Big Tree

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So its been a while....some wait with batied breath for each post (I call them my parents..) while the rest get pissed at the email SPAM that drops into your inbox each time I make an entry...to mom and dad: Here ya go...to the rest of you..its prob sun morning what else do you have to do?

Yesterday we all piled into the back of our Bukke (Afrikaans for pick-up truck) and headed out to the village the Engineering students are working in...they needed to d some work on their project while the rest of us wanted to go along for the rid and see some of he country and what they'd been working on for the last 3 weeks...

Their project is a Bio-digester..or biodisgestor..I have no idea...anyways basiclly its a big plastic sack in the ground with pipe coming out the top...you add cow manure and water everyday and as the poo breaks down it gives off methan gas...the methane is piped t a stove and used for cooking while the left over manure flows out the other end as high grade fertilizer...I can't rememebr if I already described this...but basically, its a fart machine...anyways it take a month or so to become fully functonal so their goal was to check seals and gaskets for leaks before letting it "mellow" Rick mentioned they needed more manure and seeing as I had nothg better to do and three weeks of wrangling baby poop (which is a million times more deadly than cow manure...look it up or ask your mom...) I took it upon myself to do some scat-harvesting...and I don;t want t toot my own horn too much but Rick and the rest of the engineers said it was some of the highest grad manure they'd ever seen...(Hey if theres one thing to take away from a Liberal Arts education its how to produce some top nothc bull shit)...

After team methane finshed meddling wth their machine we decided to tkae a little road trip to see The Big Tree. It was a 30 minute ride over the mountains from the Wet Side to the Dry Side and another two hours into the bush down a dusty road....three in the cab and seven in the bed of the Bukke...once we werte off the main road three of us stood in the back and held onto the roll bar for the remainder of the trip...all arrived safely to...The Big Tree


The Big Tree is a Baobob well over 43 meters in circumference, 22meters tall and hasd a root system that goes out over 2km...(there was a sign and we took notes)...its age is estimated at over 3000 years...this is definitly one of those times where I wished I could post pictures easily but the connection speed here is tooo slow and I'd been here all day...suffice it to say...someone stood back far enough to include the whole tree in a camera shot with one of us in the picture as a comparison and you can barely make out a person standing at the base...we spent two hours or so there eating lucnh and climbing all over the tree...I never thought it was possible to actually EXPLORE a tree but we did...theres a cave in side of it that you an fit 30 people in and branches that go one and on and up and up and you can just walk on them they're so thick....I spent a good 30 min eating an orange in one branch and thinking that I was sitting on something that was 1000 years older than most world religions...and it was alive and would continue to be alive until well after we were gone and forgotten...I'm running out of time in the internet cafe so I can;t really explain it without regressing to Hollywood Cheese Prose but I prmise I'll let it sink in and will talk to anyone about it when I get back...

Anyways it was a great day and I swear I took alot of pictures...too many in fact....We're having a sunday BBQ at ur place tonght so I gotta run to the store and buy some chickens...love and miss you all...


Jimmy

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Comments

[Shokoufeh]

Jeeemy, the fart machine meeeses you! Great story telling!