A Day at NEGST and then I'm "Goin' Home"!

I’ve had a wonderful day at NEGST – the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology.  There was no set schedule for me to follow and I was told I could just start walking around and talking to people…most of you know I have enough of my dad in me that that was no problem.  At breakfast I happened to run into Paul, the Executive Director of one of the not for profit organizations that supports NEGST and someone our church as partnered with for several years.  I thought it was fortunate that he was here the same week I was going to be visiting and he was very gracious with his time.   He let me join him for breakfast and even sit in on one of his meetings.  He arranged for me to have a tour of the campus and even shared his lunch and his dinner time with me.

I also learned the reason Paul was here this particular week.  You see on Friday, NEGST will be hosting the President of Kenya (!) as he presides over the official ceremony that recognizes the transition from NEGST to a full-fledged university, heretofore to be known as African International University, or AIU.  What a wonderful time to be here – everyone is excited about the events at the end of the week, the grounds and the buildings are getting all spruced up and even the roads will be repaired.  It seems that everywhere the President goes, the Minister of the Roads goes ahead of him and makes sure the roads are smoothed out 2 days ahead of time….I’m thinking the Minister has never driven through the Mara….

This is a beautiful campus, even without any sprucing up.  Newer buildings and facilities like the library, the faculty building, and the administration building that holds the computer lab where I spent the last half of the afternoon.  And refurbished older buildings that used to be part of the original farm (fondly referred to as the “coop” as they were old chicken coops) which are used for class rooms and study rooms and they even are host to a book store, a children’s library for the children’s school also located on campus, and a convenience store.  The campus also has its own health center and the centerpiece of it all is a beautiful chapel.

Here's some shots of a few of them...

This is the library

This is looking down a couple of rows of the "coops"

This is just outside a cafe on campus

This is one of the student housing units - they start at letter "A" and go all the way to "T".  The bottom two levels are for families and the top level is for single students.

Here's a shot of the school that they have for the children of the graduate students.  It's actually a combination daycare/preschool/primary school.  Very nice as many of the students have families with them.

Here's a shot of the chapel from the side.

I didn’t have a set itinerary so I pretty much roamed the campus introducing myself to people and getting to know who they are and what they do.  I’ve found them all to be very friendly and gracious with their time.  This is truly an international university as they have many students from various countries in Africa including Sudan and Ethiopia and they also have students from as far away as Brazil.  The student body is about 500 and the total faculty and staff must be about another 100.  It’s clear that this is a premier theological graduate seminary program and they even attract students from the United States and Europe to come here to study.  As they move to University status they will also begin to add degrees in Business and Psychology, all with a firm Christian foundation.  I can’t wait to see what lies ahead for this place….and with any luck, maybe I’ll be back some day to see for myself first hand!

This is Paul on the left and the University Librarian, Efriam on the right.  They invited me to join them for tea and mandazi (Kenyan donuts)...how nice!

This was during small group time where the senior faculty meet with a group of their advisees to discuss, pray, and plan for their upcoming studies.  I took this shot across the campus to give you a nice full view of the chapel in the background.

I am now sitting in the airport at Nairobi waiting to begin my journey home.  I’ve got about 25 hours of travel ahead of me once this first flight takes off and I’ve already been up 18 hours….I’m sure hoping I can sleep on at least one of those long flights!

It’s been a truly amazing 11 days.  I never in my wildest dreams ever thought I would go to Africa, let alone experience the things I did along the way.  I hope this blog has given you a little glimpse into what I’ve experienced and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it if you ever stop me in person…!

And now I'm ready to go home to see my family.  I’ve missed them all very much (and the rest of you too)…just a warning to Connor and Tommy, I will be expecting hugs from each of you as well when I see you!

So now, I’m “Goin' Home”...

Back to Nairobi

It’s now Monday night and I know I haven’t told you much about the ride from the Mara to Nairobi yesterday so I’ll fill you in now.  The ride was supposed to take about 7 hours but we actually made it back in “only” 6.  We took the same road out of the Mara as we took into it but it took us a little longer than before because of all of the Sunday cattle drivers.  And just to show you that the roads aren't entirely uncivilized, in some places it even has two lanes....!



That was the downside, on the upside, the paved road from Narok to Nairobi was beautiful…I mean the road itself and also the scenery along the way.  It is a fairly new road, nice and smooth and even…it felt good and Jonathan enjoyed turning Bullet loose on the highway.

