads" that went off of the main road that you could take, but they looked less inviting, so we stayed clear. On one particular morning, we drove down the mountain to the Blessman home. When you do that, you come to a gate in the farm portion of the property where you have to go through this big Jurassic Park like gates, using the remote control that was in the van to open, then close the gate so animals didn't get out.

Then you drove around this thing

to get to the other gate, which you had to open the same way. There are several paths in between gates. Some that leave the farm are to the left or the right, then the path forward to get to the other gate. Chad took a path on the left, which he quickly realized was incorrect, so he backed up to go the right direction. The right direction had a bit of a curb you had to drive up and when we did, Ashley asked in all seriousness, "Is this a road?" As I write this, not funny. In the van, damn near pissed myself. Again, it might have been the African air.

We had to use an outhouse at the house site.

This is a shot of me using the crapper.

You may be asking yourself, why is the door wide open? I'm glad you asked, there is a very good explanation and after I tell you, you won't question my judgement again. On several occasions while visiting this stink hole, I noticed a large gecko running around. Now, I'm not scared of geckos, but I don't want them on me and I was well aware that if it did get on me, while I was using the hole, there was a nearly 100% chance that I would leave the crapper at a high rate of speed. If the door was closed, there was a high possibility that I would run into said door and knock myself unconscious or at the very least, give myself a huge headache. On top of that, there would be a urine problem seeing as how once I start, stopping is a difficult proposal, especially when I am screaming and trying to get away from the big bad gecko. This all in mind, I left the door open. Plus, it helped ventilate, which was really needed in late afternoon.

All in all, one of the best times of my life. I'm sure I will bore you all with a story here or there, but I wanted to get the main stuff down before I forgot. If you were wondering about anything, let me know, be glad to answer. I'll post some pictures of our cabins and other stuff soon. Now I'm going to bed and dream of giraffe, zebra and the ride in the kombi. WATCH OUT, KUDU!!!!!!!

Proof is in the picture

Here is a shot of me working at the Habitat build.

One of the pictures I saw was of a guy drinking water, that is what I'm usually caught doing, so this was a pleasant surprise.

Yummy

Here is a shot of our first cucumber out of our garden, it is tasty. I have another one about the same size and about 10 more that are smaller, but striving to become like their big brothers.

The picture doesn't do it justice.

Habitat for Humanity

My first experience with Habitat for Humanity was a fun one. I had never done it before, so I didn't know exactly what to expect. I assumed we would get there with huge stacks of wood, plans and people to tell us what to do. My construction experience consists of the houses I have built in Mexico, which I just do what I'm told, so I don't "really" know what I'm doing. Then there is my basement, which my brother-in-law did most of the measuring and a lot of the actual building, again, I just did what I was told. Then the rest of the framing was led by my friend Chris, who had me do a lot of the work, but I was really just doing what I was told. So I show up at the HFH build expecting the same thing, but come to find out, all of the wood is pre-cut, pre-numbered and pre-marked. Man is that a time saver and perfect for a bunch of volunteers. When we got there, I went to my friend and traveling missionary buddy, Chad's tent, he was a leader. I figured, I know how he works, so it would be a lot easier to understand what we were to do, plus, we have a lot of fun no matter what we are doing. You would get a page out of a plan book with a number on it. The number on the plans corresponds with the numbers on the wood. For example, if you were building wall 112, you would find all of the wood with the number 112 stamped on it, bring it to the assembly area, lay it all out, then start nailing. It was really easy, as long as the wood could be found and was cut correctly. For the most part, it was, so we flew through, but the last house was a bit of a mess. We had to custom build a few walls, but finished most of them before we ran out of wood and time. I don't know if HFH uses this same method all of the time, but man it sure made building walls in a mass production situation easier. I hope when they go to set them up, they fit well and are constructed to meet the standards. When you count on volunteers, not professionals, you don't always get the quality. I watched as several people nailed their boards almost on the marks they were supposed to. I'm anal, (shut up Marcy, I admitted it) so I want to do everything as perfect as possible. Maybe everything doesn't need to be 100% square, but why not do it anyway. As every where you go, there are always people who make things, well, interesting. On my first shift, we were told to decide which end of your work area was going to be the top and bottom of the wall, and keep it like that for every wall so everyone knew what was going on. This worked my first and second shift, we tried to be organized, do everything the same way and get all of the volunteers involved. The first shift built a bunch of walls, I think 35. We were moving like a well oiled machine. My second shift, Chad asked me to run the table while he went in-between the table and the group working on the ground to be sure we were doing everything correctly. I had a bunch of people who hadn't built with us yet, so I explained the number situation, we started laying out the wall, I asked for a second opinion, once confirmed, we nailed it together. We were working even better than the first shift. I was really proud of the number of walls we built and the quality of them. Then we came to my third shift. Chad asked me to run the table again, which I started to do, until a guy with a leader shirt showed up. I figured, since he had a leader shirt, I'm going to let him lead and we'll fly again. Few problems with this. One, I don't think he had volunteered any other time during the weekend, because I had to explain to him a few things that he would have known if he had been there earlier. Two, he wasn't interested in your opinion, comments or ideas. There were several walls that had to be modified, but he wasn't listening to me, no biggie, I figured he knew what he was doing. He also decided that the top of the building area was this way this time and the opposite way the next time, a little confusing if you walk up to the wall late. I thought they had really screwd up, until he explained that he was making things more difficult for everyone. (OK, he didn't say that, but he was) We got down to our last wall and we were missing some of the wood. I told him that two of the boards that he was looking for didn't exist, they were trim and we hadn't had any all weekend, they put them on when they assemble the house. He wasn't hearing it. He decided that we didn't have enough wood to finish they wall, but we did if you didn't try to add the trim boards, which weren't supposed to be on. I mentioned it a second time to his wife. I told her the boards weren't there and we could just do the rest and we would be good. She wasn't hearing it. She turned the sheet into Chad and said we were done. Chad asked if we could go ahead and finish the wall on the table, she claimed we didn't have enough wood, which I again said we did, you didn't need the trim boards. She said I should have told her sooner. Two things with that, one, I did, two, you are the leader, shouldn't you know that? They finally decided to try and finish it after Chad took them over and showed them enough wood to finish up, I went to talk to our mission Juarez leaders that had stopped by. I checked out the wall after they had finished it and they had found enough wood to finish, and add the trim boards. So even after I had told them three times and Chad had told them once, they still did it there way. Like I said, there are always people who make things interesting. That was a minor incident, the experience was great and I'd do it again. The only side effect, my 40 year old wrist is killing. It's nice to have a friend who is a physical therapist, she is here now and volunteered to fix me up. I think I'll take her up on that.

