Good-byes, Tears, and The River & Land Cruise

So sorry for the delay. Just when I encourage you all to check in real soon for another post, our computer has problems! Thankfully, we are back and running. Oh, but where do I begin to bring you up to date over the past 3 days??? I decided to take this next week to reflect of the past few days, because it's just too much for one post!

Tomorrow morning (Sunday) Doug, Dar, Mindy and Brent leave for home, and we will miss them greatly. It has been wonderful having them here, and it will be quite an adjustment to go back to the 4 of us around our table, after enjoying a full table of eight for 2 weeks. This evening, Dad gathered us all together for a time of reflections and prayer. It was so meaningful; what a joy to be able to pray together with family members. Many of us took time to thank the Lord for my parents, who have been such glowing examples to us over the years as they have loved these dear people as their second family. Quite a few of us shed tears; a special moment for me was when my Dad prayed for Ken and me. Knowing that I have been missing Ken, Matthew immediately came over to me and put his arm around me, put his head on my shoulder, and remained there by my side, while my tears flowed. He is so sweet, and I am so glad he is here with me. More than once, he has just come up to me and given me big long hugs as we both feel the absence of the most important man in our lives. This Tuesay marks the half way point of our 10 week separation....5
weeks down, and only 5 more more to go till that wonderful man arrives here in Africa....yeah! OK, I don't want to get too emotional and mushy; otherwise I might lose some readers! Moving right along to the safari report...

OK, now for the amazing Safari that we went on in Chobe National Game Park in Botswana - I'm sure I will miss many of the details, but I will try to cover the highlights. My expectations for the safari were along these lines .... wouldn't it be neat if we could see a few elelphants, a couple of giraffes (especially one drinking water) and a few other animals? Well, we saw so many elephants and giraffes that I lost count! We started with a river cruise, and then went on land in an open jeep. We saw elephants, giraffes, hippos, crocodiles, warthogs, monkeys, impala, sable antelope, and various birds. We were amazed as we got to see elephants cross the river, drink water and spray themselves. One baby elephant nursed from it's mama (and actually then went to another one to nurse too - I'm still working on finding the answer to that one! I forgot to ask our guide, but we figured it was a grandma, aunt, or sister!) As one elephant stood by the water and
dusted himself off, we were told that he was too lazy to go into the water to cool off and instead cooled himself with the sand and dirt. We watched herds of elephants come down to the water. Undoubtedly, one of the highlights for all of us was when he stopped by the shoreline to watch an elephant that was a little distance away. Our guide turned off the boat and we just sat and watched, took pictures and watched some more, as he showed off for us by squirting water out of both sides of his trunk! Then as we were all watching him from the boat, he started walking towards us, getting closer and closer. Brent was at the back of the boat, which was closest to the shoreline, and he was frozen in his stance as the elephant got within a few feet of the boat. We glanced at our guide, as if to say, "Are we safe?"
Everyone was quiet and still. Brent says that if that elephant would have stretched out his trunk, it would have hit him. He wasn't exaggerating! I captured it on my camera! The elephant just looked at us and then walked on by, as if to say, "I wanted to give you a nice close-up view of what we big guys look like!" Unbelievable!

I always knew giraffes were tall, but I some of the ones we saw exceeded my vision of tall! Oh, they are so amazing to watch, strutting along so straight and tall. We would be sitting there watching a few, and then someone would say, "Look, here come some more!" And how thrilled I was, when one giraffe, stood there, looked around and then spread his front legs wide, so he could bend down to take a drink! What an awesome Creator we have! We watched 2 hippos for a while, munching on grass in the water. Our guide informed us that these big fellows are quite vicious, able to rip a person in half, so he always keeps his hand on the key in the ignition in case they start charging. We were glad they were more interested in eating their
grass that day! We learned that hippos can run 45 miles an hour, and a not long after that, we watched 2 hippos running in the grasses....what a sight! Those animals are huge and it's amazing how fast they can run. We saw a huge group of hippos (called a raft). Our guide told us that whenever there is a raft of hippos, the man of the raft can always be easily identified. He's the one with the most marks, cuts and tears on his hide, due to protecting himself and his family from other hippos. Sure enough, as we peered through binoculars, we could readily identify him. The female hippos have no marks, because only the males fight.

Within the first 20 minutes of our river cruise, our guide pointed out a crocodile, and said, "That's a baby croc." I thought to myself, "Really? That looks plenty big to me!" Well, a bit later, I had no doubt that it was a baby as we stood in amazement at huge crocodiles that measured at least 10-12 feet long and were so fat! Impala were plentiful, and everytime we saw warthogs, someone on the boat always seemed to laugh at those interesting creatures! We saw a lot of sable antelope, even though we were told that they are not seen very often. We felt privileged to see these stately, beautiful animals. I am going to save some of distinguishing facts about some of these animals for Matthew to write about :) Some have asked to hear from him, so I will try to get him to write a few things this week.

Well, this is enough for now! Obviously I am not as concise as my dear husband. If he were writing this, it would read something like this: "We saw some cool animals -go for it!" Oh I love that guy, and Matthew and I sure do miss him :)

By the way, we were not successful at getting the visas renewed for the entire time, so we will need to go to Choma on Monday to get the next 30 days, and then in August, most likely, we will need to go to Livingstone to get the last 30 days. Keep praying. I am praying that on Monday, the immmigration in Choma could give us a few extra days so that we could combine the trip to pick up Ken (Aug 21) with getting the visa renewed, so that we don't have to make 2 separate trips to Livingstone.

Stay tuned for the report on Breathtaking Victoria Falls!

Leza Amulongezye - Beth