Needy, Kneader, Neatest

 

This cat is as needy as the late and great Mr. Mahler VI. If Sue is in a chair, Mr. Wheel is in her lap kneading a tidy nest. If he's not in Sue's lap, he's in my lap.

 

 

Another shot at the Ngorongoro Crater rim. I talked last night with John from our tour group. He's trying to combine 4 memory sticks worth of photos into one chronological file on his computer. When we combined our two sticks, the pictures joined together in roughly chronological order. Close enough

 

 

the neat stripes of the Zebra

Life of Pie

From the Saltlick BBQ cookbook that Steve and Liz gave us for our birthday, Sue attempted a peach cobbler using organic frozen peaches. It tasted OK but the key to a good cobbler is probably the ultra fresh and juicy Texas peaches that are not available here in February. So the next day I answered my own frequently asked question: “is there any pie?” Yes there was because I made a pumpkin pie using a new recipe from the back of the generic Cub Foods brand pumpkin can.  The verdict? Delicious.

By the way, you are not seeing new glasses on my head. These are my pre-2008 backups that I’m wearing while my current frames have some new lenses put in them. These new lenses are the type that you older folk wear to both read up close and see into the distance. Call me old but just don’t call me late for some pumpkin pie.

I accidentally uploaded this next photo of me on the porch at our Arusha lodge.

Wise Mary, Nixon and Prisca during our welcome ceremony at Ipogolo.

 

Here’s the hard-core safari guy wearing an orange golf shirt and a Gilligan hat. All of us men grew beards on safari but then shaved them off when we returned to the more civilized city of Arusha.

This is our tent room at Tarangire Park which is, as you can see, a tent with a king-sized bed in it. There were zipper-down screen doors on the front and back. The back door led into the bathroom. We toyed with the idea of leaving the side curtains open during the night but in the end chose to not encourage any night terrors from me. (I was a big chicken.) Sue claims she heard animals snorting around right outside the tent in the middle of the night. 

There were three walls around the bathroom and there was plenty of hot water. You could hear the drain water form the sink and shower trickling outside the tent walls. The power was turned off at 11pm and back on at 6am. At the head of the bed we found a whistle presumably for announcing things like, “There’s a lioness and three cubs scratching to get in my tent!” or “Hyenas are pawing at my suitcase containing Market Pantry granola bars!”

These lodge accommodations were all plenty nice for us but maybe they’re not up to four star standards.

In the evening, or whenever it was dark, you were supposed to stick your head out of your tent and wait for the guard to come to escort you over to the restaurant building. They called him a guard but his only defensive weapon was a flashlight. I guess the animals really are shy of humans and they usually go out of their way to avoid us. It’s only in the movies where every elephant wants to crush you and every lion is a man eater. Mary did think she saw a deadly baby Black Mambo snake slithering on the path.

We all just wanted to sit around these lodges and enjoy the peace and quiet all day. Many people in fact do stay here for many days at a time to enjoy the wildlife that you can see from your deck chair. We were on a pretty tight safari and travel schedule so we had only minimal time to really enjoy the lodges. The truck breakdowns actually made our schedule even tighter

 

Here’s a shot of a local woman carrying things around on her head.

Dr. Eng remembered Dala from her visit to Ipogoro in 2007.  Dala, aka “one of the Mamas” is a church member who helps out/is employed as a kitchen helper.

 

 

 

 

Here’s our scruffy pal from the Ngorongoro Crater. Judging by the size of his comely mane, he’s probably older than 5 years. There are some problems in the crater with the lion population inbreeding. Outside the crater there is plenty of room for lions to roam, take over new territory, go to single’s bars geared towards big cats, meet new lionesses, buy them drinks, etc. but in the crater, the gene pool is fairly shallow. I’m reminded of the old joke about the Wisconsin folks who live north of highway 8 who meet their spouses at family reunions. (Ba dum bump)

Hidden Cat / Wall of Fame

 

 

Who do you think this is ensconced in a quilt on the couch? I almost sat on him this morning when I was taking a break from my trombone playing. We moved the Arusha cheetah to the coffee table in an attempt to lure Mr. Wheel into standing next to her. He hasn’t done it yet but he will soon as he spends a lot of time walking around on the coffee table.

I don’t know how he got in there or why he let his arm hang out. On weekdays Tailwheel gets up around 5am and lingers near the kitchen until someone feeds him but on the weekend this cat sleeps in like a teenager. We didn’t see him up and about until noon today.

 

 

 

Here’s Mr. Wheel enjoying his “Sunday Roast”. Give him a pint of Guinness and The Daily Mail or The Telegraph and he’ll be set for a relaxing afternoon.

 

Mike and Judy, do you miss this big boy?

