Better Late Than Never

Finally I have time to breathe and fill everyone in on what I have been doing for the past week. We did our homestay last Saturday with a Maasai family. I have a whole new respect for the women of the Maasai culture, they are amazing. When Emma and I arrived at our Boma we met our Mama and had some tea. Then we had to go retrieve water from the stream. This is done by taking a can that probably has 4 gallons in it and carrying it about a quarter of a mile. You fill it in the stream and then using a strap, you strap it to your head. Yes, there are pictures of my struggle to do this. But once you get the strap on a good place on your head its not that bad, but it was really tiring. Then we made lunch, which is done in a smoke filled room. We ate ugali and cabbage, which isn’t the greatest meal, but it was ok for one day. Our next activity was going to get firewood. Our Mama was using the machete to cut down branches, and then we strapped that to our head, which was a lot easier. It was a really great day and the Maasai culture is really amazing.

We had a field exercise where they sent us out and we walked about 1 Km into the nothing to look at grasses, nothing like a morning spent in the African bush, which we have done twice now. We also saw a dried up zebra placenta and plenty of tracks of zebra, giraffe, and elephants. Class here is amazing, but I am glad its over.

Monday we went to Amboseli National Park, and we learned that time management is not a thing in Africa, which is slightly painful. We did a lot of sitting around but we had an amazing day. There is a swamp area in the park where the elephants would get in and all you could see were their heads. I think it is one of my favorite things I have seen here so far. Kili was covered by clouds all day but it came out just in time for us to see an elephant parade with Kili in the background, it was beautiful.

In order to keep sane I have been running, and I have made it up to 3 miles! I’m slightly amazed with my self and I would love to make it up to 5 by the time I leave, so I have a month to accomplish this.

This week we had 3 papers due and our final was today. So I am officially done with classes and we just have our directed research left, and I am really excited about it! We find out which topic we get on Sunday so I am slightly nervous about finding that out.

I have found two new fruits which I really like, which are mangos and passion fruit, but it depresses me that these probably wont be any good when I get home. Well it’s movie time since we don’t have any work to do!