Sunset Picture

Made it to Londolozi!

Today my mother and I both arrived to Londolozi game reserve. The property is absolutely amazing! From the second we arrived, the service has been completely over the top, and the animals we have seen so far have been brilliant! While we were having lunch, a herd of elephant walked in front of us, and enjoyed a little play time in the water below us, amazing to watch. After lunch, my mom dragged me along to do some "yoga in the bush," which is a new program that they have set up here, which I have to admit was quite nice. It was the first time I have ever done yoga, and it was a lot better than I expected. After that, we went on a nice game drive with David, the ranger, and our tracker, Simon. We saw lots of elephant, giraffe, kudu, cape buffalo, and several leopard tracks. We looked for the leopard and her three cubs, but never found them. Simon has already guaranteed that we will find them tomorrow. I really want to see a leopard while I am here, and David and Simon both told me that leopards are their favorite animals, so I feel pretty confident we will see one tomorrow. I'll keep my fingers crossed! The elephant we saw were spectacular though. We saw them on the edge of the stream, drinking water. The light was perfect, and they seemed like they were almost posing for the camera. Once the sun was setting, we stopped to take a break from the game drive, and were able to stretch our legs and enjoy the sunset, which was spectacular. I can't wait for our game drive tomorrow at 6 o'clock in the morning!

The End of my Stay in Philippolis

The past couple of days have been very relaxing. Yesterday I went with Kate to see !Xarip Dame. The exclamation point before Xarip is a clicking sound that you use to pronounce the word, it’s not a punctuation error! The dame is the largest dame in all of South Africa, and it was quite a spectacular site. After that, we grabbed some lunch on the way back to Philippolis. Once we returned back to Kate’s house, we relaxed for the rest of the day. I had a bit of a sore throat, so I didn’t feel like doing much else. Today, I woke up, and anxiously wanted to see how my Cincinnati Bengals did against the Cowboys in their first preseason football game. I saw that they lost, but at least they didn’t give up any offensive touchdowns! My throat felt better today, so I planned to go out with the same boys that I went hiking with the other day. They didn’t show up, most likely because it was very cold today. It was the first cold day I’ve had since I have been in Philippolis, so I’m not complaining. I went on a short run, and stayed inside for the rest of the day. I even got to see Sportscenter on Kate’s TV at 3 o’clock pm, and I got to see both the Bengals highlights, and even more impressive Reds highlights. Hopefully I’ll return from Africa, and get a chance to see the Redlegs compete in the playoffs, and continue rooting on the Bengals after a strong start of the season! Tomorrow I head off for the airport at about noon, and travel to Johannesburg to meet my mother! I’m excited to see her, and go on a nice week or so journey before our mission up Kilimanjaro! It’s been a great stay at Philippolis, and I’m looking forward for more adventures to come!

Great Day in Philippolis with the Kids

Today was a very enjoyable day for me. I woke up around 8 o’clock, to pack my backpack for my days hike. Everyone except me left today, to go to Samara until Tuesday. I said goodbye to the group, and headed to Kate’s house to wait for the local Philippolis kids that said they wanted to take me hiking around the area. They showed up promptly at 10 o’clock, and we headed out for a nice hiking adventure. The five kids that showed up were between the ages of 13-16. They took me over barbed wire fences, up hills, through farmland, and we stopped at a nice resting spot to have a picnic that Kate provided. All the kids were very interested in knowing more about the USA, so I drew a map of the United States in the sand, showed them where I lived, and I had to have answered at least 30 or so questions about my country. Then one kid said proudly, “I hear Africa has lots a great minerals such as gold and diamonds, and has lots of things to offer.” I told him that he was completely right. Then he continued to say, “Then why can’t we get our stuff together?” I didn’t know the politically correct answer, but I went on to give them an example that a while back, the white man had all the power in Johannesburg, but now today the black man has majority of the power. The problem that exists there today is that there is too much hostility between the black and white races, because the black people resent what has happened to them in the past and that is why their crime rate is so high. I then continued on to say that although horrible events may have occurred in the past, Africa needs to live in the present and put aside racial tension and do what is best for their country. All the kids agreed with what I said, and even emphasized, “What has happened in the past is done, we need to live in the present and worry about our future.” I was very impressed that they agreed with what I said, and went on to tell them that they are the future of Africa. Instead of putting their heads down and continuing to walk, all of them looked up at me with eager faces claiming they were excited for the challenge. We had a lot of good conversation through out the day. I also got a chance to see some scorpions and cool lizards that we found by lifting up rocks. They were all super excited to show me everything they could. After our walk, I asked if we could play some soccer around where they lived. I grabbed a soccer ball, and went into their part of Philippolis to play a friendly game of soccer with the guys and their friends. Today was a very nice day! They want to do the same on Monday, which I look forward to.

Tigers in Africa?

