3 days on Noah's Ark, and progress in our schools

      We went to Kruger National Park, South Africa's biggest park – bigger than all of Swaziland, – this past weekend with some birding enthusiasts, and it was fabulous: within minutes of crossing into the Park we were seeing giraffes, elephants, rhinos, hippos, wildebeests, impala, cape buffalo, water bucks, wart hogs, gnu, kudu, and all kinds of birds, sometimes spotted so fast we could not write them all down; we think the group is claiming to have identified around 140 different birds. Big impressive raptors, sometimes up close, or flying just above the trees, or soaring far above. Smaller gaudy birds: carmine bee-eaters in flocks catching the morning and setting sun, big fierce-looking southern yellow-billed and gray hornbills and the bigger and unusual ground hornbill, crested barbets with bright yellow bellies, black backs striped with white, and bright red dapples on their throats; woodland kingfishers with white tummies, turquoise backs and heads, red, red beaks, and black trimming on their wings, European Rollers - mostly turquoise, and lilac-breasted rollers adding their eponymous lilac breast to their turquoise back and head. Owls, waiting for nightfall.

At night we could hear the lions grunting and roaring just outside our fence. First thing in the early (4 a.m.!) morning game drive we came upon a pride of lions, and the expert guide explained to us the family dynamics: previous male lion had got too old and was driven off by 2 younger males who were now competing for the lioness. We saw her reject advances of one of the males and heard him roar his frustration. The other male was in the bushes, also roaring and grunting; we had a pretty good idea of his thoughts, too.

        Baby and mom hippos playing in the water with jaws gaping, kind of nuzzling Finally a leopard, at the end of the last drive: draped on a limb in the shade, tale swaying limp in the breeze and distended tummy sagging over the limb, sleeping off his gorging on a recent kill.

      Plus golden orb spiders as big as your palm which weave webs 15' across with strong outer strands, stronger than any I've encountered in the western hemisphere, and finer sticky inner strands. Vast open savannahs dotted with acacia trees and an occasional leadwood tree that takes 300 years to reach maturity, massive spreading fig trees along river banks supporting many different birds and mammals, and “sausage trees” with fruit pods heavy enough to break a car windshield, or give you a real headache.

     And alas no pictures. The battery on our camera won't hold a charge any more and we can't find a replacement in Swaziland. Mark's sister is coming to visit shortly and will bring us a new battery.

     Things are starting to happen in our schools. We now have a good schedule of 2 5^th grade and 1 6^th grade class disbursed through Tuesday morning and early afternoon at the wealthier school. Still waiting at the “poorer” primary school. Mark has started teaching the senior literature course on Shakespeare's sonnets to the High School honors literature class, which has been a challenge and fun. John from the Refugee Camp, for whom we are trying to open some wider vistas after he graduates in December, is in that class and, after only 5 years of English, is way ahead of the others; gets all the surface meaning and images of the sonnets and with help can then get to harder less obvious issues. When the siren sounded for the next period no one moved. I asked didn't they have to get to their next class. They said it was lunch, and could we finish? No one left. Actually, I was getting sort of hungry, but where do you find that kind of involvement?

       Our most fun was helping an ad hoc debating team prepare and present on Saturday a week ago an argument at the local seat of government on why stigmatizing people who are HIV+ is bad. It was competitive against another team (arguing the same side!) and the other team was judged better, which upset our kids and us too: I'm afraid it was because the other school was more fluent in English – that's going to be hard to cure. One of the girls thinks in English; the other 3 have to translate into and from siSwati. Takes years.

     But we got very close to our 4 students, and look forward to a lot more contact with these 4 in the future. Some of the brightest smiles I've seen on a child in a long time. Eager to learn, to receive the right kind of adult attention and approval. Makes us feel really really good. When we first met with them we brought some of the pamphlets and manuals with which PC plentifully supplies us, which we marked showing some pages to read for background on stigma. One of these determined young women came to Katherine the next day, having read the entire 120-page manual, and told Katherine she wanted to start a Health Club! Oh, yeah! We've since had some discussions with her about timing, topics, who would be involved.

Katherine has introduced Word of the Day at the high school during morning assembly in our efforts to increase the students' vocabulary. Last week we heard some students using “fantastic” in their conversation. Yesterday was “optimistic” and today was “pessimistic.”