My evening

I seem to have strange things happen to me on a regular basis. My evening didn't start off that way, but it ended in weirdville. I was able to locate a missing pair of shoes, Max's only pair that fits. They are fire engine shoes that light up when he walks. Cool shoes, but believe it or not, a three year old can't seem to remember where he took them off. Turns out, they were outside by the sand box. Problem is, Marcy said she looked there a few days earlier and didn't see them. One of two things happened here, one, she is blind as a bat to not see FIRE ENGINE RED shoes in my lush green grass. OK, grass has past lush by about negative one week of rain, cause I don't water, but seriously, red on green? The other option is that she never looked in the first place, pulling a Makiah on me. Makiah tells me all of the time that he can't find something, when I know damn well that he never looked for it because I stepped on it 4 times in the last 5 minutes and its right in front of him. Either way, I saved us the $20 to replace, or whatever they cost us. You could chalk up Marcy not seeing the shoes as a one time thing, if I didn't find a missing $20 bill not 1/2 hour later, in the van, where she said she looked for it. I swear I think she is messing with me. You might say, "Two things is not a full out problem." OK, lets flash back to Sunday when I found a "missing" coupon that she looked for, and I found in a pile of her stuff. I love you baby, but you might want to have those contacts kicked up a notch.

None of that is the weird thing. I was at a board meeting for the radio station I love, Pulse 99.5 here in Des Moines. The meetings are held at the station, which is located in a church off the beaten path, about 2 miles out in the country. When the meeting was over, I was walking out with a couple of board members and found a gentleman sitting on his bicycle in the parking lot of the church. We were discussing my trip to Africa, when I mentioned that the food we ate was "Americanized" which caused this guy to ask me what was Americanized? I told him my food, which sent him into a bit of a monologue. He said that "America isn't even Americanized." I'm not sure what that meant and wanted to walk away, but I didn't want to be rude and I wasn't going to leave my friend Mitzi anywhere near this guy. He continued the rant, but added a bit more venom to it. He went on about Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and how they were ruining the country. I happen to know alot of people that feel that same way, so this wasn't new to me, not a big deal. Then he said they stole my children, which is bit concerning right now since I got home and my wife and kids aren't here. I'm guessing they are ok, the van is gone and no burglar would get into that rolling dumpster, so kidnapping is out of the question. Plus, why would somebody take my three boys? I'm guessing they'd bring them home after the first 1000 questions they rattled off before they even got off our street. Inquisitive little buggers. The guy continued on about how our schools are teaching homosexuality and some other stuff that all rambled on for a minute or so. His last complete sentence was this, "The church should be doing something about this country, if that is who you say you are." To him, I hadn't said a thing, let alone claimed to be the church. But the more I thought about it, I AM THE CHURCH. And so are you, WE are the church. Are we doing something about "it?" I don't know, not sure I know what "it" is. I try to do my part to change the bit of life I'm in, doing what I think God is asking me. I'm not sure if I'm getting it all right, but that is the amazing thing about God, he doesn't ask me to be perfect, only to strive. I don't buy into this guys view of America, I love my country and I'm proud of it. Are we perfect, hardly. We mess up all of the time and sometimes on a major scale, but when there is a disaster in the world, America is the first to step up, without fail, even to our enemies. Do you think that is founded on a capitalist principle, which America is accused of? Nope, that is a Biblical principle, a Bible that this country was founded on and the model for my life, and hopefully yours. I had my days of me first, really didn't get me anywhere, but since my life changed to God first, a whole new world has opened to me. Sorry to ramble on, but that wacko on a bike got my brain a turning. I would have loved to have chased him down and gotten into a discussion with him to see what his facts were that gave him this belief, but as he rode away, he barked and yelled a few things that I couldn't distinguish, so I figured driving away was better than them finding my body in the ditch a few days later, car missing and a bike tire shoved up my.....Sorry.

