Boat Ride on the NileMay 31, 2011
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| This morning we had a breakfast buffet at the lodge, which consists of nothing you would see at Shoney’s, with the exception of bacon and toast-it was really quite good if you weren’t paying close attention to what you were eating and didn’t ask a lot of questions. The rest of the morning and early afternoon afforded us about 2 hours to swim at the pool and converse with the other “azungus”(white people) that were also guests. This turned out to be valuable networking time as we talked with another mission group from Texas who had already started building projects in Malawi. They basically told us that we were going about our mission in the correct manner and offered helpful hints for us to use during the remainder of our stay. The calm of the morning was however shattered by 2 separate disturbing events- the first involved a member of the Texas congregation jumping into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. Our laughter and cheering gradually subsided when the victim’s thrashing and bobbing became rather crazed and a member from his congregation finally realized he was in fact drowning and rescued him. The second event involved a 300+ pound German man entirely disrobing at the pool in front of Heidi’s camera-this was part of the native wildlife we really weren’t counting on and resulted in a group loss of appetite, so we bypassed lunch. The afternoon was taken up by a boat ride along the Nile River up to Murchison Falls and back. The 3 hour trek was truly amazing as we saw herds of elephants, hippos and cape buffaloes at the water’s edge, as well as several Nile crocodiles that were eyeing us up for lunch, baboons, warthogs and many species of colorful birds. We were able to sit on a huge rock at the base of the Falls for some great photos and experienced our first brief rainfall of the trip. We were also able to meet and network with missionary groups from Florida and California on the boat in the hopes of keeping in contact for future associations on mutual interests/projects throughout Malawi. After dinner, we were able to get some internet time to let all of our supporters/friends know we were safe and sound and everything was on schedule for now. |
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