After taking the advice from a wise source I decided to blog just a little bit more, however we are going back in time here and this is one of my longer posts so sorry about that. I also have a blog post or two left, one of which is just a hilarious story that would only happen to me. Also while re-reading this while typing, I thought I should make a “Monk List” in which I list all the things I was afraid of on this trip, it would be quite a lengthy list.
Monday June 22, 2009
Today we traveled from Eldoret to Nakuru to meet up with the other half of our team that was already there. The Eldoret group we figured out was the singing group so at 6:30 in the morning when we pulled out of the guest house we started in song, we sang various songs beginning with a song that a long time ago Steve had taught the willis youth group that I have since forgotten, I do know the course but that’s about it this song is called “If on the wings”-great song by the way! Then we sang additional “church” songs leading up to “Hakuna Matata” from the Lion King. It was a ton of fun and Joseph even said that he wanted us to keep singing…so we did. On the way we pulled over and stopped at a hotel like shop thing to use the restroom and then we grabbed some breakfast and had a good and relaxing time but we didn’t stay too long because we needed to get to Nakuru to have time to shop and arrive at the game park on time. Now once we got to Nakuru we went to shop…at a market. When we got there and started piling out of the two matatus and the conways car we were swarmed by vendors, I tried to stay with someone who was familiar with the market scene but somehow me and Zach got stuck at this one place so after we made our one purchase we ran to the matatu that Joseph was sitting in and shut the doorand locked it and I closed my curtain(again here I am in a marketplace forced to close my curtain, because I am such a fraidy-cat), if you have realized yet, I do NOT like markets! So instead of shopping me and Zach got to enjoy a kiswahili lesson from Joseph in which my dad joined a little later on where he sat in the front where the world could see this mzungu(white person)-it was crazy! After everyone had finished shopping which was only one hour, however Zach and I only lasted 15 minutes, we went and ate with the Conways and then we headed to the game park. I was in the matatu that was in the lead for most of the trip with Scott, Mitchell, Zach, Steve, and my parents. The sightings of animals started before we even got inside the park, we saw a good number of monkies just in the parking lot! Once inside the park we started driving a ways and at first it was a bit boring but then I guess Noah let the door of the ark drop and we saw zebras and then there were other animals to follow some of which were rhinos and baboons. We drove down the trail a ways and eventually reached Lake Nakuru where there were masses of flamingoes and pelicans in the water, this was one spot where we were able to get out and walk around, so we all piled out of the vehicles and took a number of photos(my camera’s battery died minutes before we reached the lake so I relied on everyone else’s cameras) and Hollye, my mom and I walked along the beach towards the sea of pink flamingoes and watched as they flew up in the air-it was incredible! On the way back to the vehicles my dad spotted some tracks…of some sort of cat, not a kitty cat but a simba(lion) cat! Once I saw those I quickly made my way back to the safety of the matatu! Once everyone was back in we started back down the trail to continue with our safari, we saw some more zebras and baboons which when we came across a certain baboon, Mitchell thought it would be a good idea to call it over but instead of going to Mitchell’s window(right in front of me) he decided to come to mine! Now with my track record of wild animals on mission trips I decided it would be best to shut my window so as to keep the baboon outside of the matatu, I wasn’t taking any chances! We continued on with our journey and came upon a baby rhino closely followed by the protective mama rhino. When I say “came upon” that’s exactly what I mean, the distance between the matatu and the two rhinos was equivalent to the distance between a bus stop and a stopping bus..and once more it happened to take place on my side of the vehicle- it was nuts! After we gazed at these massive creatures for a while-a long while- we moved on with the tour. Now we were going to head up to the Out of Africa Cliff but on our way we saw some waterbuffalo, some warthogs, and giraffes however on our way up my mom, who was sitting in the very back seat, started feeling car sick from all of the bumps in the trail-not road but trail, so Steve, who was in the front seat said he would switch with her, okay let me take a second to remind you that we are in a wildlife game park with rhinos and lions, so once we found a seemingly safe place they made the switch even though we couldn’t see any dangerous animals it was still nerve racking because you didn’t know what would come out of where so I held my breath and shut my eyes while this switch was taking place. Everyone made it back into the matatu safely so now we were headed up to see the most amazing view that I will probably ever see.We got up the mountain and looked out across the jungle where we could see the slow moving giraffes we looked out at lake Nakuru with a portion of pink water due to the brilliant color of the flamingoes. It was breathtaking! Not only was it breathtaking in the sense of the view but also because we are extremely high up on a cliff with no gaurd rail and I am terrified of heights, I always say it’s not the height that I am afraid of but the fall that may come from the height, so I stuck to the safety of looking at this magnificent view from a distance unlike many of our team who climbed down part of the cliff just for the fun of it-that made me nervous! Once everyone had their fun at the cliffs it was time to take our group picture and then we were on our way up to yet another clifff, Baboon Cliff. This was another spectacular view however one of our matatus got stuck and didn’t know the way to this particular cliff so along with seeing the baboons and giraffes and beautiful scenery we saw one of our white, yellow, red and blue matatus driving between the trees at the very bottom of this cliff! We then loaded back up and headed down to our way out, we started driving down at 5:58 OM and the park closed at 6 for safety reasons. We got back to the Hotel Kunste and went to eat dinner. I ordered a wonderful minestrone soup. My mom however ordered the vegetable soup thinking carrots and real vegetables that we hadn’t had any of the 2 weeks we were there but when the waitor brought out the soup, it was a green color and as it turned out instead of being called “vegetable soup” it should have been called “Sukuma wiki soup” sukuma wiki was my mom’s least favorite meal and so Larry asked the waitor to bring some minestrone soup out for her. We wrapped up this fun filled day with a devo that Jeff led in which he read us one of his blog posts that was a tribute to Sam McReynolds, we also sang a few songs and then it was time for bed.
-Whitney Herrington (I wrote this journal entry a while back and never put it up but I wanted to share this day with everyone, it was an exciting one)