Blessman blog

I just read Doc Blessman's blog, thought I'd share, here is the link.

The houses

Let me tell you a little about the homes we built. If you read my blog while I was gone, you know that after the first day, we only had 1/2 of a house built. The math doesn't work out if you try to finish 5 houses in 5 days if you are averaging 1/2 a house a day. We didn't have 10 days to complete this, so we hoped that the lessons learned on day one translated into a bigger number completed in days 2 thru 5. I'm happy to report that day 2 was a 2 1/2 house day. We were able the first house we had started, plus 2 more, giving us 3 days to finish the remaining 2 houses. We didn't chance that we could slow down and still get them done, so we had all 5 houses done by 3pm on Wed. I can't tell you how happy we were that the actual construction was done. The last 2 days were spent cleaning, finishing the rock work and then the dedication. Here are a few picks: Delivery of the houses.


Day one of the work.


First completed house.

All 5 houses done.

The dedication.

Inside of a finished house.




The construction of the houses was pretty easy, in design, but we had to use pop rivets to hold it together. The tool you use to apply the rivets hurts your hand after a couple of hundred, so my hands were aching after day one and we still had a long way to go. You can see, what I call the spines, arrived assembled and the crew from the manufacturer put them in place. When we arrived, we bolted them together and then bolted them to the ground. If you have ever bolted something together that had pre-drilled holes, you know that rarely goes smoothly. These, however, bolted together with almost no effort. There were a few we had to persuade into working, but not much trouble. We then bolted them to the ground, which I have a lot of experience in. In Mexico, we bolt the house we build to the concrete, so I've drilled hundreds of holes over the past 5 years. After that, we cut the shipping braces out and started the outside panels. You start at the top and try to get the first piece centered as best you can. Chad and Brad from our group figured out that if you measured the beam going across the front of the house, found the middle, then dropped a plumb line from the top of the arch, then all you had to do was line up the center of the first sheet with that line and your good to go. That isn't exactly how we started this, but we figured it out by house 3, so it went much faster. Then you just add layer upon layer of the sheets, drilling holes through the metal sheeting and steel spine and riveting it all together. Once we got the hang of it, we flew through the process. Like I said in an earlier post, if you have 7 people working on a house, you can have it done in 3 hours, maybe a bit more depending on bit breakage and supplies. It took us a bit more than 3 hours because people were being pulled away for other projects. Not a bad thing, just perspective.

Here is a picture of an impromptu concert givin by the kids.


And finally, the most important picture we took all week. These are some of the kids that will be living in the homes.


May God bless them and keep them safe!

Had to share.

While in Africa, actually on all of my mission trips, we do nightly devotions. On one particular night, the quietest member of our group surprised and treated us all to a song. We didn't know he could play the guitar, but he broke it out for this particular night and sang a beautiful song I had never heard before. Chad found the song on YouTube, thought I would share. I liked Ben's version a lot better, but the song and the message are the same. Damn it, allergies are acting up again. That happened a lot in Africa, damn near lost my man card on several occasions.

Time out!

