Lions, Tigers and Bears?

Well, not exactly. But I have taken two trips in the past month and seen lots of amazing other animals. First stop…Swaziland!


Swaziland, what a beautiful country! The capital city Mbabane has a population of 50,000 people, and the country is about a 3 or so hour drive wide, obviously very small scale. It’s fairly mountainous, really red dirt and the views are really simple but stunning. The people are incredibly friendly and welcoming. Really hard to imagine when you are there that about 40% of the people are HIV+. Apart from the kindness of the people, Swaziland is famous for its candles. I got to visit the candle factory (very different from Lancaster, PA if you’ve been there) since the candles are not dipped but put together with squares of wax. They also not surprisingly make some in the shape of many of the African animals – they are incredibly creative with their designs.


I went with my friend Peter and we stayed in one of the wildlife reserves. Really pretty countryside and you see warthogs right outside your door in the morning. We stayed in a Rondavel, which are roundhouses as you can see in the pics. Peter did a mountain bike race and I went on a hike and saw all sorts of animals, such as wildebeest (aka gnu), nyalas (like deer but bigger and with stripes), zebras, ostrich, impala and some unidentified other animal in the antelope/deer family. Really amazing to be alone and all of a sudden come upon an animal many times my size and wonder who was more daunted. I did get a couple grunts from a wildebeest that was particularly irritated by my presence. I enjoyed that! See fun pics here!http://www.flickr.com/photos/vida-internacional/sets/72157600347981415/

Here we come Kruger Park!

A few weeks later, I went with another friend David to Kruger Park, South Africa! Kruger Park is 350km (217 miles) x 60 km, i.e. just about the same size as the whole state of New Jersey! Needless to say, in a weekend, we didn’t get to the majority of it, but we did cover as much ground as possible and had quite a few close encounters with some very large animals - elephant, buffalo, kudu (also in the deer/antelope family), white rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, impala, funny looking birds, eagles, monkeys, baboons – even babies, and hippos! Sadly we did not see any of the cats – such as lions, cheetahs or leopards, which are the hardest to spot. We had to save something for next time, right! But I think you’ll see how close we did get to the animals we saw…http://www.flickr.com/photos/vida-internacional/sets/72157600551724108/

Day to Day in Maputo

Aside from looking for animals, I went with some friends (Ilana and Ramah featured below) to a beach about 30km from Maputo which is really pristine. We brought a mini grill and spent a really leisurely Sunday taking walks and enjoying each other ‘s company. And the burgers we made were great!


Workwise, life has gotten much busier here. We had an event for Dia das Crianças, which means Children’s Day – what a nice idea for a holiday, especially since the kids got the day free, sadly not the adults. Our safe water program scheduled an event at one of the local schools and the turnout was great. I even got the video on my camera to work for a bit so you can see what some of the dances look and sound like. But you can see in the pictures our large drop of water that goes around and gets people involved in promoting treatment of water. It sounds kind of silly but when you’re there, you can see why people get really engaged in it all.



One of the most touching things was one of the events was that prizes were given out to the students that scored 1st, 2nd and 3rd best on each of 4 subjects in school. For the 1st place winners, they even announced their scores. One girl who was much younger than the others who got 1st in one of the subjects, when her name was called, she burst out crying unable to believe she had won. She was so moved she could barely speak, it was really touching. May sound a bit corny but it was really nice to see that good scores in school were valued and rewarded.


Finally, I did get to meet Mrs. Laura Bush who came to support the President's Malaria Initiative. She and daughter Jenna came to town here and were very personable and supportive of our program. The preparations for their visit down to the most minute detail were insane but I suppose such is the life of the First Lady.


Plans? Highly overated…

So what’s my plan? Well, as you all know me well, my future is always a bit in the works and not completely set. But I did get a 1-mo. extension at my work here so likely I’ll finish that out and then do a bit of traveling before coming home (probably Capetown, S. Africa and Nairobi, Kenya!). Although I’m still figuring out whether staying here and working might be an option, in the event that that doesn’t come to pass, I’d probably head home around mid Sept. So keep enjoying your summer in the meantime and I’m always interested to hear what's going on there!