This route took us across a wide span of the Rift Valley.  Unlike our trip from Eldoret, when we crossed the Rift Valley it was filled with lots of sugar cane fields and other farm land.  In the part of the valley we crossed yesterday the soil must not have been as rich because we saw very little farming but many large herds of free-roaming cattle and sheep.  Unfortunately, the cattle cross that beautiful highway just like they cross the road in the Mara….on their own time and at their own speed.  It’s one thing to have to stop on a dime when you’re jostling through the Mara but when the Bullet is speeding down the highway at about 70 mph and a cow decides to mosey out onto to the road…let’s just say I’m glad my seatbelt was fastened or I would have flown from the 3re row backseat to the driver’s seat in about half a second!  We managed to make it across and then it was time to head back up the other side.

I took this shot from the car as we were driving up out of the valley.

We made a pit stop about 2/3 of the way up the side of the mountain and I tried to figure out how to use the panoramic setting on my camera....

The last 90 minutes of the drive was spent climbing back up the mountains on the other side.  The valley is about at sea level and Nairobi is at 6000 feet.  We had some awesome views of the valley but we also had some more hair-raising riding ahead of us.  Imagine passing a line of slow moving vehicles while going around blind curves….thankfully we made it to Nairobi in good shape and only one really, really close call.

Do you see two distinct lanes of traffic here...one going in each direction???

We met our drivers that were waiting to take us and show us around Nairobi and transferred our entire cache of luggage over to their cars.  We then said goodbye to Jonathan, our "expert" driver and wonderful guide.

We arrived in Nairobi on Sunday afternoon and asked our drivers to take us to the city market to do one final round of souvenir shopping.  From the moment our car stopped and pulled into a parking spot we were accosted by Isaiah and his gang of friends (with other biblical names)…who introduced themselves as our official escorts through the market.   I was able to escape about 30 minutes later…about 50 bucks lighter…. and with some really wonderful souvenirs for my family (whom I’m sure will tell me they love them even if they don’t , now that they know what I went through to get them!)

After the market we were ready for some R&R so we went for an early dinner at a place called Carnivore.  As the name implies, their specialty is meat…not just any meat, sure they have beef, pork and chicken but they also serve other exotic meats.  They used to serve meat from the wild game animals but it is now illegal to do so.  That doesn’t mean they didn’t come up with some pretty exotic meats for us to enjoy. 

The meat is all cooked on a skewer or large saber over a very large fire pit.  (if you're a vegetarion you might want to skip this next photo and the following paragraph...)

Here’s the list of what we sampled, in the order which it arrived:

Chicken, Beef Sausage, Chicken Liver…(so far, nothing too out of the ordinary) then came Camel..... Pork leg, Roast Beef, Ostrich Meatballs, Crocodile (this was actually deep fried and no it doesn’t taste like chicken, it tastes like fishy, chewy, rubber), Leg of Lamb, Bulls Balls (yep, that’s right…Mary and I couldn’t finish ours….), Barbecued Pork Rib, and Lamb Liver.  They kept coming around the table asking if we wanted more until we all said we had had enough.  It seems as though the Camel and the Roast Beef were the biggest hits with the three guys….by the way, no one asked for seconds on the Bulls Balls…

After dinner the rest of the team headed for the airport. They are all en route from London to Chicago on the second leg of their journey home even as I type.  As for me, some of you may recall that I actually got to extend my African visit by one day to visit NEGST.  So when the rest of the crew headed to the airport, a driver from NEGST picked me up and took me to Kajiji guest house on the NEGST campus.  More on that in the next and final blog entry….

The Sun on the Mara

So you may remember K from the previous blog entry on the people of the Mara.  Well, here’s the story of how we came to meet K.  We had just come back from our first game drive and we could see that the sun was about to set.  We got dropped off on the ridge right across the river from our camp.  We decided this was the perfect place to watch the sunset and try and get some good photos (yes, Ashley I know it’s hard to believe but your mother took some pictures of the sunsets....!)  Unbeknownst to us, we were causing quite a commotion with our Masai friends; they didn't want us out there alone.  Mind you we were only about 100 yards from the main lodge, we could see it from where we were standing and all we needed to do was walk down some steps and cross the bridge to get there.  At first they told us we must “come in now”….after a bit more discussion, they sent K out to stand by us and guard us wzungus (the plural of the word meaning white men...not a very flattering term by the way).  When K showed up, he said “hakuna” (no worries) and said we could stay….and he stayed right there with us…notice he has his spear in hand…

