Here, kitty, kitty...

Hi friends.  Sorry it has been so long since I have updated my blog.  Two weeks ago I actually went on vacation.  It was so nice to have a week without the stresses of hospital work.  Along with Alice (who is here doing the same thing I am) and her husband Elliot, I got to explore some of the beautiful country that is Zimbabwe.  We packed up and headed into Harare where we were met by our guide driving a small blue extended cab pick-up.  His name was Taps and he took great care of us driving and cooking for us the whole trip.
  Our first stop was a private animal park, Antelope Park.  There I fulfilled a long time dream of mine to go horseback riding in Africa.  We saddled up and rode through the game park, herding a family of warthogs and getting pretty close to a group of zebra.  The next morning we walked with lions.  They have four 15-month old lions who they release every morning and allow people to walk along with.  These lions are perfectly capable of tearing people limb from limb, but seem to be unaware of their own power yet.  So we walked with them and petted and posed and survived.  Yay!  Afterward we participated in elephant training.  It's a bit like a circus.  They show us what the elephants can do then we get to climb onto their backs.  There is an option of doing a safari elephantback, but I was glad we picked horseback instead.  Elephants have big uncomfortable backs!

  We then hit the road again, arriving in Victoria Falls that afternoon.  The place that we stayed was beautiful and we were able to see wild elephants at a watering hole from the balcony of the main lodge, but we stayed in our own beautiful lodge house with a backyard and view of the stars.
  The next day we visited Victoria Falls.  Because this is the rainy season, the shear volume of water going over the falls is staggering.  It creates a cloud of spray that rises up to the clouds and falls back to earth as rain.  Just when we thought we couldn't get any wetter we did.  Looking across several of the lookout points we could see nothing but water flying up into the air.
  I crossed the bridge into Zambia which had some beautiful views of rainbows created by the spray from the falls.  In Zambia, my friend Ashley from residency and her husband, Sean, met me and we had lunch and discussed life in Africa, working at mission hospitals.  They had just finished some time in Angola at a mission hospital.  It was so great to see friends and to talk with people experiencing the things I am.
  On the way back across the border into Zimbabwe, I stopped to pet a cat.  A man passing by saw me and claimed ownership of the cat.  He told me he would sell her to me so I could take her back to Zimbabwe.  He also pointed out that she was pregnant and hungry.  I told him that he should find "his cat" some food.  He asked for money to "buy her food."  Ahhh... the entrepreneurs here, always happy to sell things, whether they own them or not. ;)

  We ate at the biggest tourist trap in Zimbabwe that night.  The Boma restaurant.  This is me eating pumkin soup out of a caudron.  I also ate a fried worm, impala, warthog, ostrich, and crocodile.  The ostrich and the warthog were pretty good.  Sorry Pumba!

   I also got my hair braded by a woman who worked at the restaurant.  As she worked, I asked about her family.  She told me that she was a single parent of a 13 year old boy.  I asked her if she wanted more children someday (yeah, I'm nosy).  She told me she had once had another child, but when he was seven, he went to visit some relatives and they called her one day and told her he was dead.  She doesn't even know what happened to him.  My heart broke for this young woman trying to raise her son alone and missing her other child.  Please pray for Maureen.
  We stayed another night in the beautiful lodge house and our guide cooked us french toast for breakfast with chutney (my new favorite thing that goes with everything), then on to the gamepark where we drove around for a few hours and saw several elephants, giraffes, crocodiles, hippos, impala, zebra, kudu, monkeys, an eagle, and a rhinoceros (which, in full disclosure, we could only tell was a rhino when we looked through our binoculars).

  But all in all it was an amazing vacation, good to get away for a bit, great to see friends, and humbling to see some of God's many wonders.