And then it was over
I cannot believe it but all of a sudden I'm back in South Africa and my 7 weeks on the truck is done and gone.
I'm trying to comprehend everything I have experienced and let it all sink in. All the game drives, the bush walks and boat tours on rivers and deltas in search of Africa's wildlife. All the hours on the truck on bumpy roads, in the bush and in queues into bigger cities or for border crossings. We were banned to call the truck "a bus" unless we were in those queues when we without bad conscience drove passed the 2 km line of trucks (since we were a bus with people onboard you know), leaving them there to wait for days to cross. Very convenient! ;)
I keep to my first opinion that doing an overland trip is THE best way to see and experience a country/continent. To be able to not only observe but feel like a part of the nature and surroundings even though just passing through a village or farming community. To be able to take in the changes in attitudes from the people as they see a huge truck with mzungus coming past and take in the smells of rain, bush fires, food cooking and more often garbage burning is something that other bus tours do not offer their tourists. Some might not want it but if I visit a place I want to be able to see every aspect, good things and bad, the happy and the sad, the wealth and the misery. It makes you appreciate everything so much more the times you see how people can survive and be genuinely happy with so much less than others are used to. Also it makes you realize what is needed for you to help later on.
The friendliness of the people all the way up was surprising to me. I only got a few fingers directed my way but once a flipflop thrown towards me on the truck. The boy that threw it got quite a scare when the big overland truck slammed the brakes and reversed towards him, he proved that Kenyans are very fast runners right there and then! ;)
To do an overland trip is however not a piece of cake some of the times. If you are not up for camping in a tent, in pouring rain and mud sometimes, with only a mattress and sleeping bag at your service every night there is upgrades sometimes, but really what is the fun in that? The days on bush camps with no toilets or showers are not for people who are used to be clean and comfortable. You also get very used to have many days between hot showers so in the end cold showers is the deal on these trips. If you are not keen for sitting for hours and hours on the roads with only a book to read or, if the road is not too bumpy, card games to play or sleeping as activity then you are in it to be bored sometimes.
The most challenging aspect of trips like these however is the group dynamics amongst the people jumping on and off the trucks. Even though I enjoyed my trip overall I am debating whether or not I would do it again, simply due to the fact of the people on my truck. To have people on a truck like this that have been traveling for months together and finding how much they can't stand each other with no way to change mindset or route was one reality. Couples getting together for the sole reason (is my opinion) that it was convenient to have someone close on the trip but then getting stuck with each other for the rest of the way, spending every single moment next to each other gets them after some months to the point where most couples would be after years of marriage and the negativity that it brings to the groups atmosphere can be detrimental. On top of that I was faced with the most negative people I think I have ever met and have found out that all evil on this world simply comes from raw insecurity in mankind. People who are forced to push other people down in order to push themselves up makes me sick to the core. And people who makes themselves being treated like dogs only due to loneliness and "love" are very close on that list too, together with the ones that treat others that bad.
One of the team said to me one day; "Wow Sof, you joined this trip being a happy and cheerful girl and the words that come out now is completely different!" It's true, the people on the trip got to me in the end, even if I fought it good for three weeks or so it is hard when you don't get away from them more than a couple of minutes every day. I got quite bitter the last weeks but I have no doubt that I will bounce right back and have only the good memories left in a while and go back to the positive me. After all I met not only the bad kind of people but had amazing times with the rest which was very loving and positive, fun people. My brazilian darling who gave warmth and smiles to everything and everyone, the crew of three from SA and Hong Kong that joined with me in Joburg but stayed too short time, the German who joined for an even shorter time in the middle and my last crew of Australian sarcasm and British "don't really fancy that much" buddies that gave me such joy and good times to round up the trip. Also the drivers of the trucks were amazing! I miss most of them a lot and thought to myself that I might still do this thing again, I think I have had the worst crew I could have gotten in a lot of ways and still feel ok with it so as the German would say; "Why not?" ;)
To sum it up, If you have not done an overland trip yet, Do it! Just be prepared to turn your head away and adapt to group dynamics and focus on the good and amazing things that is happening outside the truck. Traveling overall and especially on a truck like this shows you that there is more important lessons to be learned that you ever had before.
Lake Naivasha
After the Masai Mara we had two more days in Naivasha which we spent being very (VERY) active. I found out how unfit one person can be while sitting on a truck or on a game drive vehicle for 6,5 weeks even though she tries to gym when opportunity comes.