We chatted with K while we waited for the sun to get closer to the horizon.  We learned K lived about 15 Km from the camp and he stayed at camp in quarters they provide for the guards and the servers.  They rotate going home about one or two weeks every 3 months.  The guys in our group got to handle his spear and admire his machete (they each ended up buying one to take home) and finally the sunset was ours for the “taking"...  As soon as the sun was down, K quickly escorted us back across the bridge over to the main lodge.  They had a campfire going for us and we chatted over it a bit and it wasn’t more than 15 minutes later when we heard the first hyena…and then saw four of them  - black figures with the last rays of the sun behind them, walking across the ridge….right where we had been standing to take our pictures of the sunset about 20 minutes earlier...

So, I could say I risked my life for these pictures, but actually it was K who risked his life for the silly wzungus who acted like they had never seen a sunset before!  You can believe me (or ask my family) but I have indeed watched (and photographed) many a sunset.  However, I had never seen one on the African plain before that night.  I know these photos won’t due them justice, one can never capture the image quite like God can paint it, but you might get an idea of the awe and wonder that I felt when I saw these…hope you enjoy, butif you choose to just skip right past these and go to the next blog I won't be offended...

Before I show you a couple (I'm restraining myself here) of the sunset shots, I'll show you this sunrise picture and another one of the late afternoon sun. 

Not surprisingly, there is a bit of a story to go with the sunrise picture.  This was literally taken while I was standing in the doorway of my tent.  Right after I took the photo one of the monkeys jumped right out of the tree, landed on the dirt path in front of me, looked at me for a moment (while I'm certain he formed some mental comment about my sleeping attire) and then he sauntered on down the path...after that I decided that next time I should probably get dressed and go to the bathroom first; before picking up the camera and heading straight for the door...

I took this one at about 4 pm our first afternoon.  There were several clouds in the sky and we could see that off in the distance, someone was getting some much needed rain.  This cloud didn't hold any rain, but the bit of shade it provided sure felt nice and I couldn't resist snapping a picture of it.

 

So here are a few of the sunset shots...the first two were taken on the ridge across from the camp.  I don't think it was as pretty as the ones from the second night, but you can be the judge...

The good thing about the first night was we were able to take our sunset photos with our feet planted firmly on the ground.  The second night, we had gone quite a bit further from camp looking for rhino and there are very firm rules about being back to camp by 7 pm...and sundown is at about 6:55 pm.  Jonathan was riding Bullet as hard as he could so we could get back in time (I think it was actually about 7:02 pm when we arrived at camp).  So although the sunset was a bit more spectacular the second night, I had to take all of these photos from a moving van....while standing up with my head and my camera looking out of the open roof and hanging on for dear life with my other hand...I don't believe anyone was taking pictures of me at the time...at least I hope not...

Anyway, here are the shots from the second night....hope you enjoy them...



People of the Mara...

I wanted to show you some of the Masai people that we met over our three day safari adventure.  I never did get the hang of this guy’s name, mostly because he gave us his Masai name which started with a "K" and consisted of three or for syllables with lots of "o's" and "u's" in them.  All of the rest of the guards or servers at the camp gave us an English name to call them like George, James, Jonas...  So we'll just call this guy "K".  I’ll tell you the rest of the story of K and how we came to spend our first evening together in the next blog entry...

K is wearing one of the typical Masai "blankets" although most of them have a lot of red and orange in them.  He is also carrying the spear and around his waist is about a 30 inch machete.  His ears have holes that have been stretched and you will see some Masai wearing ear jewelry while some just leave the lobes flopping in the wind...  All of the Masai we saw were wearing simple leather sandals usually made out of cow hide.

