A weekend away

After being here at Tenwek for 6 weeks I finally got away for the weekend. I enjoy my time at Tenwek but being able to get away from the pager and stress of the hospital for a few days was great. I was invited to go to Nakuru with a career missionary family here. We headed out Friday morning and took off on the 3-4 hour ride. I had heard some complaints about Kenya roads; this one was quite smooth but very winding and hilly. I have not been car sick since I was a child but this winding road did not make my stomach happy. After a quick stop I was able to ride the rest of the trip in the front, an easy way to get shotgun. Next trip I will bring some Gravol or a Kenyan equivalent. Back to the trip: we arrived in Nakuru in the afternoon and were able to get some lunch and shopping in. Living in Tenwek many things that are easy to get at home are not easily accessible. Therefore I filled up most of my cart with snacks. We also were able to stop at a market where they sell souvenirs and other stuff. The stuff was all very neat and I did pick up a few things for hopefully reasonable prices, I am not very good at bartering. The sellers were very aggressive and would come at you from all sides trying to get you to buy their stuff, hard to choose when a lot of it looks the same. I picked up a few things and then hid in the car with the windows shut and all the vendors standing at the window trying to sell their stuff.

In the evening we went to the African Gospel Church (AGC) Baby Center. This is an orphanage run by World Gospel Mission (WGM) missionaries and AGC (AGC is also the church that runs Tenwek). Anyway, this is for children under five and there were so many cute babies. We spent the evening feeding and playing with the crawlers and toddlers class. This is a very well run orphanage but it is still hard to see all these kids without a mom or a dad and the way they crave attention. Some of the children would cry for attention while others would smile and play. We spent time loving the children but it was hard to walk away and hear their cries.

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early and headed out to Lake Nakuru Park. I was very excited my first safari. We all piled in a van with a pop up roof and started exploring the park. I spent most of the time standing up and looking for wildlife. It paid off as I spotted many animals. Our guide had seen a leopard in an area of the park earlier in the week so we spent some time searching, no luck with the leopard but in the process we also saw

 All so beautiful. For those people thinking "wow! Annette's got a great camera look at the zoom." The truth is I don't have a fancy camera with a strong zoom (only 5x), we were really that close to the animals. With no luck finding a leopard. I was quite happy spotting the lion - so close and a male lion with a mane wow. I should add that the lion was sick/old and could not walk more than a few steps, we did report him to the Kenya Wildlife Service so they could check him out. Anyway we continued on our drive with the plan to head to the lake to see the flamingos on the way to the lake this is what we saw

Rhino with flamingos in the background

All the zebras in a winding line

The same line of zebras. Why they did not wind around the water I do not know, it would not have been far.

This picture is from Baboon Cliffs, overlooking Lake Nakuru

 

After a morning of exploring we were hungry and stopped for lunch at a resort in the park. We had a great lunch and then had a dip in the pool it was great to go swimming after so many weeks without the opportunity. (There is a river close to Tenwek but I think I would have to take antibiotics before I got in.) After lunch was more searching mainly for lions and leopards no success but we did come across a few more animals that were exciting some giraffes and one of the the highights of the trip a baby zebra probably only a day or two old.

After a busy day on safari we headed back to the Baby Centre to play with the babies and headed to bed early. What a great day!
Sunday we headed off to church where we had a sermon on being thankful. Appropriate as I am at the time between Canadian and American Thanksgiving. But also apropriate as I spent so much time in God's beautiful creation. The week before coming to Nakuru was like many weeks at Tenwek, difficult due to the amount of sickness and death - it is easy to question God. But I was reminded that everyday is a gift and I am to be thankful for it. After church was the ride back to Tenwek, more hilly winding roads that my stomach did not appreciate but beautiful nonetheless.