We spent half a day in Crater Lake National Park with our Mara guide John who is amazing in recognizing and imitating birds and showed us how to track animals while we walked amongst zebras, foxes, warthogs, elands, gazelles and buffalos. We were able to walk up to a very old giraffe and stood about five meters away from him for a long time. Such an amazing feeling!
We got up to the view point of the lake and later got a four course lunch on a floating restaurant on the lake. Very luxurious compared to the packed lunches we were used to while being on the road or at the camp sites. On the way back the car got a puncture and we got to go home in a Matatu, the minivan taxi that the locals usually is crammed into on their way to and from work. Such a nice addition to our experience.
The next day we had rented mountain bikes and after a sturdy breakfast we sat off at 6.30 just as the sun started to rise. We entered Hells Gate National Park after a 20 min bike ride and me and Ricky were already exhausted after trying to keep up with Stu in the morning mist. We cursed all sorts of things for our unfitness but what we didnt know.. it was only the beginning. ;)
Our exhaustion was soon forgotten when rounding the corner of the Elsa Gate and seeing the landscape with cliffs and rock formations and the steam coming up from the hot springs. We biked amongst the animals and went up and down the hills for view points and bird hides and tracked both leopard, hyenas and porcupine, although no luck in seeing more than the tracks.
We came to Hells Gate Gorge and climbed down for an hour and a halfs trek where the rock formations are absolutely breath taking. The way up was tough on our already tired legs but after an hours lunch and power nap in the shade we decided to do a couple of more km on the bikes. Stu came with the brilliant idea to do buffalo circuit with its 14 km but after the toughest uphill and no road to follow we made a consecutive decision to go back and instead head out of the park.
Instead of going home we continued past the camp site to Elsemere with its tea garden and museum. "It's just around the corner" it was said. I think both me and Ricky thought it was a couple of extra corners but once there with coffee and cakes in front of us we just laughed it away. Even when the Colobus monkey stole two of my cakes I still smiled. (It was a eat all you want buffe after all)
After watching the documentary about Elsa the lion and the Born Free foundation that has donated so much money to wildlife in the world I think that not even Stuart were happy about putting the bum on that saddle again but two more uphills and we got back to the camp site where Tim was waiting with freshly caught crayfishes from the lake. Some had escaped from the bucket and jumped out of the truck when we opened the storage locker but we got them all into boiling water and with a bit of garlic butter to dip them in we had a feast for a starter.
Nothing tastes as good as local food and even more so after an active day in a beautiful place like we had.
The famous Masai Mara
The last stop on my 7 weeks of traveling turned out to be one of my favorites. After a couple of days on a dairy farm in Nakuro we arrived at the Fish Eagle Camp site at Lake Naivasha. We spent one night there watching the hippos at night and waking up from fish eagles calling and marabou storks flying in between the tents. With their wing span of around 3 meters they are not quiet when taking off and the hyenas calling at night around the camp also made it a very special place.
The day after we arrived the team of three that were left on the truck were taken by our guide John and driver Tonny to the famous Masai Mara. By now I had been on quite a few game drives both before and during the trip and although I hate to admit it I was not as excited about it as a couple of weeks ago. I had also heard that Kenya's parks are overrated and over crowded and Serengeti is better etc. etc. You could say that my expectations were average, in the middle of both the amazing and quite negative reputation that the park is having.
After spending only minutes in the park I can easily say that it is my favorite game reserve in Africa so far. The endless plains of green grass and small acacia trees creates a wilderness that I have not seen before. This is exactly how I have always pictured Africa's wild nature but yet not truly seen! It might have been the fact of low season but we drove around without seeing a car or person for miles and miles. The Mara is so flat that you can see kilometers each way at all times and the hills on the sides creates such beauty to the landscape.
You sometimes go for hours without seeing anything, even animals, but that does not matter because I have never felt as free as driving on those plains. There are not many roads so you drive on the grass which adds to the wild feeling, bouncing around on the plains in between bushes and water holes is just the best feeling and although moments when asking the driver if we would be able to get out to the road again and my muscles aching afterwards, it was for the first time proper game drives.
We were very lucky regarding animals, due to the size of the Mara (second largest in Africa) some might find only a few bucks or buffalos when driving around. We had amazing trackers in John and Tonny however and saw herds of 40-50 elephants first thing. We searched for hours for a female lion with cubs which was an adventurous drive on the river banks and in bushes. We had to give up when time was running out and Tonny had to push the van to its max to get to the gate before closing. We did have time to find another lion in the middle of the road and take many pictures of the gorgeous sunset before checking out and heading to camp though :).
