While we are in Tanzania we have taken the chance to visit eight year old Mboa (who we sponsor through World Vision) and his family in the community of Magugu.
WV's work is about a third through as they have been involved in the community for 6 years, and plan to remain for a total of 15.
We had a really interesting morning meeting the family, seeing his home, playing football and having the village women sing and dance for us.
More interesting however was the couple of hours that we spent with the Field Team afterwards as Paul and I quizzed them on their goals, the progress and the vision for the community's future.
If you were ever interested in sponsoring a child then I would encourage you to look this community up on WV's website. Their aim is to see 10% of the children in the area sponsored and presently they only have sponsorship for 1570 out of 2500.
Wow we have been slack in the past few weeks in doing any sort of update.Part of that is African internet, and the rest is we've hardly stopped!
After a few dramas in Kigali in sorting our gorilla permits we spent a couple of days in Gisenyi on the lake near the DRC. We did think to pop to DRC for lunch one day but sadly that would mean we had to get another Rwandan visa, and at 60USD each, that would have been a very expensive lunch… so we Didn't Really get to Congo.
It is not possible to rave enough about how cool the gorillas were when we went to see them. The day before we knew that it took five hours to see the Susa Group so we went prepared for a very long walk to find them.Our guide Hope had a great sense of humour so we thought he was joking when an hour up the hill he said that the silver back had called to say we were allowed to visit in 15 mins.
He may not have been right about the phone call, but the gorillas were there for sure.In masses.In the hour we spent with them we were able to see some kid aged gorillas playing tumble, a mother feeding her newborn, sleeping silverbacks and the entire troop on the move.It was impossible to stay seven metres away as to move in one direction only put you closer to another.
Our animal kingdom adventure continued with a four day safari in the Serengeti and Ngrongro Crater, where we saw masses of elephants, giraffes, lions enjoying sun, cheetahs having gazelles for breakfast and all those other sights which would be at home on a BBC documentary narrated by David Atteborough.We also had a very cool campsite where an elephant drank from the water tank, and the zebras gazed outside our tent waking us up in the night.
The most recent big event was or climb up Kilimanjaro. Led by a black man called White we made it to the top in time to see the sun rise over all the glaciers.V cool indeed!
We have the weekend "off" before heading to the beach.
Paul & Amy left NZ in September 2005 on a global pursuit of decent coffee.
This quest has taken us to about twenty different countries (or a new one every couple of months), and there are many more still on the list. Not only have we learnt about coffee but we can now tell the difference between mint tea in various north African states. We have perfected the art of travelling with carry on luggage only with all liquids in containers of les than 100mls. And on every ryanair flight we swear it will be last. And the last one really was.
We are now off on the adventure of a life time. With no jobs, no house, and no particular responsibilities we will be travelling through Europe, the Middle East and Africa, no doubt still looking for decent coffee. And the best bit, we're not travelling with carry on, so can carry large-ish bottles of liquid!
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