I wanted to take a break from Africa, and mention another place that I have a passion for, Juarez. I know, I know, I don't shut up about it, but it is a special place for me. I read the El Paso Times regularly to keep up on the goings on in Juarez. Today I read an article from last week that says the murder count for this year is 1000. That means 1000 lives, 5 lives a day, have ended due to the drugs and violence in the city. Some of the people killed may have signed their own death certificate by getting involved with the people they got involved with, but many of those 1000 didn't have a say in it or were police trying to stop the violence. When you say your prayers tonight, put the innocent people of Juarez down as a request for peace and safety. We are all one with God, no borders, no color, no country. Your brothers and sisters need your prayers, who are we to deny them that?

Just another Saturday in Africa.

Here is something I wrote last Saturday, but never posted. Not the most exciting, but it shows what the day was like.

What can I say about today, Saturday. We started off with a 4 hour walk up and down the mountain, several times. Chad spotted a zebra on the opposite mountain, so we spent a lot of time watching him, then a kudu showed up. Something made a sound that echoed down the valley that had Chad and I wondering just how fast we needed to run to stay ahead of it. Luckily we didn't get chased. We talked to a couple that said they had seen the cape buffalo just an hour earlier where we had just been. There are two of them on the farm, but they are rarely seen, that would have been huge to have seen them. We then went to Entabeni, which is a game preserve, that has the big 5 African animals, lion, elephant, rhino, cape buffalo and leopard. The drive into the park had zebra right next to the road
a herd of empala in the road
and a group of about 15 wildebeast about 10 feet from our car. We hadn't even started the official game drive and we had all ready seen about 50 animals. When we arrived at the starting point, the staff of Entabeni greeted us with a glass of apple juice. After a few minutes in the gift shop, we loaded up the vehicles and headed out. The first 20 minutes were spent with our guide tracking a lion, so we could see it. He gave up and said we would look for the rest of the pride instead of trying to find just the one. We saw some of the old standby's, wildebeast, empala and birds, but most of us were ready to try and find the lions or elephants. We pulled up to a little pond and there were 10 giraffe drinking and eating.
It was amazing to see that many animals all together in one place. We watched them for quite awhile, drove around the pond and got right in the mix of them. We even had a younger one walk right in front of our vehicle. We continued on until our driver stopped to give us a poop lesson. He picked up a piece of elephant poop to show us what it looked like. He said it was probably 3 days old, so I was ready for him to drop the poop and move on. A few minutes later, we drove up on a black backed jackyl. We didn't stay there long because our guide got a radio call about some elephants, so we took off to find them. As we came around a corner, we spotted a rhino and a baby rhino, so we stopped to take pictures. Some of our crew spotted something in the weeds behind us, so our guide backed up just in time to see two lionesses jump up and chase a warthog. It's hard to see, but that black area in front of the lion is the warthog. I tried to get the chase on video, but wasn't able to find it on the view finder, since I was really trying to watch it with one eye. We didn't see the end of the chase, so I can't tell you the outcome, but that was cool. We thought our lion action was over, so we turned our focus on two more rhino a bit further down the road. As we were watching them, two more lionesses came out of some trees and started walking towards the rhino.
They passed the first group of rhino, so we knew they were after the baby.
We actually got to see them stalk this baby rhino, plus we saw how the mother rhino defenede her young.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the male lion showed up as well.
This may just have been the coolest thing I have ever seen. The ride ended with a cup of hot chocolate provided by the staff and a ride home. Just when you think you have seen everything, you step out of the car, look up and see more stars than you ever have in your life. We could even see the milky way, which I have never seen before. Crystal clear and breath taking. God has created something so beautiful, it is amazing. If you ever get the chance to go, I would highly reccomend it.

WOW!