The next day we sat off before sunrise for our second drive and as usual we had the big cats as our goal. The park does not have many rhinos and the ones they have are rarely seen. Our goal as very spoilt tourists was therefore to see four of the big five in one day. We started off amazingly as after 45 min John had tracked the beautiful big cat with the name Leopard to a certain part of the reserve. The leopard is the hardest to find and even if you know where it is it is a master at hiding and very shy. So when Stuart pointed at a tree asking "is that a monkey or..?" and Tonny laughed and said "No that's a leopard", we raved with excitement of finding it ourselves and not through someone telling us in the radio. We only got a few minutes with it before it climbed down beyond visibility but that added to the feeling that we found it just in the right moment.
Later we found two hyenas walking on the road, jackals in the grass, giraffes and herds of elephants again, this time with a tiny baby that John reckoned was only two weeks old. We drove around a corner and got stuck in the middle of another herd later on also with small baby elephants that I just wanted to take home.
Our mission was not over yet though, as our guides seemed to be determined to find the lovely lion aswell this day. We drove up and down hills bouncing around trying to hold on while looking in every bush and trying to scan the grass. We got stuck in a ditch in the middle of the savannah and I had to drive while the guys were pushing it forward until we finally got out. After that, rocks and sticks had to be put underneath for us to be able to push it uphill to the path again. We finally got out and continued our search about 20 minutes more and then we saw them, two females resting under a bush in the shade. Beautiful cats! Our goal was completed and we departed from the Masai Mara with not only the beauty of it still intact in our memories but also the fulfillment of the animals we were able to see in such a short time.
A memory stuck with me forever.
Monkey business
I will take a lot of stories with me from this trip and a lot of them involves monkey business. They are funny creatures with such a similar ways to us humans that it makes me intrigued by them even if I am used to having them in my garden, office, kitchen and living room quite often. A place where I've never had them before however is in my car..
Everyone who has been to a place where they have baboons on the side of the road have probably seen nice signs with Beware of baboons, Don't feed the baboons, Keep an eye on your food.. Etc. etc. Well, now you know where this story is going..
Our group was on a day trip in a minivan with a pop up roof to Lake Nakuro National Park, where a lot of Out of Africa is filmed for anyone loving the Meryl Streep and Robert Redford movie? All happy and cheery we were watching the zebras, buffalos and Thomson gazelles gracing on the few plains of grass that the rain had not flooded. The lake was bigger then in at least 10 years before which gave us less roads to drive on but hopes were still up for sightings of leopard and lions as we headed up to a picnic and viewing point called Baboon Cliffs. As we got up to the top some went to the bathrooms (or lavatories as Ricky would say;)) and some went to take photos of the view. Myself stayed a minute extra in the van while tying my shoes in the back.
All of a sudden I hear something in the front seat and look up only to stare at a baboon the size of myself. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this male baboon was up to my shoulders when sitting down. He had eyed out our bowl of pasta salad wrapped in plastic and the next minutes was a battle between our guide and himself trying to win the lunch. They stayed in the front seat while I watched from the back but when he turned and looked for a way to escape with the bowl I found myself out faster than ever before while the baboon took my seat in the back. The whole troop of the baboons were now around the car, some of the smaller ones climbed in to get a treat of pasta, only to be thrown out through the roof by the big male. Baboons were flying, rocks where thrown, sticks were slammed into the car but nothing helped and we eventually lost our lunch. Luckily we did scare them enough to keep the rest of the bags in the van but Ricky had a bit of a fight with the male baboon over his bag after opening it and crunching the plastic inside. Seeing a man and a baboon pulling a bag and kicking each other is one of the funniest things you can see, let me just tell you that.
After the adventure Stuart ran down the hill to retrieve our now very empty bowl and we hurried away from there and continued our game drive cursing every baboon that we saw the rest of the day. Lunch was spent on a lodge in the park which was almost as good as our pasta but even with the Askari (Masai guard) around the corner the baboons got away with stealing a cupcake from a little girl on the table next to us by jumping onto her back. She screamed for a good twenty minutes out of fear, poor thing.
