Lions! Oh My!

Firstly, sorry it’s taken me a while to write another post.

Awesome--look at his yellow shoulders and back and brow!

I’ll start with a baby update. My boys are doing really well. They are staying in the hok all day now, playing with the other little kids. I’ve (unofficially) named it Awesome Hok because, well, that sounds awesome. Orion is getting super heavy, drinking lots of bottles all day long. Awesome is a little slower in his physical development. Orion has 8 teeth with about 4 more coming in already, while Awesome only has the 8 with no more showing. Awesome, however, is a cool baboon. He is so switched on and playing all day. He hunts for bugs and looks around when he sees big birds or elephants or anything predatory. He still clings to me whenever I take one step, he likes to pinch my neck, he likes to sleep holding my arm. Orion is pretty cheeky now; he runs away from me, he steals whole donuts and runs away from me on two legs (which was actually hilarious), and pulls hair now. But they’re both sweet and cute and I love them wholeheartedly.

Two days ago, Paul, our driver called back to us saying lions were close to the road. A bunch of us IMMEDIATELY jumped in the back of a truck, work be damned!, and took off down the road. About 15 minutes down the road, we found then, sooooo close to the road. They were sleeping in the bush, but we watched them for almost an hour anyways. A few us then went back at dust, after work this time, just as they were getting up and moving. We moved along with about 3 big females for about another hour. It wasn’t exactly safe sitting in the open air in the back of a truck with a lioness two bounds away.

Halloween

 

Nothing much other than that is new here. My friend Joselyn from my last trip is coming to visit for a week tomorrow.  Halloween was pretty fun around here. Most of us dressed up. I reinvigorated my pencil costume from a few years ago. I brought my fun yellow pants so I thought it’d be good and easy. We had a monkey in a kilt, Archer (from the animated FX series), Papa Lazaroo (not sure, from some british tv show), a leopard, and Courtney wore my amazing matching monkey pajamas. We played a number of drinking games and ate candy and caramel apples. Hope everyone else had a fun Halloween! Now we’ve got to start thinking ahead to Thanksgiving, which I’m hoping to cook!

Ellie

 

Orion - seriously, how cute is this kid!