Aunties and Uncle!

"Thank you aunties, We love you aunties, God bless you aunties!"
- the 45 preschoolers that we helped take on a safari ride at Mokolodi

5 of us went to Mokolodi Game Reserve today to volunteer at the Education Centre helping take 45 preschoolers on a safari / game drive to see animals and learn about them. We started out by taking a tour of the Permaculture - before the kids arrived. It showed how you could work with nature vs. against it when planting and growing. It also used grey water - recycled water. Then the kids arrived. They first arrived and they went to a meeting area where we introduced ourselves and that we were volunteers.

We were known and Aunties and Uncle - the girls were aunties and the boys were uncles - so I was auntie Leslie and Jack was Uncle Jack! The kids then went to look at the crocodile and then went in for a snack. There snack was hot tea - in plastic mugs - and bread with honey. These 2 - 4 year olds were drinking this steaming hot tea! And not one kid spilled it, or burnt themselves. I just kept thinking that these kids must be used to drinking hot tea, because this would never go over in the US with kids so young. We then got on the safari vehicle. It was just like the one we went on - no doors, no seat belts, open areas and high up. We had one adult to like every six kids sitting on a row of seats and we thought these kids were going to fly everywhere.

The path we take is very narrow and rocky so the kids were everywhere. They seemed to deal fine with it, but we were holding on to them as much as we could. Especially the little ones! I had one little girl sitting next to me that fell asleep and she would have flown off if I weren't holding on to her! But the kids all did great... and their teachers were much less concerned that we were - I think we were just more concerned because this didn't seem like something that would happen at home. We had two safari vehicles out, luckily because our vehicle ran out of gas in the middle of the drive! So we loaded up as many kids as we could on to the other vehicle and then waited for them to come back and get us!

But the safari was great! We saw animals that we didn't see on Monday - like elephants, giraffes and kudu! It is just so very peaceful and beautiful at Mokolodi - we are definitely looking to do more work there.

We finished the day by having lunch with the kids. It was very good - we had rice with salsa, fried chicken, sweet potatoes, and coleslaw. When the kids left they said goodbye to all of us by hugging their Uncle Jack and telling there Aunties - "Thank you aunties, We love you aunties, God bless you aunties" all in unison!

When we were done and Mokolodi and all the kids went home, Peter, our contact and Mokolodi - who moved there from the U.S. in 1977 - gave us all a ride back to UB. This was like a 20 minute drive from Mokolodi to UB through the country area and then through the city of Gaborone! It is completely legal and a new adventure - to ride in the back of a truck through a town in Africa. We also just picked up another person on the way, and he just jumped in back with us! HA!!! Great Experience! Here we are with our hair blowing in the wind!