February 28, 2010
Today is Sunday. On Friday I was supposed to work at the STI clinic, but there was some confusion and they weren’t expecting me to come. It was actually quite a comical morning because I wasn’t sure where the clinic was located at the hospital. I had to ask around. There’s nothing like a white girl asking the locals where the STI clinic is, in English, louder and slower. lol. I ended up just heading to the Neonatal intensive care unit instead. Baby Victoria left the ward to go to the orphanage.

Friday after clinical we headed off to Mole national park. Sinbad, Muriel’s adopted son organized a van and a driver for us. The van was the nicest vehicle I have driven in yet. It was a 14 seat van, with air conditioning and a high ceiling. I was almost sad the drive was only 2hrs long! The road to Mole was terrible, it was dirt and so badly washed out, we drove in the shoulder for most of the trip. When we had called a head they told us there wasn’t any rooms available, so we had decided we would camp. When we got there the gentleman at the reception office told us there were only a few tents left and that there was now some rooms available, and of course the price was different than what we had be quoted for on the phone. By the time we got everything sorted out, it was dark. None of the staff knew how to set up our tents. So Cherie and I opted to sleep outside. We laid our tent out on the tent platform and took our bags with us to find some dinner.

The platform we slept on over looked the Serengeti-type plain. It was absolutely beautiful. It reminded me of the prairies, the way it went on forever until it finally met the sky. During the night there was a lightening storm several miles away that we watched. It was beautiful, nothing but sky. At about 3am the clouds disappeared and we lie under the bright stars. I barely slept at all, I was glad not to have slept at all. I didn’t want to miss a thing.

Cherie and I slept with our bags between us, because we heard the baboons could be quite pesky. We didn’t actually find out exactly how pesky till the morning. I would not have actually kept my stuff out had I have known how bad they could be. Thankfully they didn’t give us any grief during the night, but during the day while we were eating a couple of them would jump right up onto the table and steal food directly from our plates. They were not easily scared off either.

We woke at first light and watched the sunrise over the plain while we brushed our teeth. It was absolutely surreal. Sometimes, I think I am so full of emotion I might burst or float away. We did a morning guided tour, and saw different breeds of monkeys as well as wild boar, antelope, and at the watering hole, elephants and crocodiles. I thought there wouldn’t be any crocodiles because it is fairly dry there and it looked to me like the water comes and goes with the heat. I got fairly close to the water taking pictures of the elephants bathing, and I scared one into the water. I didn’t do that again…

We stuck around all day waiting to go on a driving tour. While organizing it, Cherie and I overheard a group of American students talking about going on a canoe tour. We tried to look into the tour but it is very difficult to get information. We learned that it was basically the same length of time that the driving tour would be and so decided to do that instead, not even knowing where or what type of water it would be. Was it a lake, or a river? We loaded onto a cart carrying 8 passengers pulled by a motorcycle and drove for about ½ and hour. We arrived at a very narrow river overgrown with trees. There was two canoes seating four passengers in each. We got in and were paddled into what seemed like the jungle. We were eating alive by bugs but it was worth it.