The game drive itself was average but we had good sightings of bird of prey such as Snake Eagles and of a lion laying on a rock overlooking the savannah. We went to a beautiful waterfall and got stuck in the creek when trying to cross which got us to prove the groups skills in pushing and pulling.
A good day with beautiful nature and animals and yet again some adventures tucked in.
In search of adrenaline..
I am a quite adventurous girl if I say so myself.. The last few years I've always tried new things that includes adrenaline. Open Water Scuba diving certificate in Thailand allowing me to go down to 18 meters under water, later on Advanced Open water to 30 meters in Mozambique with dives in the Philippines, Australia GBR, Fiji, Hawaii, South Africa, Zanzibar and even in the coldness of Sweden. I have found the thrill of skydiving when I gave it to my brother for his birthday and he decided to get back at me so we did it together in Sweden, later on I threw myself out of a plane again in Namibia, just as amazing if not better. I have bungy jumped two of the highest jumps New Zealand's Nevis 134 meters and South Africa's Bloukrantz Bridge 216 meters high. (Many say it is the two highest as Hong Kong is from a crane and not natural) What gave me the most heart race though was when I had to climb out of Waitomo Caves on New Zealand's north island after abseiling down and by black water rafting watch the glimmering roof filled with glowing worms??. It was only ten meters up but the slippery wall together with my urge to climb it quickly gave me the feeling of falling and I quickly realized that this was a big part of my night mares, falling off cliffs.
I have loved all the different things and will do it over and over again to my parents dreadfulness, I have started not to tell them about it until after I've done it and survived nowadays which seems to be appreciated. ;) Although I've set myself up for trying most things including adrenaline, there still is some things that I always felt a bit too scared of to do. One thing, after Waitimo, is proper climbing which I think I will leave until I have a middle life crisis or something and really need the adrenaline to feel alive.
The other thing is (or should I say was?) White Water Rafting. The fact of me going down rapids in a small boat with only a helmet to protect me against the waves and especially the rocks that could crush a big animal to pieces yet alone a petite person like myself freak me out. I have always had great respect for the power of water and ever since my first step into big waves with my father as a child as well as the first time tumbling around with a surf board I understood that us humans do not stand a chance against it no matter how hard we try.
So what on earth made me on the 7 May 2013 sit at a table and commit to a full day of one of the hardest white water rafting in the world on the Nile the following day? I can honestly not answer that with a good answer, my fellow travelers called it peer pressure but those who knows me would disagree, however maybe I wanted to face my fear a bit more, skydiving and bungy is fairly secure and the odds of something going wrong is quite small. Not the case in rafting..
The following day it was time.. By that time I had surrendered to the fact and put my mind to it. We were going to do 4 rapids before lunch and 4 rapids after lunch. Two of the rapids were class 3, four of them were class 4 and two of them class 5. To get a better understanding of it I googled the classifications (luckily after I did it) and will share this with you;
Class 1:
Moving water with a few riffles and small waves but no major obstacles.
Class 2:
Bigger waves but no major obstructions in the channel.
Class 3:
Longer and more difficult rapids, hydraulics are bigger (waves, holes, currents). Some technical maneuvering is required but usually for a limited number of moves.
Class 4:
Steeper, longer or more heavily obstructed than Class 3 rapids. Usually, more technical and require many maneuvers. Scouting of rapids may be required prior to running. Swimming Class 4 is challenging.
Class 5:
Strong currents, big waves, boulders, restricted routes and powerful holes that can hold or flip rafts. Scouting is mandatory. Portaging around rapid may be required depending on river levels. Swimming Class 5 rapids is extremely challenging.
Class 6:
Considered unrunnable such as a large waterfall or an extremely violent section of whitewater with severe hazards. Risks include injury or loss of life. Commercial rafting outfitters do not provide rafting trips on rapids with Class 6 ratings.
(river search.com)
We put the gear on and listened to all the instructions, practiced how to paddle, sit down and hold on, how to swim with your feet up so you don't get caught in the rocks, how to get into the air sockets if (sorry I mean WHEN) the raft flips and lands on top of you etc. etc.
Then we were off! The first rapid was a class 5, but not too bad currents our guide said. The thrill of watching the rapid come closer to us was incredible and everything was fine since you had no idea what was in store. ;) Our team was really good at taking orders and paddling so we did the rapid fairly well but somewhere in the middle we hit a wave that flipped us completely. Later on our guide told us he did that deliberately for us to get the feel for it. It was actually good to get that already in the start we later found out..
