This is the view from our first safari lodge at Ndutu. The brown sign says something like "do not go beyond this sign or you'll be eaten by lions." Something like that. I tried to bring back the generalized pointing at things pose.
Senior statesman Brandt noted that many animals would display their posteriors whenever we pulled up next to them. He said he might put together an album exclusively featuring butt shots. For stripeless donkeys, I think they are just preparing to deliver a kick in self defense.
I think this is a Grant's Gazelle or some other large antelope.
I plan to get a lot of mileage out of these lion den photos.
Yes, that is a giraffe skull casually sitting on the side of the path. Lions do occasionally take down small giraffes or even large and sick giraffes.
We rode in the safari vehicles usually standing up with our upper bodies hanging out the roof. It was really quite comfortable but you had to hang on with the road or lack of road being so bumpy. There were no rules about where the vehicle could go in Ndutu and in the Serengeti so off road was the way we rolled. In Ngorongoro and Tarangire we had to stay on the paths.
Through the Lutheran partnership with Iringa diocese congregations, much work has been done on farming techniques greatly increasing the yield in corn and beans. This is a picture of Ipogoro's new corn silo storage device that Augustana helped supply funds to build. Now they can sell excess corn when the prices are higher.
Ipogoro Lutheran Church offers a variety of community programs like this preschool whose session started the week we were there. We passed out candy canes and soccer balls to these several hundred kids. Pastor Nixon said many of these kids are orphans due to the on-going AIDS crisis in Africa. Fortunately for many kids when their parents both die from AIDS (or something else), they may have extended family who will take them in.
This is John, Mary, and I supervising the unofficial Christening of the soccer balls.
In case you haven't figured this out yet, I am presenting these pictures in a mostly random order so as to not bore you with too many of one topic all at once. In our first two days in Iringa, we visited four of the five preaching points for Ipogoro. By the way, Ipogoro is a growing town adjacent to the larger city of Iringa--Iringa sits up high on a plateau while Ipogoro is next to the "highway" at the bottom of the hill. This preaching point (the name escapes me) is the one that is pretty far up in the hills. We had to walk about 10 minutes straight up a slope that is probably impassable by any vehicles other than a dirtbike. This congregation recently completed a new bathroom facility with a septic system out back behind the church building. We had a tour of it.
After we exchanged our usual introductions with the congregation and sang some songs, they brought out a case of soda in returnable 1970s style tall bottles (Pepsi, Coke, Fanta orange, etc). We were able to casually circulate and talk with people either with some interpretation help or all in English. Sue and I showed off our photo album of "our life in Minnesota" and we handed out photos of ourselves standing in the cold on Christmas morning. Finally we did a photo shoot of the ground breaking for the new evangelist's house that they plan to build next to the church. Everyone grabbed a shovel or a hoe and dug in. Someone got a great photo of me leaning on my shovel as if I were a county worker exercising my right to lean on my shovel.
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