 

 

We had some prints made at Walgreens today of our six exchange students that we have hosted. We’ve hung them in the exchange student’s room.The first three are from South Korea: Alex summer of 2003, Sunny spring of 2005, You-Jong spring of 2007. Then there’s Japanese Makiko 2009-2010, and the German girls Johanna fall of 2011, and Jojo spring of 2012. Note Mr. Mahler featured in two of these portraits. There is a frame reserved for our next German student. . .

 

 

Makiko / J 1

 

 

J 2 / the future Mr. Christoph Grunau . . .

Sue and I are seriously looking into a visit to southern Germany this coming July with definite stops in Neuenburg am Rhein und Esslingen. We may pop into Aschach, Austria to see if anyone there has heard the name “Deinhammer”.

Giraffes

Reader Beware: We’ve found a much easier way to post to our blog so entries may be a little more frequent.  Today’s topic is Giraffes. 

It was amazing to see giraffes in the wild.  They are HUGE! 

 

Yes – they are as awkward as you’d expect.  They were quite a sight when running.  They defend themselves against overly ambitious lions who try to take them down by kicking and running.  

The giraffes around Ndutu and the Serengeti took off when they saw us.  The giraffes around Tarangire just stopped what they were doing (eating and/or just standing around) and looked at us. 

They blend into their surroundings amazingly well.  When we were on safari, I was constantly on the look out for animals.  I was fooled several times.  It’s amazing how a tree can look like a giraffe and a mound of dirt can look like a lion. 

The Swahili word for Giraffes is Twiga.  Doug’s nickname became Twiga as well.

When in doubt, act like a tree and keep eating. 

Elephants

 

I’ve started looking through our pictures more seriously to start our Shutterfly book or books.  We have some REALLY good elephant pictures so I thought I’d share them today.  There’s very little to say about them other than they were amazing.

The picture above is my absolute favorite (for now).  You can see the guy in the front drinking but then you notice there are elephants as far as you can see. 

This elephant was less than thrilled by our presence.  He started making elephant sounds and pretend charging.  Our fearless guide Kasani advised us to “stay calm”.  His herd was on the other side of our vehicle.   

What’s not to love about a baby elephant?!  Our guide told us that if they can walk under an adult elephant, they are less than a year old.

 

License to Plaid

 

This was outside of one of the preaching points in Ipogoro (or Ipogolo depending on who you asked.) I loved all of the flashy colors and I especially loved the mismatched combinations that people wore giving me creative license to wear conflicting plaids.

 

 

This was at Ipogolo next to the new sanctuary they are building. Sue, Laura, Mary, and I led the kids in as many kid song/games that we could think of. This looks like The Hokey Pokey or maybe The Chicken Dance.

 

 

This is our room in Iringa with its bed net to protect against the mosquitoes. I didn't really see any mosquitoes anywhere but some people in our group think they got bit some at night. We all took anit-Malaria medicine every morning at breakfast continuing a week after we returned to the Malaria-free US. Some Malaria medicine causes extreme nightmares so I was glad to make it through our trip without any episodes of night terrors.

 

 

This view is looking down toward Ipogoro from the hilltop city of Iringa.

 

 

Sister Mary and Frau Doktor Eng

 

 

Here's a group song at the hilltop preaching point.

 

 

Here you can see an eagle-like bird flying above the river in Tarangire Park.

 

 

Reedbuck

 

 

Tarangire is located in a low elevation area of the rift zone. Ask a geologist to explain my last sentence. The weather here was probably the hotest we experienced on the trip aside from the sweltering heat on the airplane before we took off from Dar es Salaam to Amsterdam. As the temperature climbed and people began to sweat and fan themselves the pilot came on and said there was something wrong with the air conditioning system that the plane hooks up to at the terminal. I asked Bill if we should pop off our shirts to show how blazingly hot it was. Before we even finished laughing about this idea, a large woman had taken off her shirt and was sitting there on the airplane in only a bra. Classic.

 

 

The elephants behaved like the giraffes--when they saw us pull up, they started slowly moving in the opposite direction leaving us to wonder what effect the safari business has on the actual lives and routines of the animals. If you observe it, you've altered it.

 

 

This is the Arusha Lutheran Medical Center, the hospital that our medical missionary Mark Jacobson helped to open about 5 years ago. Dr. Jacobson talked about how great it is to have international money coming in to Africa earmarked for AIDS treatment but he wondered if some of that money could save many more lives if it were put towards Malaria prevention, for example.

 

 

This stained glass was really nice. We attended the morning chapel service before meeting with Dr. Jacobson. There were several foreign doctors present at the hospital including a Canadian doctor who gave up her practice to come to Africa to work. She was touring around the continent trying to decide where she'll settle in to practice medicine.