Blogs from Africa - page 2727

Friday wasn't too busy, sight-seeing wise. We spent a lot of time on the campus at University of Cape Town, getting oriented to our program and meeting our professors. We took a tour of the campus, and I have to say, the South Africans sure seem to love their stairs. A lot of things around here are named after Cecil John Rhodes (aka the Rhodes scholarship), and there is a lot of controversy surrounding his contributions to the country. It's interesting to hear the South African people's takes on the politics. Everybody here, even the poorest people, are VERY political, and I have tried to have conversations with everybody from the porter at the hotel to our law professors about their take on the political situations, particularly the conflicts between the Xhosa and Zulu populations. ... read more

After an emotional departure from the airport, Amy and I boarded flight 1 to Amsterdam. Flight was solid, no worries. Met Eric, Genora and Linda in Amsterdam and sat back with them for a while getting to know them better. I was feeling real agitated for some reason, not sure why. Raveesh showed up some time later and Candace barely made it due to her flight being stopped because of a medical emergency. Anyways, we all flew down to Nairobi and slept the entire flight. We then jumped aboard our flight to Entebbe and got there fine, just without Candace’s trunks. We were greeted by a host of characters who were very joyous to welcome us. We learned that they were all members of Lahash (the organization we are with: www.lahash.net) in some way. A guy ... read more

Awhile back (2 months - yes I have been slacking on my blog updates!) I took my first safari in Kenya to Lake Nakuru National Park with some friends from Kisumu. The park was initially established as a bird sanctuary and is Kenya’s first established rhino sanctuary and therefore has one of the largest concentrations of black rhino in the country (Nakuru is also home to white rhino). The park has 500 species of bird including 2 difference flamingo species whose populations can number up to 1.5 million at a time. The cats represented are lions, cheetahs, hyenas, leopards and jackals. Then of course there are baboons, zebras, giraffes, water buffalo and gazelles. Of this we saw everything except cats - but surely not every bird species. Despite some rain on the first day our game ... read more

After a big party in the bar on our second night in the camp near Jinja, we got up fairly early (9ish) to go quad biking around the local villages. The quad bikes were quite difficult to handle at first, but we soon got used to them and were speeding around all over the place (following our guide), and trying to avoid the chickens! We went around on the back roads (although they were so narrow they were more like paths) and saw lots of people in outside their houses all shouting jambo (hello) at us as we went past. We also saw lots of rapids on the Nile, and even stopped for a while to watch some rafts try to make it down one (which they all somehow managed to, despite the fact that they ... read more

Hey everyone!, hope all is well in the states, i will be joining you back there in a few weeks now. Phase 12 here in seychelles is winding down. we have spotted a few more whale sharks since i last wrote you. the biggest was just over 7 metres (~25 ft). and my week on curieuse island was also a highlight although it was a bit crazy because i was in charge of a group of 4 volunteers on a remote island. while we were over there we were busy building the house which will eventually house the new GVI seychelles expedition, sea turtle tagging (i caught and tagged my first hawksbill) , and i led four dives throughout the week. On my dive friday morning the visability was crystal clear and we saw 11 White ... read more