Of warthogs and elephants and Easter bunnies

Last week we had a last IMME hurrah… complete with pizza, ice cream, and Princess Bride. I laugh every time I watch that movie, but I have never laughed harder than when someone used the slam “you warthog faced buffoon.” Definitely funnier when three days earlier you saw too many warthogs to count and had them come and stiff your tent while you sleep at night. That was our experience at Queen Elizabeth.

The weekend before, after a crazy long drive down to the park in southwestern Uganda, we got to see not only warthogs but elephants, hippos, water buffalo, cobs (antelope-like animals), a lion, and even a leopard on our safari. The leopard was sweet, the elephants (especially the baby ones!) were amazing, but my favorite part was the hippos… not all of them, but mainly just one—a little baby hippo that was born just five days early. Five days old! It was sooo cute… well, as cute as a hippo can be.

For the whole drive down there, and for the majority of the safari, the same group of us was piled in a jeep with our awesome driver Ronald. We called ourselves “Team Ronald” and decided we had the best driver in Uganda… so we did awesome things for him like writing him a song and saying “Yay Ronald” and screaming and cheering every time he conquered the rocky roads that look completely un-passable. We couldn’t really tell if he truly liked it, or if we were the most obnoxious Americans he had ever met, but he always smiled, so big that you could see it in his eyes through the rearview mirror.

The craziest part of the weekend was not necessarily the safari itself, but our experience camping. In Africa. With all of those crazy animals that we had just seen. I was chilling outside staring at the moon as I read my Bible, when I heard some of the craziest noises. Just as I was reading Psalm 50:10, “For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine,” I heard a large cat noise. No joke. It was killing something, because I also heard the sound of an animal dying. CRAZY! At that moment Michelle and Katie came running up from behind me, scaring the crap out of me. I thought I was going to be eaten. And that was just the beginning of our night. After all of that, I decided that it I felt a little (not much) safer inside the tent, so we all hide in our sleeping bags from the noises outside. Shortly after, they continued. The warthogs came, sniffing around our tent, sticking their noses right up against the fabric, and making noises as ugly as their faces. A little while later, an elephant. No joke. Elephants are cool, but not when you think they might stampede through your campsite. Its not over though… a while later in the night came a hippo, plodding up from the lakeside and walked right by our tent. It is good that every wild animal of the forest is God’s I am thankful that all that moves in the field is his…

I have tons of pictures, but don’t feel like spending my whole day fighting with the Internet… I’ll be home in three weeks. You can see them then.

This past weekend we had an Easter celebration with our family. Our sister came over, with our three “nieces,” who are super cute, along with William and Eva joining us from Kampala. After the Easter service Sunday morning we had a giant feast with TONS of food. I played with Patricia, Tracy, and Belinda (our nieces) with a little tub of yellow playdough that I brought with me from home. Patricia, the oldest (about 12), loved running her fingers through my hair, braiding it and styling it until she said I was “fit for the cover of a magazine.” They were so cute. It was weird to be away from family at Easter, but I was still surrounded by my new family here. Even more, it was great to be away from the consumerism of America, where Easter wasn’t just about the Easter bunny. It was great for Easter to be completely about resurrection and new life, and about celebrating the life that we have been given with friends and family.

Happy Easter!