We left early Wednesday morning and had a 4 hour car ride to the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Park. When we arrived around noon we got into 3 different vehicles (which look like typical "safari" jeeps!). We had a 1/2 day out in the park and saw a lot of animals!! Impala, Wildebeest, rhinos, giraffes, kudu, zebras, buffalos, and elephants!! My favorite were the elephants!! They were so amazing! At first they were pretty far up the hill but then three of them came down right next to our car and played in the mud pit! They were so big and beautiful!! We even got to see one tear down a tree with his trunk!
During the night we stayed at a camp site in tents. But, these are not your normal pop up tents. They are huge canvas tents that have 2 beds, a dresser, and it has a indoor/outdoor bathroom attached to it. It was so nice! Also, the camp only has a fence to keep out elephants so other animals walk through the camp at night, mostly hyenas. But one night we heard that some lions came through the camp! After the sun set we weren't allowed to leave our tents until the cars came right outside to pick us up. It was quite the adventure!
The second day we went out for 12 hours! I loved being in the car driving through the gorgeous landscape with he wind blowing! We went up to breakfast at a place called Hilltop that looked over all the beautiful scenery. The food was amazing! One of the exciting parts of that day was when we stopped to watch these rhinos right in front of us, then one stared at us for a long time then started to mock charge us!! Reg, our driver, sped up REALLY fast and then the rhino stopped! My favorite part was seeing a breeding herd of elephants walk right in front of our car! There was around 15 of them! And there were babies too!! They were so cute and precious!!! And they had the clumsiest and cutest little walk/run! It looked exactly like the baby in the elephant in the The Jungle Book!
We slept over one more night at the camp and then had a half day out in the park until noon. It was such a bummer we didn't get to see any big cats! We always missed them by a few minutes! But I still had an amazing time!!!
We then switched with the other safari group and went back to AE on Friday. On Saturday we planned a trip to a little camp site by a river. We had a braai (an Afrikaans barbecue) and went cliff jumping!!! I was so scared at first! It took me a while to gain the courage to jump, but I finally did and it was so exhilarating!
Sunday was our last day of adventure and we went zip lining in Karkloof! It was so much fun! There were 8 different slides and the longest one is 170 meters! We had the most amazing view going down, the beautiful African jungle below us! I just cant believe how blessed I am to experience all of these things! And to top it off, my psych professor took the 5 of us out to dinner that night! It was a so much fun and lots of laughing!
Today we had to come back to real life. We are starting up service sites this week, but we also have a new class called Principles and Practice of Community Engagement. We have it for 8 hours during the day!! But it is actually not too bad because our professor is amazing!! I mentioned him before in the beginning, but his name is Francis Njoroge. He is from Kenya and is famous worldwide for being a project coordinator for missions. He does participatory surveys and evaluations for relief and mission organizations to make sure they are being successful and actually benefiting the people. He quoted a Catholic bishop, Dom Helder Camara-
"May all of us who are involved in peaceful struggles for human promotion bear this in mind always; it is good that our hands help the flight of the poor, but may we never dare to take the place of their wings"His focus is really on empowering the people in the community so that they can grow and sustain themselves after "the whites" have left. He said the biggest cancer in Africa is dependency. They don't learn how to use the resources that are available to them all around. It is our job to encourage them to stretch their wings but we should not take the place of their wings. So much wisdom and it is only the first day!!
We also had a great chapel today! A South African who has summited the highest mountain in every continent told us some of his stories. He started out as a videographer and got the chance once to go to the base came at Mt. Everest to take some shots. He went back to South Africa after but was really inspired and motivated to climb Everest. So a FEW MONTHS later he went with a team and summited Everest!! That was the first mountain he had ever climbed... Everest! With barely any training! Now he has climbed all of the highest peaks in the world and also works as the camera man on the trips. It was so cool to hear what he had to share.
I will be posting pictures soon of safari, cliff jumping, and zip lining!
No comments:
Post a Comment