On June 25th, Rich and I got up before the sun and took a ride with 12 others from our group to a launch site for some of the largest hot air balloons on the planet. These baskets (gondolas) carry 16 passengers and a pilot. They are huge! There are four compartments for four people each and you are tethered into the hot air balloon by a seat belt around your waist with a cord attached to the basket. You are able to move around freely, but you supposedly can’t fall out. Rich and I, having gone to college in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the annual balloon fiesta happens every October, have both been in hot air balloons before. These balloons are so big, and with such a big basket, that the riders start laying flat on their backs on a chair and holding onto built in loops on the sides. That is how you take off and land. It is like being on a spaceship. We watched the sun come up and then watched the animals and camps from above. Our pilot, Rosa, is the only female hot air balloon pilot in Tanzania. She is originally from Barcelona, and she is a spit fire! She speaks Spanish, English, French, Swahili, and Arabic to name a few. We were in the air for about 90 minutes, and she even served coffee to those who wanted some. After we landed, she told the story of how hot air ballooning started and shared a toast with all of us with champagne. Rich caught the cork, which is supposed to bring good luck. We were then bussed to a large, tented area for a big English breakfast. The native Tanzanians who were the chase crews sang and danced for us, as seems to be the custom anywhere you go in the region. There was about 30 mongoose who came up to the tent expecting the scraps. A tiny bird landed on the table and helped himself to part of my muffin. This was such a magical ride….to see the Serengeti from the open air in a hot air balloon. It was so quiet and still. I would 100% recommend it!

So I keep mentioning the Big 5 – those are the most dangerous animals in Africa. They are: Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Cape Buffalo (also known as the African Buffalo), and the rhinoceros. There are other Big 5’s….like the Big 5 Uglies…the ugliest animals in Africa. They are: the marabu stork, wildebeest, warthog, hyena, and vulture. We managed to see both of these Big 5’s. There are others…like the shyest and the smallest. What was so wonderful about traveling with Collette during our tour of Africa is the drivers and guides. There were 6 of us in the back of a toyota land cruiser that was modified for safari drives. Some of the roads we went on would not really be considered roads so they could handle that kind of off-road terrain. The tops popped up so you could stand on the seats with your stocking feet to peer out without using a window. The windows slid side-to-side for easy photography. However, there were some instances, especially with the big cats, that I felt safer popping out of the top rather than opening my window. Our guide said that he has had big cats jump onto the hood of the vehicle before, but not us. Not this time. Back to our drivers….there were 6 passengers and then a driver. The driver has to go to university for a minimum of 3 years to learn about the flora and fauna of the area. They learn about the hundreds of different animals and their habits for mating, hunting, life expectancy, behavioral tendencies, etc. It really is a lot. They know where to look for certain animals or birds and can identify their calls. Raymond, a driver we were with quite a bit during our time in Tanzania, could also identify snakes in the area by the smell. Evidently it is a very venomous snake that smells like DDT pesticide. Our guide, Alfred, happened to be with us when we came upon a pride of lionesses who had taken down and killed a cape buffalo that day. He could tell us that when a lioness yawns two times, she is going to get up and come feed again. I totally thought he was making that up. Sure enough, it happened four different times. So not only did we SEE a bunch of really cool animals, but we learned about them as well. I want YOU to try and go to Africa to see these things yourself, so I won’t share EVERYTHING, but I will share some things. Africa has these nasty little bugs called tsetse flies. (pronounced teetzee) Alfred was really good at letting us know ahead of time how to dress according to these little beasties and the mosquitoes. Speaking of mosquitoes…they were there, but we, as I said before, were warned when we would be someplace where they were thicker. It was wintertime there, so I am guessing they weren’t as bad. We used bug spray with a minimum of 30% DEET. I used catnip spray which also does the same thing. I also had a big, but lightweight scarf/shawl thingy that was infused with permethrin, which doesn’t have any smell to it and is good up to 79 washes for deterring bugs. We were prescribed malaria prevention pills to take during our trip and the few weeks after, but we did not end up taking them. Did I have any mosquito bites? I got maybe 4 or 5 while I was there. We also had mosquito netting around our beds that we closed every night. (although it does make it fun if you have to get up and use the bathroom in the dark) You cannot drink the water in Kenya or Tanzania. You can’t brush your teeth with it. You have to have bottled water with you always. Collette supplied clean water for us on our trip both at the hotels and camps and on the safari vehicles. I think just about everyone in our group of 16 had a bit of a tummy issue during our 16-day trip. However, a lot of them were because of the malaria pills. (it is one of the side effects). Rich and I came armed with malaria pills and pills to clear out and reset our digestive systems if we couldn’t treat our intestinal issues with over-the-counter meds. We both used the tummy meds but not the malaria pills. I think everyone else on the trip were taking them. A few people did just fine with them, but others were miserable. Another must have is binoculars. Rich was always on the lookout for an animal or bird. The drivers always had an extra set of nice binoculars to share with those folks who didn’t have a pair. A good zoom in camera will also do the trick and capture the shot! The drivers taught us some Swahili and some words in Masai as well. Sawa Sawa (okay – we can go now) Polepole (slow down) Asante sana (thank you very much) Gladly (karibu) No problems (hakuna matata) Habari Yako? (How are you?)