In the middle of our second day at camp we visited a Masai village which was close by.  We were greeted outside the village circle by the young men of the village.  Before we could enter the village they danced for us and told us about some of their traditions.  One young man was introduced to us as "the chief" (lower case intended).  He wasn't really the leader of the village but when the young men become of age a group of them go out to hunt a male lion.  The first one to put a spear into the lion gets to keep the mane and they make a hat out of it for him and from then on he is known as "the chief".  They also explained that he may not be the one to put the final kill strike on the lion as the group of them all attack once the first spear is thrown.  They tell us that the lions know and fear the Masai men.  They wear the red and orange blankets while tending their herds of cattle or sheep so that the lions know to stay away.  They were very serious in this.  During the day sometimes the younger boys or even women or young girls tend the herds, especially when they are close to the villages.  When you see the herds out in the middle of the Mara you will always see a Masai with his trademark blanket on.  They also told us the hyena are scared of the Masai but one of them said he knew 4 men who had been attacked by hyenas so he wouldn't stand by that but he definitely said that the lions feared them.

Anyway, back to our dancers.  The dance these guys did included a lot of singing and rythmic chanting (think Masai rap) and one or two of them at a time would go out in front of the line and start jumping.  They started small at first and then they would jump higher.  The man with the highest jump got the best girlfriend.  They may have been Masai but there was definitely a lot of good-natured ribbing and commenting on each others jumping prowess....acted a lot like teenage boys in the US at that point...of course they weren't wearing Nikes...most of them removed their sandals before they started jumping, its not official unless you do it barefoot!

After the dancing they told us a bit about the Masai village itself.  The village is surrounded by a circular fence made out of sticks and twigs.  Inside this enclosure are about a dozen homes.  The homes are all built by the women...several times we were told that once the men marry, they sit around and tell stories while the young men and children tend the animals and the women do just about everything else...they obviously haven't been "westernized"...and no, Larry, we are not moving to Africa!

The homes in the village are constructed of a frame of sticks and then "stuccoed" with a mixture of mud and cow dung....and the women build them by hand.  They last about 10-12 years and then its time to construct a new village a little ways away.  They are very frugal with the raw materials at hand and they recycle as many of the sticks from the old homes and fence as they can.
This woman was working on the construction of the new village about 50 yards from the existing one.  Gotta tell you, I remember being grossed out when I got cow manure on my gloves or my jeans....can't imagine mixing this stuff up with my hands, plastering it on the inside and the outside of the walls, and then living inside of it....

Once the home is constructed it is split up into three different areas.  The first "room" as you walk into it is for the baby calves....yes, that's right.  At night they bring the cattle into the village and they stay in the middle of the grounds while the homes make a circle around it and then the fence surrounds the homes.  Needless to say, smell of "cow" is quite potent...did I mention we were there at about noon....whew!  We stepped into one of the homes and sure enough, there were two baby calves just lying in the shade of their little abode.  The next "room" is a store room where they keep supplies and food and finally the last room is the largest.  On each side of the room is a small window and a bed made of sticks and cow hides.  The area in between the bedroom areas is the kitchen with a smoldering fire smack dab in the middle of it....just imagine what my olfactory senses were experiencing about then....I only stayed inside for about 30 seconds.  A couple of our folks stayed in there for about 5 minutes while the guide was explaining everything to them...bless their polite little hearts!

Once we were inside the village the "mamas" of the village came to greet us and do their own song and dance routine.  By the way, I don't think I've mentioned it yet but in Kenya I was referred to as "mama" just about everywhere I went.  The guys got quite a kick out of that but it really is a term of "respect"....really, it is...!

In this photo, the oldest mama is on the right and the youngest is on the left.  I forgot to mention it above but after they did their singing for us,  the guests were invited (dragged) into the dancing with both the young men and then the women.  I have some interesting photos of both, but you will not see them posted on this blog....sorry Mom.

We also learned that most of the Masai have become Christian - praise God!  We left our camp on Sunday morning about 9 am and drove by a couple of villages where we actually saw them having their church services, it was awesome.  I snapped this one as we were jostling past in the van and even though its farther away than I had hoped it came out pretty clear given the circumstances.  If you look carefully, you can see them gathered under the shade of the tree and a man standing up in front of them leading them in worship.

Mornings on the Mara are a special time.  Its nice and cool and everyone and everything seems to enjoy this time of day.  This was taken from our moving van as we headed out on our one and only morning game drive.  If you ever get a chance to go to the Mara, you definitely want to do at least one morning drive.  Hopefully in this photo, you can see the two Masai as they herd their cattle with the sun coming up behind them.