After struggling to find the way to surface under the flipped raft and finally on board again with adrenaline pumping like never before we set off towards the two class 3 rapids further down the longest river in the world. Our team did amazingly well on those and we had the time of our lives cruising the waves still on the right side of the raft.
Then we came to the last rapid before lunch which was the second class 5 rapid. That rapid then quickly turned into a class 3 so our guide told us that if we fall in just go with the rapid all the way to the calm water. In order to get to it we had to get off on the river bank and walk down with the raft a bit in order to get over the class 7 waterfall that the rapid started with. We were the first raft to launch and afterwards in the bar we heard the other guides say that we aimed for the roughest part haha. I guess we had to live up to the name of our raft, EXTREME.
The few minutes that followed was probably the worst in my life.. We paddled our raft into the hole of current and not long before that I was thrown out into the current. What felt like a few minutes was probably just 45 seconds but stuck underneath water that long with not enough air is not nice. I somehow managed to push myself up (god knows how I knew where up was) twice for minimal sips of air before being pushed underneath again. The fear of hitting a rock and the thoughts running through the mind once the air is gone made me appreciate life so much more once I finally got out spitting and gasping for air and saw the Ugandan kayaker coming to pick me up. After I pulled myself up and tightly hugged the front of the kayak with my legs all I could say to the smiling rescuer that asked me if I was ok was Holy Shit! I laugh about it now but it was not funny at the time.
All of us was shaken after that rapid, either from being thrown out or gotten stuck under the seats of the raft while it surfed in the middle of the whirl hole for a good minute and a half. Lunchtime gave us some time to regroup and get some energy before the last four rapids that were all class 4. We did the three first ones without problem and stayed afloat even though we kept to the extreme theme choosing the hardest parts of the rapids while some of the others did the chicken paths. :) In between rapids we enjoyed the rivers amazing nature and bird life and waved to the children bathing and women washing clothes on the banks. We jumped in and let the drift take us down next to the rafts enjoying the sunny weather we luckily enough had.
Last rapid was a hard one but since it was "only" a grade 4 if we flipped we would only stay under for seconds in the current our guide said.. Tension hardened.. He went around to check everyone's life vest which did not comfort us much but there was only one way to get it over and done with and that was through the rapid. After seeing the raft before us completely shoot up in the air with the people being thrown in all directions, we had a couple of paddle strokes, time to get down and hold on (and pray for your life) and we hit the waves which threw the raft vertically up and then backwards. We kept on the raft while it was surfing the whirl and we stayed there long enough for the happiness of staying on it to change to someone screaming "I don't like this anymore!" and fearing that the other raft would crash into us. One by one flew off and finally it flipped with four of us still inside and we were washed away downstream.
The fact that I wrote this much about one day of my life tells me that the fear of dying was worth it in the end.. I will never forget this, the adrenaline and great feeling of riding the waves with sometimes perfection in order to avoid flipping over. I was glad when it was over but was very glad that i did it. I just hope that I won't dream too much about it. ;)
Gorillas in the mist
We have moved back towards the east of Uganda after some days in the mist of the western mountains. It has been many kilometers and rain and the roads are filled with potholes and under construction so it in itself is an adventure. Keep an eye out for YouTube clips of people bouncing off their seats later :)
The landscape in Uganda is absolutely beautiful with hills full of trees but also square patterns from the growing of crops everywhere. The patterns are nice to look at but once you see it from the perspective that many years ago wildlife had its home all the way from the capital city of Kampala out west compared to the 14 hour drive you need in order to reach it now, it's no longer only a treat for the eye but a stab in the heart. That mankind can do much harm on this planet is a fact so often shown on this trip and it hurts to see how much forest is gone due to farming. It also shows how necessary the national parks in Uganda, Rwanda and Congo are in order to give the animals their space once stolen from them.
The animals I'm talking about and the goal of our trip out west is of course the Mountain Gorillas that lives in the mountain forests together with buffalos and elephants. They only let tourists spend one hour per day in a group of maximum 8-9 people with the family of gorillas in the different parks so you need to apply for a permit in advance in order to see which park and country you are signed up for. Our permit was for Mgahinga National Park in the far southwest of Uganda, close to the Virunga Volvanos park where Karen Blixen once opened the worlds eyes regarding the situation of the gorillas survival. The late 1960s saw the Virunga Conservation Area (VCA) of Rwanda’s national park reduced by more than half of its original size to support the cultivation of Pyrethrum. This led to a massive reduction in mountain gorilla population numbers by the mid-1970s. (Wikipedia.com) Today there is a bit more than 800 of the mountain gorillas left and thanks to the great conservation work it is very slowly increasing.
