Goodbye KBC

Pole, (Po-lay) about not writing in my blog for a while. I’ve been trying to spend my last few days in Africa soaking up everything around me so I won’t ever forget such a beautiful place. But lets backtrack a few days. Wednesday was our community presentation, and what better way to top off our academic semester with a long, very intimidating public presentation about our Directed Research to the local community and government officials. Over 50 Maasai men and women filled the chumba for hours listening to our findings about water quality, land use changes (that ones me!) and wildlife sanctuaries. We all dressed up in ‘community’ wear some in Maasai clothes and I even put on makeup for this special day. Shocker, I haven’t touched it in 3 months. The presentations were a great ending to the semester and when we finished it hit me that junior year was over and we were officially on summer vacation. I’m a senior in college already!? When did this happen? My group was amazing we really caught the audience’s attention, and explained very sufficient recommendations to help improve their agriculture production. Everyone was extremely impressed. And as for my 46 page research paper on human-wildlife conflicts in the Amboseli Ecosystem? A-. Yes I did extremely well this semester and I’m going home with no regrets.

            Thursday we were rewarded with a trip to Amboseli National Park, our last non-program day. We spent the morning game driving around the park, searching for wildlife our car packed with 9 people. Unfortunately once again it was cloudy and we couldn’t see Kili. And on another note, currently we are also in the wet season so animals aren’t really found in the park, making it difficult to find them that morning. We got a few pictures of some hippos and elephants though.

            That afternoon we enjoyed another wonderful buffet, and a dip in the pool, but as we were getting ready to head out to our last game drive it started to torrential downpour. So we sat inside the lodge sipping our hot mochas watching the rain fall. A few hours later it cleared up and we set out for our final game drive. We watched elephants crossing the road trumpting as they headed out into the sunset. Some were even 2ft from our car! We watched them splash in the recent rainfall puddles and I added about another 400 pictures to my photo collection.  

            And then just like that it was over. The semester was coming to a close and the days passed even faster. Our final days were spent packing, which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and wondering around Kimana. And now it’s Saturday, my plane leaves tomorrow and I’ll be back in America by Monday. Scary to think how fast these past 3 months have flown by and that my junior year is finally coming to a close. But senior year is right around the corner and new adventures are coming my way. To conclude my last blog post in Africa and linking it to my title, here’s the adventure time theme song: “It’s ad-venture time, c’mon grab your friends, we’ll go to very distant lands. With Jake the dog and Finn the hu-man, the fun will never end it’s adventure time!”