Delivering novels to our Maasai friends...

On January 4th we made a day trip down to Amboseli to visit our Maasai partners and deliver a box of 85 books. Our friend, Devin Jones, a middle school teacher at ISK, had teamed up with us and asked his students to bring in books for young adult readers. We expected we might get around 30 books and ended up with over 80! Daniel, the head school teacher at the Ilkengarre Maasai community school, was excited to receive the novels and had us come and spend some time with the children. School had just resumed the day before, after a 6-week break, and Daniel spent time handing out school supplies we had delivered about seven weeks ago. After visiting the school for almost an hour, we walked to the adjacent village and spent another hour having tea with Daniel and a few other people in Daniel's home. It was a very special time, topped off with a chance for us to thank the community for their donation of hand-made goods; the Maasai crafts will be sold at an upcoming ISK event to help fund another Freedom Through Learning project. What a great way to kick off 2011!

Family adventures to usher in the new year...

It was such a blessing to have Rebecca come to Kenya during the Christmas break, from December 24 - January 2. It just felt right to have everyone together for the holidays, and we tried to see as much of Nairobi and the surrounding parks as we could during Rebecca's visit. Here are some family photos from Christmas, including a New Year's Eve photo at Fogo Gaucho, a Brazilian BBQ restaurant in Nairobi. We're already dreaming of next year's Christmas vacation and more sights we can share with Rebecca.

Rhinos at Lake Nakuru...

After our Christmas trip to the Mara, Rebecca had seen four of the "big five": elephants, buffalo, lions and a leopard. But no rhino. So we took a day trip up to Lake Nakuru National Park in search of rhino so she could round out her Kenyan game drives. Not only did we see many white rhino (including a mother with a baby), but we also spied a black rhino in the bush beside a back road in the park. These elusive and endangered creatures are very hard to see in the wild, so we considered ourselves to be very lucky, indeed.

A real African lion safari...

To make Rebecca's Christmas trip to Kenya really special, we traveled to the Maasai Mara, Kenya's world-renowned national park, for three nights and three days. It was an amazing experience. We saw dozens of lions, including a male and female eating a dead buffalo. We also spied a leopard at close range (basically, right above our heads as we parked underneath a tree out in the Mara). Not to mention elephants, buffalo, wildebeest, gazelles, zebras, giraffes, jackals, etc. It was a fantastic trip.