After a few hours, as the sun was getting higher and the animals were starting to settle into the shadiest spots they could find, we decided it was time for us to partake of our Bush Breakfast (for those of you who enjoy fishing in Canada, consider this the African equivalent of a Shore Lunch).  Our cooks had packed a picnic breakfast for us complete with sandwiches, sausages, fruit, and even hot tea and coffee...all of this just a few feet away from where we had spotted the impala and some warthogs.  Jonathan made sure we didn't stray far from the van, but he didn't really need to worry we were enjoying sitting in the cool shade and just basking in some down time!

As I mentioned earlier, we left camp on Sunday morning headed back to Nairobi.  We had to drive about 3 hours on the rocky, dirt roads.  Jonathan kept the Bullet cruising along at the bone jarring pace we had become used to on the ride down.  However, it did take us about a half hour longer to get back to the paved roads...it seems they have Sunday drivers even on the Mara and they really don't care if they're holding you up....

Masai Mara Game Drives Part 4 - The Fast and the Furry-ous

There are several antelope-type species on the Mara which stand and look pretty when they're grazing but when they decide to run...wow, what a spectacle!  They are so graceful and swift....just like you see on the Discovery Channel! (Again, I'm thankful that Bill was filming video, these still shots don't really do them justice.)  The other thing we noticed was when we came upon a herd, we could tell right away if there was a predator around.  Especially the lion or the cheetah.  The males would all stand with their heads held high, absolutely no grazing...facing the direction where the threat was coming from - like sentinels on patrol.  Of course our driver picked up on that immediately as well and knew that if we looked hard enough we could probably find the beast that was stalking them too.  They never seemed threatened by the vehicles and would continue grazing as long as there weren't any predators around.

Here are some of the species that I caught on film...at least the ones whose names I can remember!

This is the Thomson's Gazelle.  Its the smallest of the antelopes that we saw.  They like to frolic about as well and they were also the most prolific...we dubbed them "African Rabbits".

These are pictures of Impalas - the males have horns and the females don’t. They are a little bigger than the Thomson’s Gazelle but just as swift and graceful.  We didn't see as many of these and most of the ones we saw were females so we were excited when this group of males showed up at the watering hole...probably working on their pick-up lines for the large herd of females on the other side of the water!

Females waiting for the guys to buy them a drink

One of the larger types of antelopes is the Topi.  We saw many of these as well and they would stand right there as we pulled up beside them...if I didn't know better I'd say they were striking a pose just for us!

These last two species didn't seem to be as plentiful as the Topi.  The Waterbuck seemed especially elusive and we'd often times see only its head sticking out of the bushes so were lucky to get a full-body shot!

This is the Grant's Gazelle

...and the elusive Waterbuck...

There are some other very swift creatures in the Mara - some bigger, but no less graceful and some smaller than the antelope.  Here's one of the bigger ones...

We were fortunate enough to see some Wildebeeste on Sunday on the way to Nairobi, just after we left the park.  Most of the Wildebeestes have migrated to the Serengeti.  You may have seen TV shows where these massive herds migrate up from the Serengeti to the Mara during the rainy season (April-Sept) and then migrate back south.  Jonathan said there are a few small herds that have become “permanent residents of Kenya” and have not migrated.  And low and behold, one of them ran right across our path on Sunday.  The herd was probably 150-200 strong and they were stampeding across the road about a mile in front of us.  By the time we got to them there were a few stragglers so we could snap a few photos.  I think Bill may have caught some of the stampede on his video…it was a sight to behold!

The tail end of the thundrering herd...

 

I mentioned in the earlier posts that we looked long and hard for a leopard but couldn’t’ find one.  Well we actually saw something just as rare.  Another of the smaller animals which are hard to see because of their coloring and because they are very sneaky and elusive, is the Jackal.  We came upon three Jackals playing in the road on our way back to camp on the last evening drive and fortunately they didn't run off.

So now we move on to the swift, but maybe not so graceful creatures.  We saw several groups of Warthogs a couple of different times but these little guys are so quick to run that we could seldom get a good shot at them.  Usually all we would see is a glimpse and then their tails sticking up out of the grass or partial spottings through the bushes as they ran away.  Somehow we managed to sneak up on this group and get close enough that we could get a picture or two before they took off.  The locals call them the “Kenyan Express” because they have their tails straight up in the air when they run!  It was very fun to see this group, especially with the little ones...