For the past couple of days I have spent the majority of my time working with Pete, a geography teacher from England, on putting the windows in on our brick classroom. Yesterday I woke up at 7 to go on a nice jog, because I knew it was going to be a hot day. I got back close to 8, showered up and had some breakfast, then went off to the building site until noon. I grabbed a quick bite to eat, and then went off to the 6th grade class to do a few exercises with them on their conservation class. Last week we just watched the movie “White Lion”, and talked about it briefly afterwards, but this week we had them first draw out a scene from the movie that they remembered, which was interesting because some drew a lion, porcupine, or elephant, while a couple drew a picture of a rifle. After that we had them do a word-search on some of the key terms that were mentioned in the movie. Some kids whizzed through it, while others couldn’t finish it with out peaking off the person next to them. Finally we had them work in groups of six to put together a puzzle of six different animals we cut up into pieces. We put all the different animal pieces together, mixed them around, so they would have to work together to arrange them in their proper position. We made both the word-search and then puzzle a competition, and the winners would receive more candy then the other kids. All the kids enjoyed themselves, as did I. Kate drove me back to the “hole,” which is where we eat our meals, and hang out together, so that I could board the bus to go on our excursion to Tiger Valley. At first I was very skeptical on going to see tigers in Africa, but once I was there, and John Vardy explained his reasoning for having these tigers on his property, the whole aspect began to really make sense. In short, he explained how the tiger population in Asia is diminishing every year, and while the populations in India and China continue to grow, there won’t be enough room for the tigers to survive. His future plan is to continue to expand his property to 100,000 hectors, and introduce the lion, leopard, cheetah, and hyena into his tiger populated land, because evidently these creatures once lived together in parts of Asia. There is already a lioness on his property that gets along with the other tigers, because John introduced the baby lion when one of the tigresses gave birth to a small litter. At first the mother tiger didn’t accept the baby lion, but soon after it became part of the family. I saw footage of this lion and tiger hunting together, which was spectacular to see. There were also two white tigers on the property, which was awesome to see, because there are not any other wild white tigers in the world. It was a fascinating place to see… Today I built all day with Pete, and we’re almost above the window line. Tomorrow I’ll continue working on the wall. The group before us only completed 4 rows of bricks, and I think we’ve completed about 16-20 rows… we’re cruisin’.

The Past 2 Days in Philippolis

Yesterday was a very fulfilling day. Kate came up with the great idea of doing a “60-minute makeover” type ordeal on an 80-year-old man’s shanty house. His home was in horrible shape when we first arrived. There were several windows missing, the paint job (both inside and outside) was non-existent, there were spider webs, spiders, and black widow egg sacks underneath his bed and table, his mattress was completely worn down and full of dust, and his clothes were scattered around… basically this man needed our help, because at his old age, he would have never gotten around to fixing up any of these problems. We started by taking all of his furniture outside, scrubbing down the walls (outside and inside) with soap, and sweeping the floors and the ceiling. Then we painted the outside a light tan color, and put in new windows. Once the outside was complete, we wiped down his table, his beds, and put all of his clothes on hangers. Kate bought two new mattresses for his beds, so he will hopefully sleep better and not kill his back with the crappy mattresses he had before. Next we painted the inside with a similar color as the outside, let it dry a bit, and then moved his stuff back in his house. Kate also bought a bunch of useful household items such as sugar, salt, flour, coffee, and other generous items. The coolest part about this whole project was that Kate had the old man leave his house for the entire day, because he is very grumpy, and she was worried he would complain the entire time. She told him we were only going to redo his windows. When he came back, he was ecstatic with what he saw. It was nice to see this grumpy old man with a huge smile on his face!
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Today has been a bit slow. We continued building the elementary school, but everyone was really tired from yesterday’s work. I just had some lunch, and it gave me some energy to hopefully do a better job working this afternoon. Kate had mentioned that I may be going on a hike with some of the local kids around the mountains this afternoon. If that works out, it should be a lot of fun! Tomorrow we are going to see some tigers that someone has on their farm, and has been raising them for many years. It’s going to be weird seeing tigers in Africa, but I’ve never seen a tiger in “the wild” so it should be a great time nonetheless.

Weekend Trip!

Just got back from our weekend trip at some game reserve about 2 ½ hours out of Philippolis. I stayed in a small hut with two other teachers, and enjoyed the presence of the guides that were in charge of the place. During the day I walked through the game reserve with one of the guides dog, named Shadow. I would walk until lunchtime, grab a bit to eat at the campsite, and then head off again to explore the land. At one point I stopped at the river to search for some cool rocks, in hopes that I would find a diamond or two. Unfortunately I had no such luck, but I did find a couple of neat rocks. At night we would make a fire, and the guides taught us a fun game called “Lie Dice”. It’s very similar to poker, except you play with poker dice. The rules are quite complicated, but it was very fun to play once I got the hang of it. We had a flat tire on the way to the campsite, and also on the way back to Philippolis, which was annoying, but wasn’t the end of the world. I wish I had brought my fly-fishing pole, because there were all sorts of fish rising on the river every morning and evening. The people who went white water rafting came back every time miserably cold, and eventually I started my own group of hikers. As much as I do enjoy white water rafting, I think I made a good decision going on hikes. I got to explore a lot of the property, which was fun, and gave me a chance to have a bit of time away from our huge group. Tomorrow we are doing a make over to some man's house who lives in Philippolis. It should be a fun day!