Update 3

Hello Friends!

It has been an adventuresome, amazing week for Leah, Maddy, and I. Since we last wrote we have been on a few different excursions with the girls as well as an adventure of our own!  Let me apologize for no pictures in this post, but it adds an extra hour to get them on here because of the slow internet and I don’t have the time today!

Last weekend some of the girls who have been doing well in school got to go with us into Karen (a town nearby) to see the “Baby Elephant Orphanage” and the “Giraffe Center” The Elephant Orphanage is a project started by Karen Blixen which takes in elephants that are found orphaned for different reasons. Many of the elephants lost their parents to poachers. The organization does not go looking for these elephants, but simply responds to calls from tourists or locals who see baby elephants alone. They only allow humans to see the elephants while they are feeding them in order to allow the elephants to stay wild. They, thus far, have a 100% success rate at integrating the elephants back into the wild with a new family. It was really interesting to see.

After the Elephants we headed over to the Giraffe Center with the girls. Basically, it consists of big porch where the Giraffes are able to come right up to. The workers give out handfuls of food pellets and the giraffes eat them right out of your hands! My family may remember being there, and I have a vivid memory of the Jarrett girls telling us that they would feed the giraffe from their mouth! So, it goes without saying that I was NOT going to leave that place without giving it a try. I marched right up that porch, handed my camera to Leah, and asked the guy worker about it. He so kindly demonstrated, giving me the courage to try it! Yes, I kissed a giraffe; In EVERY sense of the word. It was interesting because there were more white people in these two ‘tourist attractions’ than we have seen the whole time we have been here and I found myself gravitating towards the Africans instead of the tourists. However, we did have some good conversations with other travelers. One lady came up to me and asked me if I would please feed the giraffe from my mouth again so that she could take a picture! So, I went in for round 2. Leah and Maddy, while amused at my determination, were not quite as enthralled with the idea, and stuck to feeding the giraffes with their hands! By time we left a few other young tourists that were in a group were talking about that crazy girl who fed the giraffe with her mouth and they too gave it a try! I feel that we left our mark and started a trend! I believe the Jarrett Girls would have been proud! 

Monday night a group of 10 volunteers arrived to share the guest house with us. They have been traveling in Kenya for about 3 weeks, and leave tonight. Since they were going to be here last week, we decided that it would be the perfect time to go on Safari!

To give you an idea of how much of an amazing experience the safari was, I’ll have you know that I wrote 14 pages in my journal about the trip. Needless to say, I am going to summarize on here: Our driver picked us up at Hekima on Wednesday morning. We loaded up, and started the drive. Our guides name was Peter and then there was another man traveling with us named Godo who is redesigning the website for SpurWing (which is the company that we scheduled our safari through). Peter has worked in tourism for years and was a bottomless pit of knowledge. He used to work in Spanish tourism, so he fluently speaks 4 languages: Spanish, English, Swahili, and Kikuyu (his mother tongue). That in itself was impressive. We stopped at a gift shop at the rift valley which brought back memories again of my previous trip. I don’t know that it was the exact same spot, but I am going to let myself believe that it is just for the sentiment of it all!

For those of you who have ever been on a mission trip, or heard of some of my family’s road-trip adventures overseas you know that if you get from point A to point B with no troubles, it is a MIRACLE. As we were getting closer to the Maasai Mara Safari, we heard a snap and pulled over. Luckily we were right in a small town and so we pulled over at an “Auto Shop” and discovered that one of the fan belts had snapped. There were two adorable little boys standing outside our car smiling at us every time they caught our eye. I just wanted to get out and love on them, but we stayed in the car until it was fixed. About 45 minutes later we were up and running again and back on the road.  About 10 minutes later: SNAP: there goes the other belt. This time we just removed the old belt and kept driving because apparently you only really HAVE to have one. We dubbed the small break downs as an adventure and laughed our way through until we finally arrived at the campsite!

