Termites and Bruises and Bats, Oh My!

Ok so I realize I haven’t sent any info out about the animals we’ve come across here or the injuries or bites we’ve gotten and that’s not fun at all.  I mean I know these things aren’t the meat of the story but they are definitely the comic relief.

We will start with the creatures and critters:  First of all let me just say I really don’t like spiders or snakes but I really really don’t like bats.  I mean when you get down to it they are rats that fly.  Honestly, who thought “Hey rats are cute cuddly creatures, why don’t we throw wings on them and really have a good time”?  Say it with me (in your best church-lady Dana Carvey voice)- “Could it be Satan”?  Yes, Im going with that answer right now.  And of course we had plenty of bats in Kenya.  They really would just fly around outside and that was ok, but then 1 week before we left as I sat up writing an email, one of those flying rats made a special appearance in my room.  Awesome.  So I woke Katie up and she couldn’t catch it (although she’s a good friend and really tried), and then we woke our Kenyan father Joseph up and the bat got scared and hid.  I thought it was over but 2 nights later as we enjoyed our dinner Sylar showed up again (yes, I named him after Heroes), and that was it.  Joseph, Immanuel, and Michael all trapped him in the ceiling, and Joseph sang him a song about his impending doom, but he snuck out and we never saw him again.  He got lucky, for now.

Other creature stories: So the bat was the most traumatizing, but we’ve seen other crazy stuff too.  We saw a camel spider when we were cooking our food at the campsite (look these things up if you don’t know what they are because they are HUGE).  Then while we were hiking up a mountain in the bush, and already halfway up the mountain, the kid who is taking us tells us that there are often buffalo at the top of the hill, so if we see any we should just climb up a tree as fast as we can.  Oh sure not a problem.  Let me use my awesome height of 5’3” to quickly scale a tree to avoid being impaled by the wild buffalo.  So to comfort us he then says if we cant climb a tree to lie on the ground and pretend we are dead.  Again another stellar idea.  Thank goodness we run into any buffalo and it was ridiculously beautiful from the top of the mountain.  We have also been told multiple stories about snakes (coming out of the shower drain, cobras in the pantry, that the snake who kills the most humans lives right where we were camping), but luckily (knock on wood) we haven’t seen any yet.  We have also seen incredible creatures here, especially in the game park.  Lions, zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, hippos, buffalo, cheetahs, hyena, gazelles, and elephants were all so close to us when we were in the park and it was the best!   Sometimes we see very cool animals outside the parks too.  Like, since coming to Tanzania I have seen many monkeys hanging around in the trees by our house which makes for some amazing sights on a morning run. 

Then of course they have been some bumps, bruises, bites, and “tasty” snacks since we got here too.  In case any of you were wondering, termites toasted and then dipped in a little bit of honey actually makes a decent snack.  Sidenote- not so decent is when you have something tickling the back of your throat hours later and it’s a termite leg.  Also have gotten some awesome insect bites, mostly mosquitoes, but I got this one bite on my elbow while we were camping that swelled to about the size of golf ball.  They said as long as pain didn’t shoot up my arm I was good, and so far so good.  Oh and then on our way home from camping Katie found a tick on her leg and she couldn’t get it off because the head was in there, so she freaked a little and I proceeded to pull the tick off her leg… ah friendship.  The best injury though was this sweet bruise I got after I crashed and backward somersaulted my paragliding landing (there is video of this that may surface at some point. All to say its never boring here and I love it!