Okay….the Serengeti. Wow. Just wow. It is 16,000 square kilometers of African wild wonderfulness. The animals are often attacked by the bugs, especially the tsetse flies. The rangers have put up blue and black flags in some areas that are treated with some chemical that sterilizes the flies so they can’t reproduce. We were under strict instructions to not wear black or blue during some of our tour days because those colors attract the tsetse fly. There were some very interesting animal stuff I learned from Raymond, our driver. Our drivers said that we start out as clients and quickly become friends (Swahili word for friend is rafiki). It certainly felt like that. Giraffes move differently than other animals. They move with the right legs moving then the left. The whole side moves together. That is different than most other mammals. The wildebeest and the zebra migrate north together. We saw thousands of them together, just hanging out and resting. Lions…a young lion will have a pink nose. It will also have a small mane. When a lion is about 5 years old, they will have a full mane around their heads and their noses will turn black. Lion in Swahili is Simba. Lionesses do a majority of the hunting. They stalk their prey in groups. We got to see a lone zebra get stalked by a group of 5 or 6 lionesses. They were full from the cap buffalo kill, so didn’t actually chase the zebra for longer than a couple of seconds, but they are hunters of opportunity and couldn’t turn down the chance at another kill that had wandered into their area. We watched the lionesses stalk this zebra. They have black tips on the back of their ears and on their tails. The lead lioness would flick her ears or tail to communicate to the other lionesses to flank left or right. It was amazing to watch. Seeing an already dead animal is okay, but I was cheering for the zebra in this one and was glad the lionesses’ bellies were too full to really give chase.

Cheetahs are not a real cat because they don’t have retractable claws. They eat their kill very fast so others won’t eat their food. When we came upon a couple of lioness kills during our trip, jackals, hyenas, and vultures were waiting in the wings for their chance at getting some food. The jackals are small and fast. They would try to steal meat in-between the lionesses eating. Their heads are always on a swivel because lionesses don’t like to share. Hyenas go to work once the lionesses are done and have moved on. Then the vultures come in and pick the bones clean. There were a lot of antelope-type animals around. Thomson gazelle were everywhere. Then there were the Klipspringer (3rd smallest antelope), who practically have rubber hooves to jump on rocks and have good stopping abilities. The dick-dick is a tiny little antelope (4th smallest). They mate for life. The females look bigger than the males. The males have tiny horns and the females don’t have any. Considering they are so small, they have a life expectancy of 9 years and their gestation period is 5 1/2 to 6 months. They try to confuse their predators by pooping in the same couple of piles to make it look like a it is a large animal defecating bigger piles when it is really just a few little dick-dicks that piles all their piles together. (see these are things we would have never learned just looking out the window!) There are also the Topi antelope. They are larger and look like they are wearing yellow socks, blue jeans, and a yellow cap. They can run up to 60 km/hr. The impala were plentiful as well. They call them “McDonald’s antelope” because they look like they have the “M” of the golden arches on their rear ends with their tails down. They can jump 10 fee up and 30 feet forward. We also saw the hartebeest, which looks like an antelope and a wildebeest combined. They are gangly looking but can really move for their size. We saw a couple of crocodiles as well. They can live 30-70 years and weigh up to 1 ton for the really big ones.

We saw so many acacia trees! There are over 350 species, but I love the flat-topped ones that really scream “Serengeti!” to me….especially in sunrise and sunset photos. They are just magical looking. They have huge thorns on them though. Their leaves are full of water, so the giraffes love them. The giraffes have horny papillae in their upper lips and that protects them from the spines on the trees. They giraffes are able to eat the leaves and leave the spines behind. (FYI – a group of giraffes is called a TOWER). In a lot of these acacia trees there were bundles balls of dry grass. The weaver birds make nests that are tight and neat. They only build their nests on the west side of the tree so they don’t have any early morning sun shining into their nests. The starlings aren’t so neat. They are amazingly beautiful with metallic blue feathers. Another amazingly beautiful bird in Africa is the lilac breasted roller. They have so many colors! The Acacia trees don’t burn. Their roots turn nitrogen into nitrates in dry soil so other long-living trees can grow and get nutrients from the super dry soil. There was also the candelabra tree (which looks like a tree trunk at the bottom and a candelabra made of cactus on the top. They are very unique-looking. They are poisonous. They only animal we saw near them were bats.

Elephants are my jam. I just love them so much. Did you know that an elephant has over 40,000 muscles in it’s trunk alone? That is crazy! Have you ever seen videos of an elephant using that trunk? Amazing. I had a baby elephant try to untie my shoe with its trunk at the Sheldrick Nursery. Elephants also have 3-4 liters of blood per minute flowing through their ears. This is why they flap them in the wind to cool off. Elephants put their ears straight out and their trunk straight out to fake charge something. Don’t get me wrong, a fake charge is scary. When they trumpet, it is loud. Lily and I were at the Omaha Henry Doorley Zoo when a small train went by the elephant pasture. There were 3 babies there at the time and all the adult elephants surrounded them and faced outward and trumpeted. They were about 50 yards away from us but it practically blew our hair back. When they are truly going to charge, they flap their ears and curl up it’s trunk up and inward.

