Sa-fari, so good (sorry)

jambo! mambo? poa. besides "hakuna matata" and the words for "thank you" and "where is the toilet" (choo iko wapi), that's the extent of my swahili knowledge. it's a very cool language though.

side note: kevin and I cannot stop singing lionel ritchie's "all night long." (as most of you soft rock lovers remember, the intro to the song is in swahili. it goes something like this: "something see ya say ya mama. hey! jambo la. something something hey ya jama. hey! jambo, jambo!" I believe these are the exact words.) this supposedly fun, innocuous tune has become annoyingly impossible to get out of our heads. at first we'd implore eachother to "shut the fuck up" when one of us started humming the song, but now we've given in and embraced it. we've even worked out some simple harmonies and take turns singing lead and back up.

anyway...

so this is the first opportunity I've had to blog since, obviously, my last pre-safari entry. since arriving in tanzania, when someone asks where we are from, and we naturally say "America", 95% of the time the response will be, "Obama!", then "you like Obama?" and then we say, "no, McCain!" no, that's not what we say. it's really incredible hos obama has made it respectable to be an american again. I no longer have to say that I'm from canada when I travel.

okay, time to talk safari. but let me first say that before these past seven days, I'd never been a big Animal Kingdom of nature documentary gal. sure, I'd seen a few (usually if someone else was watching it or if I was drunk) but my wildlife expertise was far from impressive. in fact, before the safari, I thought a gazelle was a bird and a wildebeest was a hyena-like creature. but now, post-safari, when I get home I'm gonna watch the shit out of Animal Planet. this safari was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. our first day in tarangire national park we saw elephants, giraffes, impalas, and zebras...all hanging out together! just extraordinary. in the lake manyara area, we saw tons of baboons and vervet monkeys, and hippos. and, in the serengeti, we were about five feet away from a male lion and his lady friend. we also got to check out a couple leopards and cheetahs. but perhaps the most incredible site was seeing thousands upon thousands of wildebeest and zebra migrating to greener environs. the seregeti plain was literally covered with them. it was one of those times when I felt very small; I felt that the world was an enormous place where billions of stories are happening simultaneously. leaving the serengeti I couldn't help thinking, what else am I missing? and then I realized, oh, my leg. damn lion.

our last stop was ngorogoro crater where we caught a glimpse of the endangered black rhino. it was very far away though, so it could have just been a wildebeest wearing a rhino mask.

there's a ton more I could write about: the horrors of camping, how camping is stupid, and how, when camping, spiders the size of a fiat crawl down your leg and force you to stay in lodges the rest of the safari. but alas, I must go enjoy the beaches of zanzibar.

tomorrow we fly to rwanda!

Oh, perhaps I'm in Africa. No biggie.

well, we did it. after a fairly painless 24 hours of flying, we arrived last night at kilimanjaro international airport, and spent the night at the cutest l'il b&b this side of vermont. no, it's not a b&b at all. it's called le jacaranda hotel, and it's very cozy and very african. which makes sense being that we are AFRICA!!!!! still hard to believe.

interesting observation #1: there are a lot of black people here!

tomorrow we head off on our seven day safari in the seregeti. our guide said we should see a lot of lions, elephants, zebras, wildebeasts, and a bunch of other wildlife. woo hoo!

well, I have 3 minutes of computer time left, so I must cut this sucker short.

off to the wild!

p

That's My Homo Sapien!

leaving for africa in 12 hours. going to the place where it/we all began. kind of overwhelming to think about all that history. I bought a very large book with very small type that will guide me through it. the flight over is twenty-some hours, so I will have plenty of time to pretend to read it.

I need to pack now.

the plan is this: land in kilimanjaro (tanzania, bitches!), do a week-long safari in the serengeti, then over to zanzibar for a little weekend r&r on the beach before we fly to rwanda to meet with the people from the foundation. after we do a trek into volcans national park to hang out with the mountain gorillas, we'll drive to the imbabazi orphanage where we'll spend a week with the kids, taking photos, videos, and such. then it's off to gisenyi, a resort town on lake kivu for a day or two to discuss the plan of attack for the website and fundraising efforts with the foundation people, then back to kigali, rwanda's capital city, where we'll figure out what we want to do with our three or four free days before we fly back to america.

not sure what the internet situation will be like over there, but will try to blog when I can so you guys can follow my adventures and be reassured that I'm not dead.

gonna go get me some africa, y'all.

p