And then there’s the Hyena….these guys give me the heebee jeebies!  They are down right sneaky and scary.  Very fast and graceful in their own way but I certainly didn't find myself  oohing and ahhhing over them like many of the other animals.  One of the guys got a really eery shot of one just after we returned to camp the first night but unfortunately I didn't get it from him yet.  We saw this particular one on our morning drive but they tend to be much more active at night.  Every night at camp you can hear them calling.  It’s a very eerie sound and you know they are out there just waiting to catch some prey off guard….we actually had Masai guards posted at every other tent all night long every night and when they would hear one, one of the guards would go after it.  Our last night in camp there was quite a ruckus and we found out in the morning that not only were there hyenas prowling about, there was a lion out there too!

That's probably it for my animal shots but I've got some interesting people shots I'd like to share with you as well...

Masai Mara Game Drives Part 3 - The Larger Specimens...

Here are some shots of some of the bigger animals we've seen.  I know they don't give you a good perspective but believe me, these creatures are each massive in their own way.  We spotted this mother elephant and her calf our first evening in the park...we were so pumped we couldn't believe our luck....at least until the momma got tired of us pestering her and turned toward the van full of us and started doing the ear flapping thing...!  Several of us had a flashback to our childhood when we would watch Marlin Perkins on Mutal of Omaha's Wild Kingdom...we suddenly felt a whole lot more empathy for "Jim" the guy that was always getting the worst end of the deal by the animals while Marlin, the host was casually explaining that "this is what the mother elephant does when she's about to charge..."  Needless to say, Jonathan also picked up on her anxiety level and we got out of there - we were very glad for the speed of the Bullet that time!

Did you know that even a Zebra's tail is striped?  Yep, it sure is...and we know that because like most of the big animals, when you drive up to them they usually turn their backsides toward you.  We were fortunate to get this shot of the little guy and the rest of his family actually looking at us.

These three giraffe didn't know quite where to go to get away from it all.  They thought they had found a nice quite place for their evening snack but there were about 7 safari vans all converging on them at once...this is one of the few pictures that I have which doesn't have a van in it!

 Ok, I know this one is hard to see but these are hippos enjoying their morning swim.  Unfortunately, they like the cool dark water so the only thing that we could see for any appreciable time was their heads...and sometimes it was only their nostrils.  What was most entertaining abou this was the sounds that were echoing up from the river below.  There were at least 10 with a mixture of adults and young ones and we were observing them from atop a fallen tree along the upper bank of the river...rest assured, they could not make it up the steep bank...Anyway, all you could hear was snorting, blowing out water, and belching!  It sounded like we were listening in on a teenage boys phys ed swimming class!

 This was the last group of animals we saw before leaving the park for the last time tonight.  We were headed out and we came across this large herd of cape buffalo, probably at least a hundred of them.  Several young ones with their mothers, and several stern looking bulls like this guy.  He was actually standing about 20 feet directly in from of us and he was not about to move!  We had him in a stare down for at least 5 minutes and then we finally blinked and drove away!

With that I'm going to have to call it a night and get rested up for our long ride to Nairobi tomorrow.  I'll try and get some of the "fast ones" and the people shots up tomorrow night.  Hope you are all enjoying your weekend and sorry to hear about the snow...I'll try not to mention my sunburn when I get back next week...

Masai Game Drive Part 2 - The Big Cats....and some little ones too!

We saw several lionesses and their cubs when we were out today both in the early morning and the evening.  We could have stopped and watched them all day.  I wish I had a video and am thankful that one of our team members did...he has promised to share...all 6 hours of it!

Anyway, the cubs were so playful, with each other and with the mothers.  We were really hoping to see a male but no luck...although, having seen these, we can hardly consider ourselves anything but blessed!

(sorry, can't figure out how to rotate this one, it was OK as a jpg...ah well, just tilt your screen!)

We saw this cheetah on our first evening drive and again on the morning drive...

So we managed to see 2 out of the 3 big cats; we didn't see a leopard.  Jonathan said they are very rare in the Mara, especially this time of year.  We will need to come back during the nicer season (July-Sept) if we want a better chance at "spotting" one of them (sorry couldn't resist!).  Most of them have migrated to the Serengeti.

I'll try to do at least one more post tonight but the connection is getting sporadic...I've got some big mammals and some people shots to share yet so stay tuned for more coming your way shortly.