A group of warthogs is called a SOUNDER. They are funny little creatures because have tails that go straight up and look like little antennae running through the grass. The necks of warthogs are too short to reach the ground so they have to kneel on their front legs to root. Raymond said it is like they have to pray before their meals. In the movie, The Lion King, the warthog’s name was Pumba, which in Swahili means “slow-witted”. The warthog isn’t known for it’s smarts. They have very short memory spans. Did you know hippopotamuses have pink milk? Yeah, I didn’t know that either before this trip. A group of guinea fowl is called a CONFUSION.

Also a couple of other random things….there were some hearty beer drinkers in our group. The beer most famous in Kenya was Tusker beer (with an elephant on it). The beer in Tanzania was Twiga beer (Twiga means giraffe in Swahili). In Tanzania they use the shilling. At the time we were there in late June, $1 = 2600 shillings. It was crazy because Rich would go to the ATM and get out a million shilling and come back with a stack of bills but it was less than $385. We tipped in both shilling and American dollars. Either were widely accepted where we stopped.

Okay! On to some photos! The wildebeests are crazy looking. There is an old African legend that says God had some left over parts from creatures he had made and with it made the wildebeest. He took a buffalo’s horns, a locust’s head, a cow’s body, a goat’s legs, and a lion’s tail. Honestly, that pretty much sums up their appearance. Their heads certainly do look like a grasshopper’s head. You’ll notice that there are a lot of tsetse flies on the animals. It seems like those little insects are the bane of their existence. There are birds that ride along and eat these insects right off the animals, so the animals don’t mind the birds hitching a ride. I mentioned before that baby zebra are very fuzzy and more red and white than black and white. I have a few more photos here to show that. There is a photo of a very colorful bird. That is the lilac breasted roller. So very pretty! Sunsets and sunrises…are completely magical in Africa, especially in the Serengeti. We did not witness the takedown of the cape buffalo (the old general) in the photos. It had happened earlier in the day. The grass around the abdomen is from it’s intestines. The lionesses can’t digest that, so when they go for the organs (which they do first because they have the most nutrients), they split open the intestines and let the grass spill out. They can’t eat that part, but don’t worry…some other opportunistic animal or most likely bird, will. We had an up-close encounter with this kill and the lionesses and their cubs feeding. We were less than 20 feet away. It was so interesting to watch.

Ngorongoro Crater is not a national park, but a conservation area. There are Masai people who live there, migrating through the area. It is like the African Garden of Eden, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the best places to see the “Big 5”. We saw so many really cool animals here! The area is not really a crater but a caldera, which is lush and green and has everything from monkeys to hippos to giraffes, to lions, elephants, and several cool birds, including the flamingo! We were there at the perfect time…the rainy season was over and the babies were just being born. You will notice baby zebra photos over my next few posts. They are born reddish brown and white and very fuzzy. They are adorable! We also got the chance to see the great migration….thousands of zebra and wildebeests moving together across the plains of the caldera. Amazing. I even have a photo of Rich under a tree trying to take photos of the hippos. I included a photo that took of a baby hippo resting in the water on its mother’s back. You have to look close to see how much bigger the mom is by her head peeking out of the water. It is quite a feat getting to Ngorongoro Crater. You drive upwards and along the rim before heading down into the caldera. It is a beautiful site and quickly became a favorite spot! Karibu Eneo La Hifadhi Ya Ngorongoro! Welcome to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area!

I know it has been a hot minute since I have posted. It isn’t that I am drowning in photos to process Africa (although I kinda am), I went on another trip! I am going to give you the low-down on where we went, but photos will have to wait until I finish the Africa photos. I am working almost daily on our Africa photos, but I am weeding through 4000 photos taken.

So the latest trip! We were home for a little less than 3 weeks. We had a big rush on fire calls the first week we were back. Then Lily had her 4 wisdom teeth removed. She asked the dentist if she could keep them, so she did! She will proudly show anyone who asks to see them. She didn’t have any complications, for which we were very thankful. About 10 days after her surgery, we packed up our bags and flew down to Kansas City. We can’t thank Michelle Messina and Zac, Wanda, and Ed Oslica enough for their roles in our short 48 hour stay. Michelle picked us and all our luggage up from the airport and handed over Lily’s car (which had been staying at her house over the summer). We got a tour of her new home….it is adorable and such a beautiful fit for her…. plus it is a much shorter drive with less traffic now that her job has moved to a new location. It is a win/win for her. The Oslicas showed up with their pickups to help us get furniture from Michelle and then from some of her neighbors we bought to help furnish Lily’s new place. We bought a duplex near the KCAI campus. It is a 98-year-old house that has been gutted on the inside and totally redone. The flooring is original, but there is a new kitchen, bathrooms, etc, in the half on the first floor and Lily’s half on the top floor. We have a bit of work to do on the outside, but we have that under contract to be done. The bottom floor is rented out. The top floor has Lily, her best friend from high school and roommate from last year (as Lily puts it…she is her Zac….Joe’s best friend). There is then a master bedroom with its own full bathroom that we will eventually rent out to female traveling medical professionals. We were in KC for 48 hours and needed to furnish the whole top floor. The Oslicas were a huge help. Family that isn’t blood…they were amazing. Then Joe’s brothers at the Olathe Fire Department came by the next day to help carry more furniture up the narrow, steep stairs. Three captains showed up and in 30 minutes had it all done. What a relief and how thankful we were for their help! Lily is all moved in, furniture is all in place, and she is in the second week of her sophomore year. I am happy she is in a safe neighborhood and has a place to call home for as long as she needs it. No more getting kicked out of the dorms for holidays!

