Wow. What an experience. Ok so the NT team came out and were picked up from the airport and taken by bus all the way to Makete, which is in the Livingstone mountains, southern Tanzania. Nick took the team there, and the Kuykendalls took Jon Catron, his son and three interns with them to Njombe. The goal was to built chicken coops and a live roof. Using it to aid the church reaching the community. The missison part of the trip went well... the problems really started during the fun part. The kids and I took a bus down to Iringa and joined up with the team for the R&R part. We stayed at Kisolanza, (my favorate spot near Iringa) for a night then drove into Iringa, had the team shop and then to try to make it into the ruwaha. Well as all of us missys know, nothing in Africa happens properly or in a timely fashion! But this was a huge mistake...
Nick and I got in the kuykendalls car with Roger and Laurie, leaveing our kids on the bus with the team and the bus without a swahili speaker, and drove on ahead to get things sorted out at the gate. The bus drivers said they knew where it was... everyone knows where the park is (usually) so we assumed. Anyway... we get to the park and we have no cell reception. We wait for an hour thinking the bus is just taking a long time because it was an awful road. We borrow someones phone that uses a different coverage and get a hold of them. They were now three hours in the opposite direction! They drove back to where we had left them in Iringa. We met them there and spent the night. It was a terrible misunderstanding. 6 hours in a car and for nothing!! IN MY OPINION...Three things that shared the same amount of repsonsibility...
1. Nick should have stayed on the bus to have a swahili speaker present.
2. The car should have waited for the bus to follow, atleast until we were on the only road that leads to the park.
3. The bus drivers should have let us know if they didn't know where it was. (But to their defense there is another Ruwaha, where the ruwaha river runs threw on the way back to dar es salaam. This is the one the bus drivers were thinking of.) Miscommunication and misunderstanding!
So we spent the night in Iringa and left the next morning for the ruwaha national park. The road was so bad but when we finally made it, we got settled in to our rooms, had lunch and went for an afternoon game drive. It was beautiful. We saw 2 prides of lions, one with many small cubs and the other pride had just killed a buffalo and were eating it. Total lions that day were 47. Looking on the possitive side, we would have missed it if we had come a day before. :0)
So it was a great day...but the next day on the "Never ending road" (which is its real name) Because the road was SOOOO bad, the bus axle broke in the middle of a village. We hung out for 4 hours waiting. As soon as it happend Nick got back to Iringa by lorry truck and sent a bus to get us. Also he was setting up lodging for all of us. But plans changed in the bus on the way back and now the team was flying out of iringa, to Dar, spending the night then leaving to states the next day.
One of the funniest things that happend: As the team were going through their things to decide what to take and what to leave here they were a little frazzeled about the whole new development... now desperatly wanting to leave this country. But Ethan... he had been doing this annoying thing about everything... Look a mosquito, Made you look. Look an elephant... made you look. Anthing, he would just make it up. Well While we are all out on the Iringa Airstrip waiting and stressed, Ethan says "Look a plane". AND EVERYONE LOOKS UP. lol "Made you look" he says and runs away. It was so innocently done. But funny. I felt bad for the team and all that happend.
The kuykendalls and Stuva's stayed in Iringa that night. The K's wanted us to drive their car back to Dar while they and their Interns took the bus. They needed a bus experience. :0) We made it back and were shaken from this whole experience. We have never had anything happen like this on our watch. But I guess we were sharing the time too this time... Kuykendalls its all your fault!!! ;0)
Sweet faces.
Views of Makete.
Hands on. I liked this picture!
Building the coops.
Thank you guys for coming out and working so hard. Not to mention putting up with it all!
Bus trip, getting to the camp the first day and being served lunch. Laurie could not eat because we lacked 18 of us! Megusi camp is where we stayed. Such a great place.
Then at the gate the next day... The do over day. It was worth it.
In the Safari vehicle.
Hey Nick the camera is shooting the wrong way! :0)
Pride of lions with the cubs and then the pride that just killed the buffalo.
They had blood all over their mouths.
The buffalo, Impala and Elephants.
Sun downer... we stopped here in this banda for a few drinks.
The camera got dusty, and the sky got dark.
Breaking down in the village. Entertaining the bystanders. They wanted me to pay them for taking a picture of them. I guess they get a lot of tourists breaking down since the road is washboard!
On the way home shattered bottles of beer and soda were all over the road. Nick got out to help them sweep off the road before he drove over it with the kuykendalls vehicle. He thought Roger would appreciate that. :0)