We set out for our trek on a Saturday morning, drove through some Pygmy villages on our way up the mountain and was after a pretty big climb up to the park sports office greeted by our ranger Jona and Nicholas, a police officer that was accompanying us up the hill together with his AK47 on the hip. "Just in case of buffalos and elephants, not to hurt anyone" Jona told us. ;)
Before we started our day he also told us that the reason they take care of the gorillas was so that history did not repeat it self like it had with the Dinosaurs. Before there was a lot of them but due to man there was none left. Haha we all tried our best not to laugh out loud at that comment since it was all in good thought.
We walked through the forest up and down the paths jumping over buffalo dung and red ants that likes to bite. We were lucky as the tracking rangers earlier found the gorillas not too far from our starting point. We had heard stories of hours and hours of trekking through dense bush with machetes cutting the way and people with mud up to their knees. We only needed to use the machete once and were very lucky with not too much rain or hot sun. The altitude got to me and in the uphill climbs it felt like I never had exercised in my whole life. (It has not been easy to work out these 5 weeks but still)
An hour into the rain forest we found the trackers and we sneaked into the bamboo where we saw the family of gorillas resting. It was a family of 9 including 4 silver backs, 1 black back, 2 females, 2 juveniles age 3 and 5 years and to our amazement a very recent addition to the family as one of the females held a baby gorilla only two days old! She was very protective and it was not until the end of their rest we caught some glimpse of the brown little thing from time to time.
It took a while for me to realize that what I thought was a group of them lying down actually was ONE (!) gorilla, the dominant silver back. He was massive, probably two and a half times me if not three. Rolling around grabbing his feet in a nice stretching pose I could not get my head around how big his arms were. I felt an urge to walk up and crawl into them and get a big gorilla cuddle, which the juveniles got from time to time when they were not laying on top of a tree eating or fighting each other. The females were cleaning each other and the big male while the other silver backs and black back was lower in the valley eating their way up to us slowly. It was not until our time was up that we saw them and had to move around as they made their way towards the next bamboo bush. No one thought of counting how many we actually had around us..
When our time was up we reluctantly left them to eat and headed back. It was more downhill on our way back and we were about half way when we found the forth silver back that the rangers thought still was in the valley. I was second last in the group and it was dense bush so after hearing a sound I've never heard before but could guess my way to as a gorilla charging all I could see was the people in front of me running towards me and in the corner of my eye I saw Nicholas with his gun running passed me towards the sound ready to shoot. Before we had time to react we heard Jona scream that all was ok. He had come too close around the corner and he and the gorilla scared each other. We saw him in the bush but he left us alone after that. WOW Quite an experience, not every day that happens to you right? My heart was pounding even though I was not in the front so I can only imagine how it must have been seeing a giant gorilla coming towards you hitting his chest and screaming like that.
I will never forget this day; Gorillas in the mist, Mzungus in the mud.
I'm a millionaire!
Today I had to take out 1,5 million at the cash machine.. What a feeling! Haha I only wish it was in SEK or even better USD but it was in Uganda Shilling :)
We have spent a couple of nights in Kenya saying goodbye to some of the crew and hello to others and are now six people on the truck. We just crossed the Ugandan border and are heading towards our Gorilla Trek with children screaming Mzungu everywhere we go. The word Mzungu means white person and originates from the Kiswahili verb Kuzunguka meaning "to wander around aimlessly like a mad person". Some say that the Swahili word for hangover; kuzungu-zungu meaning "my head is going round and round" also has something to do with it. Haha all I need to know is that the children is smiling while saying it, which they most often are, and Ill be happy.
Up in the Kenyan highlands it was very chilly but beautiful forests with pine trees and other trees that actually reminded me of home. I had expected the people to be very tired of tourists by now and I don't know if it is the truck that makes a difference but I can't feel the hostility that I have heard so much about at all. We will come back to Kenya after a couple of days here so my opinion might change but so far I have only felt warmth from the people everywhere. I love sitting on the truck and seeing a person that at first glance looks unfriendly shine up in smiles as soon as we wave and smile at them.
It is a good lesson learned to see what a smile can do in the world.