We left Lily in her place in KC and flew to D.C. for Rich’s brother’s change of command. He has been the garrison commander for the last 2 years at Fort Belvoir, VA. He will now move on to working across the hall from his wife in the Pentagon (if you have any idea how incredibly large the pentagon is, that is quite a feat to be working so close together!). As he was decompressing after a year of basically being the mayor of a large town, we joined them on a wonderful overseas trip. So the actors in play were Joe and Heather (my brother- and sister-in-law), Tammie and Casey (my sister-in-law and her son, who is 30 – and was close with our Joe, his cousin), and Rich and myself. The six of us took off in the evening from D.C. and flew to Rome, Italy through the night. We then flew to Catania, Sicily, where we drove to Taormina to stay a couple of days prior to heading to Messina, Sicily to board the MSC World Europa, a brand-new mega ship that I am not sure I saw a third of whilst on board. We spent a week on board and went to Malta (a new country for both Rich and me) – Barcelona, Spain – Marseilles, France (a new country for me and my 50th country visited….on our 33rd wedding anniversary!) – then two stops in Italy – Genoa and Naples – before heading back to Messina, Sicily and getting off the ship. We toured Messina and a few other areas that were in the Godfather movies and went to Catania. Tammie and Casey flew out the next morning. Rich dropped them off at the airport and picked up a rental car and the remaining four of us took off for an adventure around Sicily for about 6 days. We spent time in Agrigento, Marsala, Syracuse, Palermo, Cefalu, Vulcano Island and Messina. We had a really good time with lots of adventure stories to go along with our trip. I learned a lot about Sicily and really enjoyed the atmosphere and the food! We flew back to D.C. for 24 hours then flew back to Montana last week. So, we have been busy catching up with work, our firefighting hall and home. I am trying to spend a few hours a day chipping away at my Africa photos and will post them on the blog in batches of where we were in Africa. Then I will move on to Sicily. I actually took more photos with my phone as it was really hot and I didn’t want to be carrying a heavy bag around, but I will share some photos on that trip as well.

We did celebrate Lily’s 18th adoption day on August 31st. I can’t believe it has been so long since we picked her up in China! To quote Lily, “That’s a lot of years!” She is in her 2nd week of school at KCAI and seems to like her classes and her teachers. We love that she has been our daughter for over 18 years now.

We are also trying to enjoy the last dregs of summer here in Montana. We pretty much missed the whole summer with travel. We came back from Sicily (and hot and humid temps there) to a winter weather advisory. The mountains got about a foot of snow, but we had cool temps and rain. The warm weather is back now and even though the temps are still in the 80’s here, we are seeing trees that are starting to show their red and yellow leaves already. It is hard to be inside when the weather is so wonderful. Tallinn keeps reminding me that my happy spot is on the front porch in my rocking chair with him at my feet enjoying the breeze.

We spent a couple of days in Amboseli National Park doing morning and afternoon game drives. This national park is in Kenya, but right on the border of Tanzania with Mt. Kilimanjaro looming over the park. It makes for spectacular photos when Mt. Kilimanjaro isn’t hiding in the clouds. The name Amboseli is a Masai word meaning “salty dust”. They warned us ahead of time that we would see several dust devils swirling across the plains. This national park is known for their large herds of elephants. It did not disappoint. I am a big elephant lover. I love that they are matriarchal society and they protect one another and grief for their losses. They are smart and they are amazing animals. I was not disappointed in Amboseli National Park. We saw a lot of elephants. However, we saw a lot of other animals as well. We saw hyenas, hippos, Thomson’s gazelles, warthogs, zebras, African crowned cranes, wildebeests, a little yellow birds called village weavers, kori bustard bird, Masai giraffes, African elephants, lions, monkeys….we just saw a lot! We also saw a gerenuk, or a giraffe gazelle. We had never heard of them but they have very long necks and are definitely in the gazelle family. The photo of the monkey on roof watching the sunset was at our lodge. They only had the generator (which was solar) on in the evening and the early morning. Luckily, we were gone or sleeping the rest of the time. There was 2G wifi if you were in the main lodge and the generator was running. Many of you have asked about the food they served us in Africa. They served a LOT of food and it was mostly family style. They always gave us soup before the meals and it was pureed vegetables of some kind with cream and was very good. I even had beetroot soup and it wasn’t hot pink like I was expecting, but more of a red and tasted like cream of tomato soup. One thing we could not do was consume the water in any way. No ice, no brushing your teeth with the tap water….we had multiple bottles of water on us at all times. We brought with us a prescription of anti-malarial pills (which we never took) and then antibiotics for Montezuma’s revenge…which we both ended up taking. We were good with covering up and using bug spray when told we needed to and we used our mosquito netting around our bed every night. A lot of people had pretty adverse reactions to the anti-malarial pills, so we just didn’t do it. Anyhow, I think we had a good enough time that we might want to go back again….this time to different countries in southern Africa. We will see. We’ll most likely set up a group, so if you are interested….let us know! We were in Kenya and Tanzania at the perfect time…no rain…still green…winter temps…and lots of new baby animals! Here are some photos from Amboseli National Park, Kenya:

