real vacation

Our time in Kenya was amazing...it was the first real vacation I've had in years in that it lasted longer than 9 days and I wasn't studying for boards or preparing to move to Africa! We did have some work/training...but even that was a chance to catch up with friends and be encouraged! Much of our time was spent celebrating and enjoying life, food, and creation:

I celebrated my birthday along with some friend's birthdays.

Happy Birthday to us! 

A beautiful, delicious, hand-decorated cake (Thanks, K!)

We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary (on our real anniversary I was on call doing C-sections).

And, on our way home, we bought ourselves an early Christmas present:

A small chest freezer!!!

Its amazing. I can freeze vegetables and we won't have to go months without eating anything green. I can cook and freeze meals on the weekends so during the week we just have to pull something out of the freezer and bam- dinner! The possibilities are endless. :)

we're back

After almost four weeks away we have returned to our African home. We've had several interesting adventures since our safari....but for now I will leave you with some random photos from our last week in Kenya.

Since there are no Halloween or Thanksgiving celebrations, its already Christmas season in Kenya!

We watched the solar eclipse in Kenya...the small half-moon shaped light is a projection of the eclipse.

Cappuccinos and strawberry milkshakes...amazing!

love this

So, while in Kenya I was tempted to buy an American magazine to peruse ...but $19 was the cheapest I saw. Yikes! Needless to say, I did not make that purchase. 

Big five

We have had an awesome couple of days on Safari here in Kenya. We have seen more animals and animals doing crazy things than we had thought possible. We saw a leopard marking his territory (the most difficult of the big five to find), a newborn giraffe learning to walk, lions mating, and a lioness extracting and eating a fetus wildebeest from his dead mother!  Within two days we saw the big five: leopard, lion, rhino, cape buffalo, and elephant. We have really enjoyed a chance to enjoy creation and remember what it's like to wear long sleeves and sleep under the covers!

It's a boy!

Here on Lamu Island they have lots of donkeys. They call them the "Lamu taxi" because only one person on the island owns a car, the district commissioner. And he can only ride it up and down the one street along the seafront that is big enough for a car. Donkeys and boats remain the main methods of transportation.

One thing we noticed right away is that the donkeys here seem healthier than the ones where we live. They are fatter, gentler, more compliant and endure fewer whippings from their owners. There are probably several reasons for this...one being the relative abundance of food here and the other being a seafront donkey sanctuary! There, all sick donkeys get free treatment, donkey orphans are cared for, there is an annual competition for the best-cared-for donkey in Lamu, and twice a year they de-worm every donkey on the island.. Pretty cool.

We've stopped by several times to watch the donkeys. Today when we walked by the donkey keeper motioned us to come inside to watch a donkey giving birth! Sure enough...just the nose was already out and we got to watch the whole delivery! It was pretty cool. Then the donkey keeper showed us the operating room and stables inside. One had a donkey with a very distended stomach lying in it. Luke asked, "does he need an operation." The donkey man replied, "no, his life is done." We looked closer. Yep, he was dead. Then the donkey keeper asked us to give him money...not in the donation box but to him. And thus was life and death in the African donkey sanctuary. The End.

This is the organization's website. http://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/

Luke loves it here...

We made it to Kenya...after five days of travel we are settling into our guesthouse. First stop, breakfast on the roof. As you can see...Luke doesn't quite know what to do with all the fresh fruit!