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!!!!!!!