I am guessing (as I thought the same thing before I went to Africa myself) that when you think of African safaris, you think of riding around in 4×4 jeeps and spotting animals with binoculars and hopefully getting close enough to take photos. Well, that is a good part of it. However, we travelled with a travel group guided by a company called Collette. They specialize in land tours all over the world. They arranged our flights, our transportation, our guides, our accommodations, and our itinerary. We were all sent a booklet ahead of time so we knew what to expect each day. Each night we would have a chat before dinner in which Alfred, our tour guide, would tell us about what time and where to meet the next day and what the schedule would be for the day. He told us how to dress appropriately (if we needed bug spray…long sleeves to fight against Tse Tse flies or if we were only going to be in the vehicle and could wear shorts and sandals. All of this is great to know, and it is nice to have someone else make the decisions and you just be along for the ride. So we didn’t just go seek out wild animals. We learned a lot about the culture of the areas we were in as well. We spent a couple of hours on the border of Kenya and Tanzania (on the Kenya side) with a Masai tribe. They are nomadic people and travel with their herds of cattle, goats, and donkeys. However, about 5 years ago, the countries of Kenya and Tanzania cracked down on children and them going to school. They realized that girls should also be able to go to school and now both genders are expected to go until they are about 18 years old. The Masai and some other tribes had a pass on this because they are nomadic. However, the government stepped in and created some community schools. These schools were closer to where some of the temporary villages were located for the Masai. Their children no longer had to walk several miles one way to school. The adult men that are younger still leave with the herds but many of the women and the older adults stay with the children in the huts so that they can continue to go to school. They are expected to wear uniforms, and they learn Swahili and English. We got a chance to meet with the 4-6 graders at the community school along with their teachers (who are usually from cities and come to live and teach there for 9 months at a time). They sang and danced for us and then we had a question-and-answer session with them. They asked us questions and we asked them questions. It was really fun. We even had a few cows wander through the school yard. Then we met the chief’s son, Richard, who has one wife and two children. We also met James, who has two wives and 10 children. Masai are all Catholics and they are also polygamists. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that. Richard’s dad, the chief, had 6 wives. The women in our group asked Richard how his dad keeps all those women happy. They women each have their own hut and he spends one night a week with each of them. He told us that Sunday was for church though. The Masai live in mud huts made from cow dung and sticks. They have no electricity or running water. The men light a fire every morning at 0500 for all the women to come out of their huts and take some of the fire back to their huts for their cooking fires. They make the kids breakfast before they head to school at 0700. They are there all day and come home around 4. The Masai are very easy to recognize due to their dress. They normally wear red, especially for weddings. The entire village will wear blue if a new baby is born though. At the age of 8 or 9, they have a rite of passage where they will have a circle branded into their cheeks. The men also have round burn marks on their right upper arms that they put there themselves to test their manhood and pain tolerance. The children and the men are expected to make no noise or cry during this time. In the photos I took, you will see they love color. They love colorful fabric and beads. They do their own beadwork. The men and women are allowed to carry a peace stick (it is the short stick with the knob on it) once they got married. We didn’t see any women carrying them, but the men were all carrying them. Most were made from ebony. This tribe lived in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. Even though Mt. Kilimanjaro is located in Tanzania, we were right on the border and therefore on the Kenyan side this day, near Amboseli National Park. We started seeing a lot of acacia trees (there are something like over 300 different species of acacia trees). I feel in love with the flat top acacias…they kind that just really make you think of Africa. Mt. Kilimanjaro is shy and often covered in clouds. There are three peaks. Mt. Kilimanjaro is the 2nd highest mountain in the world behind Mt. Everest. Rich is hoping to go back and meet up with our head guide, Alfred, and climb to the top. Alfred grew up at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro on the Tanzania side and used to be a guide for the climb. He has been to the summit more than 50 times. Rich is thinking October of 2026 if you want to join him. The Masai are known for their jumping. The men work very hard on being high jumpers as that is supposed to attract a female. They love to show off their jumping ability, especially the young men. They only jump to music though, so when we cornered the two best young jumpers and had them jump for us side-by-side, a couple of men started singing for them to get them into a rhythm for jumping. Rich joined in as well with the big group of men. Look at the shoes on the men’s feet. They are made with leather straps and the soles are cut pieces of motorcycle tires. They last forever and are all weather rated (at least that is what Richard and James joked with us saying). They offered to make Rich a pair if he comes back. He just has to call ahead and talk to the chief’s son. You will notice smiles on everyone’s faces at the Masai village. They are furaha (the Swahili word for happy). No matter what we might think of their lifestyle…they are happy. After we were done at the Masai tribe visit, we went back to our lodge and Collette has all their visiting groups plant small acacia tree saplings to help with reforestation. We were supposed to each plant our tree and say a blessing over each one. They also said it would make sure we would come back the next year to check on our trees! When they came around to water my tree and for me to say a blessing over it, I said it was in honor of Joe…who never got to see Kenya or Tanzania and would have loved it. Right then, the clouds opened up and a big ray of sunshine shot out of the clouds. So that is what that photo is about. My Joe giving me a sign that he heard my acacia tree blessing in his name.

