Kibalo's in Africa

We finally made it!!! Our trip was originally postponed due to the death of my grandmother on 7/18. She passed away while on the phone with my father from natural causes and she will be greatly missed. We arrived in Nairobi on Friday night, after a really long flight and a layover in Ethiopia, and had a really great dinner with the teachers at Mercy Care. Everyone was really nice and one of them asked me to marry them!! We woke up early on Saturday to drive to Masa Mari which took almost 6 hours. We checked into our tents (which sounds bad but they were more like luxury hotel rooms) and saw baboons right outside. Later we went on an afternoon safari and it was amazing. We saw lots of giraffes, zebras, wildebeests, mongoose, antelopes, gazelles, warthogs, hyenas, hippos, and ostrich (I'm sure there were more that I can't think of). We were also lucky and got to see 4 cheetahs and a leopard which are rare to spot. After the safari we went back to our tents and there was an elephant right outside. The next day we woke up early and were determined to find some lions. We spent the morning trying to find them but were not lucky. We still got to see many amazing animals and the sunrise. Afterwards, we had breakfast in the bush and went on a nature walk. We relaxed for the rest of the day and went on one more safari. Again, we were looking for lions and our drivers were stressed out thinking we might not find any. We spent almost 2 hours looking and finally found a pack of about 20! We then saw the sunset and came back to the lodge. During dinner, my mom and Carol surprised me with the locals singing a few songs and their version of "Happy Birthday". It was really cool but also really embarrassing. Overall, it was probably the best birthday weekend I have ever had. Today, we drove back to Nairobi which ended up taking closer to 7 or 8 hours because we had 4 flats along the way, it was ridiculous. Tomorrow we are going to the school for the first time and looking forward to do what we can to help.