I know I have been quite behind in keeping this blog up to date. Let me attempt to catch you up to the happenings of my TZ life:

Last week was a bit uneventful for me as I got a bit sick on Thursday. I could not seem to keep any food down and Dr. G in her wisdom forced me to stay behind. I spent two days recovering and by that time, the first set of site visits were over with. I must admit I was sad because I was enjoying the site visits, even though they are tiring. The roads are very hard on your body and the food is not something I had gotten used to yet. However, I was enjoying the process.

Come Saturday, it was time for us to head out to our mini safari. I was looking forward to the trip, but I was a bit fearful of how my recovery was going. The safari stories I have for you are enough for a novel (j/k). On our first day out, we noticed that the vehicle's tire was a bit flat, and mentioned it to our driver. He shrugged it off and said it was okay. As the day progressed, other drivers pointed out the "flat" tire to him a few times, until it was absolutely necessary to change the tire. When did he choose to change the darn thing? When we were right next to the lionesses!!!!!! His reasoning: "Here, I can tell exactly where they are and I know if they are coming my way or not. Any other place, they could be hiding and charge at me without me knowing or being able to do anything. Plus, there are 4-5 other vans here that can help keep an eye out for danger." Makes some sense, but why not change it while we were at the lodge?!?!?!?!?

As he got out of the van to change the tire, he had to pull out our luggage to get to the spare. Well, if you did not know, one member of our team brought a luggage with a leopard print. It appeared that as soon as this piece was taken out of the vehicle, one of the lionesses started coming towards our driver. Once notified, he ran back into the vehicle, leaving our luggage outside and us inside with no tire. Teamwork was necessary at this point. Some of the drivers brought their vans around ours to cover us while the tire was changed, but the lioness kept coming towards us and was not fooled by the blockade. Finally, some of the drivers got out of their vehicles and changed the tire for us, as our driver was so nervous he could not hold anything steady for more than 1 second. In a matter of seconds, the tire was changed and we were all finally safe to go on. All in all a great story, but a bit unnerving while it was happening. Did I mention that all the others were hysterically laughing at us ("this silly Americans")? Well, they were. I have to admit I was laughing too, but only AFTER the ordeal.


The safari was amazing. We got to see so many wonderful animals and very close too. My favorite was the family of elephants. I’m a sucker for babies. They were so close to our vehicle that I could reach out the window and touch them. There was also an encounter with baboons and two little ones decided to jump on our vehicle to play. I think we spent an hour just watching them and laughing at them as they played with each other.
Once the safari was done though, it was back to Mwanza for the next set of site visits. Jamie had already gotten started the day before and I needed to catch up with her. Read about that adventure in the next blog!