Pure Magic-mwujiza

I sometimes feel a little less than inspired to write anything down, hense the lack of daily thoughts and reflections on the adventures of me. This is rather strange however, as this place is full of so many extraordinary occurences, that I should be churning out news. But its Sunday, and most of you are probably still asleep. I on the other hand got a rude wake up call at 7am...no I have not slept in for 5 weeks. But a cup of kenyan coffee and the morning light was definitely enough to get me up and about for another eventful day.

I decided on Thursday to move away from the standard text book chapter that I have been allocated to teach and did a lesson on Music, Johnny Clegg and his song African Sky. Now there is no better way to kill a song than make unsuspecting children learn words from the song as vocabulary, especially when trying to explain what a "highway" is (not too much tarr around here), or how that relates to "stars across the heavens", but by the end of the lesson I had 11 Masai children dancing and singing African sky - it made my day! Especially as half way down the escarpment back to camp, in my open landrover it started to pour with rain, I was in my element! Literally (at the risk of sounding completely cheesy)...the rolling thunder across the savanna, underneath the African Sky... u can imagine the smell of rain which we are in desperate need of, the rivers haven't been so low in years, rain streaming into the vehicle, my clothes soaking wet and the thought of the grade 7's from Emurutoto singing a bit of johnny.

My first crossing...or two!

It isn't often that I get to drag the manager out of his camp for a drive, but every now and then I remind him of the millions of Wildebeest pronounced Wilde - ee - beasts crossing over the Mara river from the Serengeti and off we go. Last Sunday was one such day. We drove right over to the otherside of the Mara Triangle (about a 2 hour drive) in hope of seeing a river crossing. As its fairly early in the season it wasn't a given, and we hadn't left ourselves with much time. But the driver, ever a ranger spotted a herd of Wildebeest gathering on the bank on the otherside of the river, and sure enough after half an hour of patience and growing excitement they started moving down to the river. Its so difficult to verbalise the experience, once one animal decides to cross they all follow at such a rapid rate that they are often forced to move forward, even if they dont want to. The dust and motion and noise (which sounds a bit like Huntersvlei calves after they've been weaned) makes it complete mayhem. The lurking croc only adds to excitement, however due to the low water level the wildees and Zebras seem to be having an easy time of it this year and the crocs are going hungry.

We estimated about 1000 animals in the first crossing, as spoilt as I am we saw a crossing of about 4000 animals half an hour later and then on the way home to sundowners on the escarpment we found a cheetah...no other way to describe it but magic!