We were approximately 3 hours late for lunch so grabbed something quickly and then headed out on our first game drive. The beauty of the land is indescribable. We had beautiful weather and were driving as the sun began to go down. That first day we saw so many different animals and were consistently amazed by their size and grace. Peter (the guide) kept feeding us information and I couldn’t stop thinking how creative our Creator is. The evening ended with a delicious dinner at the camp site and hours of talking by the campfire. Peter is 28 and married with one boy. We all sat around the fire talking about everything under the sun. I learned so much about the different culture that we are in. Leah and I were literally hanging on every word that the workers shared. We also had the whole camp to ourselves because it is low season and we went in the middle of the week. So we basically had 7 men waiting on us hand and foot. I wasn’t about to complain ;)

Here is where it gets interesting: The next morning we woke up early and headed out for an all day game drive. We drove for a couple hours expecting great things: but what we didn’t know was that the Maasai Mara was out to get us from the start! We were on our way to the hippos to have a picnic lunch by the lake when we got stuck in some mud. This wasn’t the first time we had been temporarily stalled in mud. But on the other occasions, one man drove while the other pushed a little and we were good to go. However, this temporary break turned into 4 hours in a ditch in the middle of the Mara. Any normal person would have been upset , but at the end of the trip it was everyone’s favorite part. We dug out mud by hand, shoved rocks under wheels, pushed, pulled, and prayed. After the first two hours we decided to stop and eat our “picnic lunch” in the van. Then we all got down in the mud some more. 4 and a half hours after we had gotten stuck, we prevailed in getting out! Truthfully, I give all the credit to the prayer. I think I would have made my mom proud with our joyful attitudes. We did everything without “complaining or arguing.” Peter told us of other times when he had been stuck where the people he was driving left with another driver and he had to get out alone. Once he even slept in the car in the mud until morning when a bigger car could come pull him out. We informed him that we would be sticking around and getting out.

The rest of the safari was just as interesting as we saw more animals and more beauty. There are so many more details I could share, but I don’t feel that I could do the experience justice with my words. The third day we went to the Maasai Village in the morning. The children were beautiful, but covered in cow dung and flies. One little girl was afraid of my white skin when I tried to talk to her, while another little boy would have given me high-fives all day long. While it was a bit of culture shock to comprehend that these people truly lived like this every day, I found myself having a respect for their sense of tradition. Some things have changed over the years, but they still live with a respect of their past. More than a respect: they live in the same mud huts, eat the same food (including drinking blood and milk every day), and practice the same marriage traditions. The best part was when the men did their “jumping competition.” Peter joined in the competition, but lost miserably. We were told that whoever would jump the highest would get a girlfriend. Some of them were jumping pretty high!

It was late Friday night when we arrived back at Hekima, and it was bitter sweet to end the adventure. We were all exhausted from the trip, but couldn’t stop talking about all of the wonderful things. In the short three days that we three girls spent with the two men, we went through a lot and felt a sense of family.

The girls welcomed us back to Hekima with open arms, all asking about our trip and telling us about the “Carnival” that the other group of Volunteers had done. We played soccer with the girls and the uncles on Saturday. Leah slipped once and fell on her wrist and hurt it. We are hoping that it is just a small sprain, but please keep her in your prayers as we feel it out the next day or so to see if it improves.

We are excited to be back at Hekima, and are starting to get closer to the girls each day. Some of their stories just break my heart. But they have such love and family here. Yesterday we celebrated the birthday of an older girl who was literally brought to tears by all of the girls wishing her birthday wished. As she addressed everyone she choked out “I am so thankful: I never thought that I would have a family like this” before breaking into tears. I hardly know her and I was crying. It was heartbreaking, but so encouraging to see how God has provided for her and so many others.

Please continue to pray for us as we are about to our half way point. We have four more weeks here and are still going strong. However, we are always grateful for prayers for energy and health.  The second half of the trip is going to include our week in Tenwek, our visit to Word of Life Kenya, and our visit to our World Vision Child. We are so thrilled to see what God has in store for us!

God Bless,

Lizzy (and Leah)