I put a separate post for the Nairobi Nursery with the baby elephants (which they feed milk until they are about 4 years old) then try to get them reintegrated into wild herds again by age 5. We also went to the Karen Blixen Museum. Remember the movie “Out of Africa” in the mid 1980’s? It won best picture in 1985, I think. It was the story of a woman named Karen Blixen. She was a Dutch woman who went to live in Nairobi, Kenya for several decades. She eventually wrote several books and one was about her life and it was made into a movie decades later. So we went to the Out of Africa farmhouse and coffee plantation of Karen Blixen. If was very interesting. I remember the movie being incredibly long…but I was a young teen at the time. Perhaps I will look into watching it again some cold snowy day this winter.

We also went to the Kazuri Bead Factory, where mothers are employed and trained as jewelry artisans. They sang and danced for us and showed us the way they made their beautiful jewelry from clay from the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. It is a pretty long and arduous process. Most of these women are widows or have fled abusive relationships and need to make money outside the home to support themselves and their children. We met Momma Elizabeth, the only remaining of the three women who started this bead making project back in the mid 1970’s. They sang and danced and flashed amazing smiles.

I told you we did a lot that first day in Nairobi! We stopped at one other place and it was the Rothschild Giraffe Sanctuary. There are three subspecies of giraffes: the reticulated giraffe (which is what we mostly see in our zoos in the U.S.), the Masai giraffe (which is darker and we saw in Africa), and then the Rothschild giraffe, which is found in southeastern countries in Africa but are few in number. This sanctuary is a breeding area for them. There once was only 120 Rothschild giraffes in existence, now there are 800. The baby giraffes stay in the sanctuary for 2-3 years and then are released into the wild in groups of 3. These giraffes can see for 2 km, and their leg bones contain no marrow – they are made of solid bone. They have rectangular spots and white legs. We fed them pellets out of coconut shells. They were adorable.

Before I start off talking about our trip to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi on our first full day in Kenya, I want to talk to you a bit about Kenya itself.

We didn’t fly with the rest of the group from Omaha (since we were coming from Montana). We flew into Amsterdam a day early and then tried to acclimatize to the new time zone. As with most flights to Europe, you flight through the night. I don’t sleep well upright. I am a side or tummy sleeper, so sitting upright is not conducive to good sleep for me. I think we managed to stay up until 7:30 p.m. and then crashed. We flew out around noon the next day to Nairobi. So the flight to Amsterdam was about 9 hours and the flight to Nairobi was the same, (and that was not including the initial flight to get to Minneapolis from Montana). It is A LOT of flight time, so we broke it up a bit. We arrived in Nairobi around 10 p.m. and was picked up in the airport by one of the Collette employees (that was the company we did our tour with).

Nairobi has about 5.5 million people and is the largest city in Kenya. Mombasa is a little less than 500 km away and is the 2nd largest city in Kenya. There are 44 tribes in Kenya and they all speak a different language. They learn Swahili when they head to school and then later English is added in. We actually learned a lot of phrases in Swahili while we were in Africa. It is the national language of many of the countries in southeastern Africa. Jambo Jambo! (Hello! – A greeting we heard all the time.) Karibu (welcome!). I will sprinkle a few more phrases as I blog through our trip. Our guide, Afred, often spoke in what he called SwaEnglish – a combo of Swahili and English. The Kenyan money is the shilling and a U.S. dollar = 130 Kenyan shillings. They do drive on the other side of the road and the vehicle, as they were a British protectorate for a long time. They gained their independence from the UK in 1963. The population of Kenya is about 56 million and covers 587,000 square km. Kenya doesn’t use states but counties, of which they have 47. We were in Kenya and Tanzania in mid to late June, which is their wintertime. We had cooler nights in the mid 50’s and it was mostly in the 70’s or low 80’s at most while we were there. It was dry, as the rainy season had ended about a month prior. We had a few dusty days in the Serengeti, but for the most part, things were still green from all the rain. It was the perfect time to be there. In the city of Nairobi, there was the Nairobi National Park, where they have all sorts of wild animals, including black rhino. Right in the middle of the city! Christianity makes up 64% of Kenyan’s religion. Muslims make up 42%. The remainder are mostly Hindu or other Indian religions. Nairobi has a slum area called the Kibera slums, where 100’s of thousands of Kenyans live. It is the largest slum in Africa. Other random facts about Kenya….the drinking age is 18 years old, which is also when they can vote. Plastic bags are illegal. This includes plastic grocery bags and ziploc baggies. All illegal. We couldn’t bring them into the country unless we took them out with us.

Okay…our first full day in Africa was spent in Nairobi and it was a FULL day. I think it was somewhat planned that way so we could stay up all day and crash hard that night. I think we started with breakfast at 7 a.m. and our welcome dinner started at 7 p.m. Our first stop of the day in Nairobi was the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust – otherwise known as the Nairobi nursery. They are open to the public five days a week but for only one hour a day. People are allowed to buy tickets to hear about the program from the caretakers and watch the baby elephants be fed their bottles. They have two black rhinos there as well….one which is blind and 15 years old who lives there permanently, and one year old rhino who had been attacked by lions they think, and had several awful wounds that they have done several surgeries to correct. She is now on the mend and starting to grow and flourish. They have 22 baby elephants righ now who were rescued from certain death all over the Kenyan countryside. They all have varying back stories and if you go on their website, http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org , you can read about their stories. Rich gifted me with adopting one of the baby elephants, Mzinga, who is a female that is 2.5 years old. She was found in Tsavo East National Park all alone. She is now thriving at the Nairobi nursery. The goal for the elephants is to be raised and released back into the wild to be adopted by family groups of wild elephants. This program has been around for 45 years and they have raised 12.067 orphans and have 29 anti-poaching teams. I am enamored with African elephants so this was so very special for me. As an adoptive mom, I get emailed the caretakers’ notes on Mzinga each month and pictures of her and how she is doing. She is full of spit and vinegar…just like me! The baby elephants came right up to the people around the feeding pen and I got to touch them…and even got a smudge of mud on my shoe from the trunk of a curious baby elephant trying to untie my orange shoelaces. My heart almost burst. So here are some photos from that hour at the Nairobi Nursery:

I have mentioned several times that when Rich and I moved to NW Montana, we decided to join the local volunteer fire department. The North Hall is a little less than a mile from our house and we went to their annual summer open house to meet them and check it out. We showed up and one young 20-something firefighter jokingly asked if we wanted an application. Honestly, as people with no firefighting experience and in our mid 50’s, we thought we would cook them meals on meeting nights and wash the trucks and file paperwork for them. Oh no. Within three weeks of starting to attend meetings, we were assigned bunker gear, lockers, and given pagers and radios and expected to answer calls. That was the beginning. We have been with Bad Rock Volunteer Fire Department and QRU (that is the EMS side) for almost a year and we love it. Are there hard calls? Yes. Actually, we have had several tough calls in the last week, and we’ll be meeting with county trained officials for a critical stress debriefing tonight. It is a great service we have in our county to help with the mental health of our first responders. In our year so far, Rich and I have been very active in responding for calls and volunteering for extra duties. I went through EMR and then EMT training. I now understand how our Joe talked about his firefighter brothers….as just that, a brotherhood. I would do just about anything for these guys (and gals). Rich describes our lives as 1/3 work, 1/3 play, and 1/3 fire department. We did this to honor our Joe, and when we found out our volunteer fire department was number 13 (his birthday), we knew it was meant to be. It gives me purpose and I didn’t realize how important that was to me…how much I had missed patient care and doing something that really matters. Rich and I do wildfire calls…although most of them have been unattended burn piles or hay fires…not the out-of-control wildfires that plague our state and our neighbors to the north in Canada. We answer calls for motor vehicle accidents, especially during the height of tourist season (which is now). We have had several gas odor calls. Some are false alarms, others we are faced with hissing exposed lines that make me a bit nervous. The gas company always responds to these calls as well, but they typically come from 30 minutes away, so we are first on scene to scope out the situation. Rich and I have learned to drive engines and wildland fire trucks and tenders (the tanker trucks that carry thousands of gallons of water). This was not in my comfort zone in the beginning. It is still not my favorite, but I can do it. To be quite honest, I have a hard time getting in and out of these trucks in my bunker gear. My knees don’t bend in all that extra material as well and being 5′ 2″, the first step is mid-thigh to waist level or higher, depending on the truck. Exiting, I just jump and hope for a soft landing. Being rural, we don’t really have fire hydrants…. or streetlights. When we have to fight a fire, we have to bring the water with us and then dump it in a soft pool we carry around and then go back and get more. Our engines draft water out of these pools, which if it is a hot fire, we can go through pretty quickly. We had a fire recently that was 130 of those huge 1200 lb round bales of hay. It was a 24-hour process and I think we had 5 fire departments helping us throughout that time. We weren’t there the entire 24 hours, but it was 24 hours before it was safely torn down, cooled down, and sprayed over. It is a lot of work! It is not just spraying water on hot spots; it is getting in there and walking in the mud and soot and digging and raking through the hay and dirt to make sure we expose any hot spots. Then there are the medical calls. A lot of people thought that EMT school would come so easy to me with my history of being a military nurse. Some of it did… but it is vastly different working in a hospital with doctors looking over your shoulder versus showing up at someone’s house on their worse day of their lives and trying to play 20 questions and figure out what is going on with them so we can treat them. Then 95% of the time, you never know how the outcome. Did the patient live? Did the patient get the correct treatment? That is a hard thing to deal with…. the not knowing how things turned out for the patient/family. However, I am learning slowly to let that go and not lay awake at night wondering about it. I do pray for them every night and know that God’s will will be done with those I work with. When I lose a patient, I light a candle for them at church that next Sunday and honor their lives in that small way. I am getting used to having a pager and a radio with me all the time. I have adjusted what I wear, thinking of whether or not I will get a call. When I go to bed at night, I always have clothes laid out for those middle-of-the-night calls, so I hopefully cut down my enroute time. I have given myself permission to wear my glasses to calls in the middle of the night rather than put in my contacts and that has sped up my call time as well. As I sit here and type this, I realize I am still in my glasses as we had a call at 06 – something this morning and when I got home, I just went to work around the house getting things done. Anyhow, as I listen to the Olympic judo competition while I type this, I wanted to share some photos we have taken recently. If you have a volunteer fire department near you, please consider contacting them and helping out in some capacity. These departments are on a shoestring budget, and you’ll be amazed at all they do with the equipment they have.

Shane and I attacking a burn pile that was started in March. The owner just piled dirt on it at the time and it reignited in late July. There were a couple of these piles and they had to be all torn down and flooded with water to make them safe in our hot and dry conditions right now. Normally, I would not be wearing bunker pants, but I was coming from a medical water rescue, and we always take our structure gear with us just in case. We came direct to this call. I was glad to have it because I was filthy by the time I left. Even my chief made a few comments.

