African Safari Adventures

Pictures = good internet connection today. Lucky lucky you!

With care package items in Uganda...don't we look happy?


Chatting with some Kenyan friends


Ron's jam session with some buds


So, many of you have asked what types of wild safari animals we have encountered here in Africa. Sightings of desirably interesting exotic animals have been few and far between, but it is true that we’ve had more encounters with nature than we would have at home.

We have exactly three mosquitoes living inside our bathroom toilet. Before you dare to sit, you must first wave your hand quickly over the bowl several times, hopefully causing enough air disturbance to make them flee. Otherwise, you will have given these mosquitoes a feast – the equivalent of a double whopper delivered right to their front door. All white meat, if you know what I mean.

In fact our bathroom is a veritable panacea of wildlife. We also have a gecko living behind our bathroom mirror. We have named him Geico the Gecko, and we like him and he is our first pet. Although recently Geico was very roguish indeed when he appeared one day with baby geckos. Apparently “he” is a “she”, and we ought to adjust our gender pronoun accordingly.

We also have large – very large – grasshoppers, which have the distasteful habit of flying around in chaotic zig-zag patterns. Having one hit you in the side of the face is a startling and unpleasant experience indeed. And don’t even get me started on the Mutant Cockroaches Which Must Have Migrated Here From Chernobyl.



Other wildlife sightings include the rat that lives in our neighbor’s backyard that is big enough to be seen from three stories up. Barf. I don’t mind insects and little buggy creatures so much, but I draw a hard and fast line at snakes and rats. The neighbor also has a pet monkey, which occasionally makes lewd gestures at pretty girls.



Speaking of our little plague-inducing friends, one day we were at the market when there was a disturbance on one of the shelves, which turned out to be a large black rat. The shopkeeper excused himself (with some measure of dignity, which I’m not quite sure how he managed) and marched over to that rat and picked it up in his meaty fist, took it outside, and flung it over the roof of the building. I was astounded. I kept thinking that there was probably a poor kid on the other side of that building, playing soccer in his yard or whatever, when out of the clear blue sky a big black rat came and hit him in the face. Sigh. It’s a tough world.

In town, there are curious number of establishments that play host to packs of wild cats. Now these are not the darling, sweet, playful cats that live in some people's imaginations (although the rest of us know that, with rare exception, they are a savage, barely domesticated species who consistently make you feel inferior to themselves). These cats are mangy and wild-eyed and have fleas. I feel very suspicious of these cats.

There are also herds of turkeys in our neighborhood. And no, we do not live on Old McDonald’s farm, though it may sound as such. There are one or two big, ugly turkeys and many little turkey babies. I wonder what the purpose of these are, since I have never actually seen or heard of a turkey being eaten in this part of the world, and to my knowledge you can not make an omelet out of their unborn.

And lastly, the entire Great Rift Valley in Africa seems patrolled by cows with horns as tall as me and with the girth of my thigh. The cows themselves seem docile enough, but these horns are terrifying and I do not like them. My sister Emily has an irrational fear of cows, which, she would be happy to know, is not so irrational here in Burundi.

So that is the relative extent of our wildlife experience. If it sounds exciting, then you have gotten more out of the description than we have gotten out of the experience, we promise you.

And while we do hope to see an elephant or hippo or something postcard-worthy one of these days, we do hope that Gustave the man-eating crocodile stays away.