A Camping We Will Go

This past weekend my roommate and I packed up a truck and headed down to our favorite reforestation and development project for a weekend getaway. We headed out Saturday morning to minimize our time in traffic. We still got a bit hung up though, especially because of this truck.

We saw some other fun sights. This car was making a beautiful scrapping noise as it went down the road.

This is a quasi-pano. You can see the windshield of the taxi in the lower left corner of the photo on the right. I wanted to give a taste of traffic jams here. On our left was a cart drawn by a horse that was drooling on the trunk (boot) of the taxi in front of it. In front of the taxi was a 7 place (bush taxi) carrying sheep on the roof. This is extremely common, especially at this time of year. Once when I took a bush taxi the sheep in the back kept bleating like a woman in labor every time we went over a speed bump. They kept shifting too, which was kind of annoying because they kept kicking the back of my seat.

But we had no accidents or problems, praise God, and soon we were there. Well, almost there. We drove in the gate and realized that there was no longer a road leading to the tree where we normally set up camp. In just a few months of rain it had completely grown over with grass and small bushes. We met up with our third camper, who had ridden his motorcycle to the project, discussed our dilemma, and decided that we would probably end up camping in the field.

We then drove back into the nearest town to visit our friends from the project who were promoting and selling fuel-efficient stoves at the market. After eating a very late lunch (rice with fish) we helped pack up for the evening and then went back out to pitch our tents before nightfall. We just barely succeeded in getting the tents up and fire started before the sun went down. Then our friends showed up with a bunch of meat and started grilling it. Never mind that we had just stuffed ourselves with rice 3 hours earlier- it was time for another chow down! We had quite a crowd that first night and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. Unfortunately my camera was tucked away somewhere and I didn't get many photos.

The next morning we had a worship service. One of the African guys who was with us normally runs the powerpoint at the big Assemblies of God church in the city and he happened to have his laptop along- so we had slides in the middle of nowhere! We sang a mixture of english, french, and the trade language. By now most of us from the US and Europe have learned to sing several major worship songs in the local language because we frequently sing songs in two or three languages at church. After that we had a time of prayer and sharing the things that God had been teaching us.

After that our friends left and for the rest of the day it was just the three of us. The day after that it was just me and my roommate. I spent most of those two days sitting in the shade reading Unbroken, the story of Louis Zamperini. He possibly would have been the first man in the world to run a sub-4:00 mile except that World War II broke out. He joined the Air Force and after his plane went down in the pacific he and his pilot set a new survival record in an open life raft- 47 days. Unfortunately, they weren't rescued. They were captured by Japanese who then put them in a prison. That's as far as I've gotten. It's an amazing story.

In the evenings I got out to take some pictures. My friend M is a bird fanatic and I am a photography fanatic so we enjoy going out together. He takes his binoculars and I take my camera. He enjoys the creation, I enjoy the challenge.

Well, I enjoy the creation as well. I love being out in nature. When I took my camera out of its bag the second evening I spent almost half an hour just photographing grass and trees. I miss them so much in the city that being immersed in nature was almost overwhelming. It was so beautiful that I almost felt like I was dreaming.

But I also enjoy the challenge. I don't have a camera with a lens the length of my arm. It does it's job, but I need to be close and I need good light. That means sneaking around in the brush, cutting myself on the thorns and prickles and sharp edges that typify the desert foliage, crouching for several minutes as still as possible, and generally enjoying "a fine and pleasant misery" (Thank you, Pat McManus).

Imagine the thrill of picking a path through grass nearly as tall as myself, hoping that the roughly outlined path below me was not made by the resident python. It was wonderful! Whether I managed to "shoot" any good animals or not is beside the point. The fun is in the hunt. I leave you to decide whether I got any good shots.

As for myself, I have decided that my new favorite bird is the grey headed kingfisher (or whatever M says it is called) that kept flying past my lens on this trip. It's wings are brilliant, stunning blue. It's beak is a bold red, just as striking.

It makes a really bizarre trilling sound that is disproportionately large for it's body size. But what is really cool about it is that it shares my love of flying and swimming, preferably in rapid succession. It sits on a branch overhanging water, watching for fish or other small creatures just below the surface. When something catches it's eye it shoots over the water in a flash of blue, belly flops face-first into the water, and more often than not comes up with it's prize.

I never got close enough to capture it's dive bombing very well. Even in good lighting it was moving so quickly that the photo is blurred. It was a ton of fun to watch, though. Next time I'll try to get down closer to the water. It's challenging because the bank is very steep.

There were many other birds as well. These green and yellow ones were especially fun to watch because they almost always sat together in groups.

I believe this is some kind of kite.

And a hornbill?

This looks like the female perhaps.

This must be some kind of duck. It kept diving under the water and then popping up again a couple seconds later.

There were some larger birds that flew by also.

There were some other cool animals. First, this rather impressive spider was hanging between our camp and the truck. Fortunately she didn't eat any of us alive.

Then, the second evening when I went out to the water hole this creature emerged from the depths. One of our friends told me that it is a relative of the komodo dragon.

This insect is astonishingly red. Another advantage to sneaking around in the undergrowth is finding creatures like this.

This praying mantis jumped on my leg in the dark and scared me a little bit. I thought I was being attacked by the world's largest grass- hopper until I beamed my flashlight on it.

Look at this extraordinary creature that was sitting on the path!









Well, that concludes my adventure log for the moment. You really should think about coming and joining me some time!