That is Rich on the hose above at the hay bale fire mop up and then at training learning the engineer aspect of pumping water off of our structure fire engine.

These are the pools of water we have to keep full so we can draft water through our engines. Notice the engine to the left….yep, it got stuck. We tried to push it out (we have done that before) but this time we needed help from a big rig tow truck .

Rich and I try to attend as many trainings as possible. Sometimes there are opportunities to learn about different aspects of firefighting. Last weekend, we went out to the city airport and got some training on wildfire firefighting with mutual aid from the air and the air bosses. It was really informative, and I learned a lot.

Most of you all who know me, know that Rich and I have been traveling a LOT this summer. We were gone just shy of 5 weeks and it was all overseas. The first 16 days were Kenya and Tanzania on a wildlife safari. It was AMAZING! A definite trip of a lifetime. (Although I am already looking at ways to get back there and see more countries and wildlife in southeastern Africa.) I can let you know that I took not hundreds of photos there, but thousands. That post will take a while to get through. When we finished our tour in Africa, we flew up to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Instead of flying home right away, we got on the Viking Vidar and went on the Grand European Tour River Cruise. We were already on about the same time zone, we figured we’d go ahead and do the river cruise then. It was two weeks long, so we were missing home by the end, but it was also a neat experience. Here were the places we stopped: Amsterdam and Kinderdiijk (the Netherlands) – think cheese, wooden shoes, and windmills – Cologne, Koblenz, Freudenburg, Würzburg, Nuremberg, Regensberg, and Passau (Germany) – think beer, cobblestones, churches and castles, schnitzel, and pretzels – Melk and Vienna (Austria) – think cobblestones, gingerbread, Lipizann horses, castles, Mozart and Strauss, and cathedrals – Bratislava (Slovakia) – think of the summer home of Maria Theresa Habsburg, cathedrals, castles, and a pretty young country (1993) with a deep, long history – and finally, Budapest (Hungary) – think cobblestones, thermal baths, the parliament building lit up at night, and the moving tribute called “the shoes” dedicated to the Jews asked to step out of their shoes before they were shot and then their bodies pushed into the Danube River by the Nazis. This river boat cruise was relaxing and slow-paced after the go-go-go pace of Africa. There were only 183 passengers on board, and we got to know probably about 50 of them by name and fairly well. We tried to eat with different people at each meal but towards the end of the cruise, we sat with the folks we really enjoyed spending time with. The Viking service was amazing and we learned a lot about the local history, cuisine, and customs. If you want to learn about an area, Viking really does it well.

Here are some photos from The Netherlands:

We then moved on to Germany. If we were beer drinkers, perhaps we would have had an even better time, but we enjoyed our stay in Germany. We had the awesome opportunity to meet up with a good friend of Rich’s who is in the German Air Force. We were stationed with them in Norway and our kids went to school together. He and his wife took us to lunch while we were moored in Cologne. It was so great to see them and catch up. So many churches and cathedrals….so many cobblestones. During WWII, the Nazis made the train tunnel entrances look like churches or castles, knowing the Allies wouldn’t bomb those buildings. They still stand like that today. We saw a lot of vineyards on very steep hills as we cruised through Germany. We lit candles for our Joe in almost every city we stopped in…in all the countries in Europe we traveled to.

Then there was Austria….we stopped in Melk and in Vienna. Rich fell in love with Vienna and would like to go back. It was extravagant…so much beauty in the city. We went to a concert that night to listen to the music of Strauss and Mozart. We even had lessons onboard the ship on the Viennese waltz, which all Austrians know how to do. We spent a few hours touring the Spanish Riding Stables where the world famous Lipizzan stallions reside and are trained. They are born dark gray and 95% of them turn a brilliant white. They are bred from 6 lines and are beautiful! Our cruise started out cold and dreary but by the time we hit Austria, it was hot and steamy. We even saw a sunflower field!

We only had a short time in Bratislava, Slovakia, but would like to go back and spend more time there. It was a new country for both of us, so we enjoyed meandering the cobblestone streets. Remember back in the day when the had the country Czechoslovakia? Well, in 1993, after the fall of the Wall and the downfall of the Communist eastern block countries, the country separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. You can still see where the wall used to be between Austria and Slovakia because there were trees lining each side. So this very young country is still learning its place in this new Europe and yet it has such a rich history. It was about 100 degrees this day and I mostly took phone photos…but here are a few.

Finally, we ended up in Budapest, Hungary. This is the city I fell in love with. We are already talking loosely about going back and then finishing a river cruise through the lower Danube and hitting Prague and Romania. I adored Budapest! I already mentioned the “Shoes” art exhibit. It was along the area where our ship docked and there were people out there looking at the metal shoes day and night. It was incredibly moving. The Nazis made the Jews take off their shoes before they were shot and their bodies dumped into the Danube because their shoes were the only thing of worth they had and could be resold. The city of Budapest sits on several geothermal sites and therefore have a lot of hot springs. We spent the afternoon at one of the larger ones. They had indoor and outdoor pools….and of varying temperatures. At night, Budapest comes alive with their buildings all lit up as well as their bridges. It was magical!