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First I just wanted to say thank you to all you who have sent messages and comments about my trip, I am sorry I haven't been able to respond as my time on the internet is limited but I really do appreciate them all!!!
Soo here's a question for you all, what do you get when you mix a 70 year old german bee expert named Wolfgang, with a equally as old farmer from Mississippi, and a 50 year old land rover in Africa?? Well, if you're me you get a near death experience on the cliffs of the Kilimanjaro national park! What started as an innocent trip to go see the waterfalls, ended in quite an African adventure after a little bit of rain made the veeery narrow road up the mountain into a slip and slide! I swear we almost backoff the side of the mountain but thankfully we made it out alive! Athough we didn't get to see the waterfalls, we did end up hanging out in the local Chagga tribe huts, having tea and sodas, and even got some honey from the local bee keeper who lives down amongst the banana trees on the side
of the mountain. But needless to say I will be staying away from Wolfgang's ancient land rover for quite awhile :D
In other news, everything with the kids here is great. We took them to the fire station yesterday and they had a blast learning about the job, trying on the hats and boots, and seeing how the hose works. They also got to go up to a beautiful resort with a view of Kilimanjaro to play with the ducks they have and play some soccer. The locals here are incredibly generous with our kids, and let them go many places for free because they are orphans, so in a couple weeks we will take them back up there to go swimming and spend the day running around the nearby coffee and banana plantations. Charlie, the farmer from Mississippi and his wife Janey, have been teaching the kids to garden and plant, so this week they learned how to plant banana trees and corn, which they of course loved. Melissa, the director here, really wants to get the kids exposed to as much as possible of the outside/real world, so it is awesome to be with these kids when
they experience things like going to the fire station for the first time!
The other major adventure was attending the dedication of a well that the organization that sponsors our orphanage called Hidden with Christ, built waaay out in Maasai land. It took us over two hours to get out there, but when we finally made it there were over 250 Maasai there to attend the dedication, and they even performed the traditional lion dance, because in their mind we had conquered the lion of thirst. Afterwards to thank us even more we were invited to a local village to meet the rest of the family and eat the ohh so delicious GOAT that they generously killed and roasted for us that day. You can imagine how very excited I was for that, riiiight, I did eat a piece of goat for good measure, but thankfully there was a very hungry little girl sitting next to me who was more that willing to secretly take the other pieces of goat meat off my hands haha. And they even sent us home with one of their goats and sheep as a further thank you, so now the kids have
Mount Kilimanjaro
View from the resort we took the kids topets they can chase around! It amazing how generous these people are considering they have very little, and their entire well being depends on goats and cattle.
Otherwise everything is going quite well, the kids will be out of school at the end of next week so my last few weeks will be super busy as we have alot of day activities planned for them, including a day safari hopefully!
Love and miss you all, I'd love to hear updates from you too!
~Me
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Kai
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Wow
Oaky, this is the first time i've actully had a chance to read this and i am so impressed! the children look like they are having so much fun and so are you! how long are you planning on staying in Tanzania? and are you going to come back with a baby ala Angelina?