I think I'm still in shock that I was able go to Africa, something I never dreamed of doing, and I'm also sad that it is over. I'm always glad to get home and see my family, the boys rushed into my arms at the airport and to hold Marcy again was something I had been thinking about for days. I'm blessed in so many ways I can hardly believe my life. When God laid on my heart that I was supposed to go to Africa, I didn't even question it and told Marcy I was going before my brain even had a chance to wrap around the idea. Within days I was talking to Chad about it, thinking it might take some convincing, but didn't have to beg or anything. Then the letters for financial support, one of the hardest things I had ever written. Why so hard? Well, I had to ask for help, something I fail at continually, and no I don't know why. The response was overwhelming, beyond my wildest dreams. I figured I'd be able to raise half of my goal and I was more than willing to come up with the rest. I should have known that God had bigger plans than me. I've all ready been asked, would you go back? In a heart beat. If these Abod homes work as Blessman Ministries sees it, the program will continue and I would be more than happy to go back and build them again. Now that we have a system down, I know we could build 10 in a week. Everybody pray about it, see if God lays on your heart to support me again, or for the first time if you weren't able to this past trip. I'll be telling you more about the homes we built, you will see some of the children whose lives were changed and you will here stories. There was a film crew at the site the whole week we were there, so as soon as the video is done, it's supposed to be on the Abod website, I'll let you know. The homes are fantastic, although the "4 African women can build it in one day" is a bit mis-leading. These would have to be huge, agile, African women that don't need a break and are as quick as a jaguar. These homes are easy to build, once you get them figured out, but we usually had 7 people working on them at one time and we could do 2 1/2 houses in a day. The main issue came with the rivets we had to install. You had to drill through the metal house frame, plus the metal sheeting on the outside, then hold it all together with a rivet. If I had to guess, I'd say there were at least 200 rivets per house, probably more. The drill bits we had broke regularly, so we had to change them often. The rivet gun required alot of pressure to use, so at the end of day one, my palms were aching. My legs had bruises on the knee and shin from leaning on the ladders. My back was sore from being in positions I'm not accustomed to. After the first day, I was discouraged because we only had 1/2 of a house done and only 4 days in which to complete the remaining 4 1/2. Chad and I had a discussion Monday night and agreed that we would forgo all of the weekend activities, if we needed to, and work the weekend to complete the houses. Knowing the rest of the team as I now do, I know they would have felt the same way. We knew why we were there, for the children who were going to live in these houses, so we would have sacrificed everything to complete the Abods, THAT was why we were there. I'm so glad we finished so soon and were able to do the other things that we did, but the game drives weren't why I went. If you know me well, you know that there are 2 things that I'm very emotional about, my family and my missions. The family is a no brainer, I love my family. They mean everything to me, my wife, my kids, my brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I have been supported my whole life and wouldn't trade any of them. My close friends fit right into the family. I don't have a lot of friends, mainly because I'm busy with the family and I don't really meet people easily, I'm kinda shy. The friends I do have mean so much to me. They too have been so supportive, I can't thank them enough. Now, whenever I try to talk about my mission trips, I get emotional. I think it's because I know I have been direct by God to do these things, and I'm humbled by the experiences I've had. I feel so good when I do the things I do, and I thank God for giving me the opportunity and for sending me where he has sent me. I used to think there were a lot of coincidences, but I don't see it that way any more. This trip is a prime example. I wrote about it in my support letter, but I will repeat it because it is important to this trip. Here is part of that letter:

This year World Vision brought a traveling African village to my church. They talked about the children who have lost their parents to AIDS and how their own family members, aunts and uncles, wouldn't take them in because they were afraid that the kids had AIDS and would infect them. I would like to think that my family wouldn't do that to me! These kids then are left to fend for themselves. Upon entering the exhibit, you were assigned a child and given an MP3 player to listen to your child tell his or her life story. These were actual kids telling their stories, not actors playing the part. Hearing the story was heart breaking, to say the least and personally, I was moved. I kept asking myself, what can I do? Right then, sponsoring a child was not an option for us, but I did not forget and knew that God would provide an opportunity to serve. In November, the opportunity I had been looking for and praying about appeared in the newsletter from our church and I felt God telling me to GO to South Africa. I feel in my heart that I am supposed to serve the people of South Africa by building homes through the Mission South Africa work project. I am asking you to partner with me, so I can help a few of the millions that are hurting.

Was it a coincidence that I went through that exhibit and then there was a new trip to South Africa that involved physical work, which is more my style than words? Could be, but man that is a big coincidence. Since I have been working for God, I feel better, I'm happier and I feel at peace. I've been asked, "Aren't you ever scared?" A little, when I go far away from home and to places like Juarez which is dangerous, but the thing that sticks out to me is, I'm not afraid to die. I sure as heck don't want to, but I have the peace in my heart that takes all of the fear away. Enough of that, check out the business located across the street from where we were building.

Not sure what the "Fun" is.

I'm home!

Let this be a taste of what is to come.

Home sweet home!

I should be on my way home. If I haven't posted, get ready, they will be a coming. If I have, then know this was set up prior to my departure, so if I died, don't let this "voice from the grave" freak you out.

I saw a cape buffalo today, what did you see?

We went for our morning walk today with hopes of finding the elusive cape buffalo. After hiking up a steep road, we walked up on this huge animal, a mere 20 feet away. We froze, then fumbled for our cameras, and it ran off into the bush. This is one of the big 5 animals, which means it is dangerous, so were we a bit shaken up, but extremely happy we were able to find it. I'm leaving for the airport now, see you back in the states soon.