Shan and Shoshanna: In Africa!

Shoshanna and Shan

This is a belated New Year's post -- a solar New Year's post -- but I only yesterday received photos to go with an end-of-the-year report (itself received on January 28, 2013!) from my brother Shan and his wife, Shoshanna, to family and friends, a report that I break into here where Shoshanna describes their Africa trip:

Culminating the year and fulfilling a life dream to visit Africa, we spent 3 amazing weeks in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa. The first portion of the trip was spent living in Livingston, Zambia with Gertrude Akapelawa, the visionary founder of Victoria Falls University. After delivering pro-bono leadership training for 100 faculty, teachers, and staff, we headed with our backpacks on foot over the Victoria Falls Bridge across the baboon-lined border into Zimbabwe to join our Intrepid Camping Safari comrades.

For the next two weeks, we traveled with African guides through stunning countryside and coastline, stopping in small African villages and camping along the way. The final leg of the trip was spent in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, a stunningly up-close and personal encounter with leopard, lions, hyena, crocodile, monkeys, and huge herds of antelope, zebra, elephants, wildebeest, Cape buffalo, hippo, black and white rhinoceros, and giraffe. Lucky for us, it was just past birthing season, so we were privileged to see and photograph lots of animal babies hugging their mothers' sides.

Now for the photos sent by Shoshanna. First, a picture of Shoshanna, Shan, and a lady whom I take to be Gertrude Akapelawa, founder of Victoria Falls University:

Next, a photograph -- from which country, I don't know -- of two African women, the closer of the two carrying a baby in a sling on her back:

Here's a comfortable view of Victoria Falls, a view better seen enlarged, so click on the image:

Now come the animals (some of them) in the order mentioned by Shoshanna above, a fuzzy leopard first:

And next a lion, studiously ignoring the happy Intrepid Campers:

Also, a lazy lion, though one allowing himself slightly more interest in the passing safari:

And now appears -- as we all know from that eminently trustworthy source of factual information, The Lion King -- the lions' mortal enemy, the hyena:

Far better than that scurrilous creature, a baby zebra with its mother, apparently a unicorn mother zebra:

Not to mention a mother elephant and her baby, her rather big baby:

And a suspicious Cape buffalo (but where's his cape?):

Plus a hippopotamus (and like an iceberg, 90 percent is below the surface, so don't take this image at face value):

Even a rhinoceros, a black rhino (I suppose):

And finally, a condescending giraffe:

And those are all fourteen photos: people, landscapes, animals -- the sought-after African experience, I reckon -- along with Shan and Shoshanna's Africa leadership sessions, likely a wild life itself, but no photos of that, so we can only hope that my brother and his wife stop by and fill us in, and they might want to check out yesterday's blog entry on the African artist El Anatsui.

Meanwhile, I've been traveling all over the world myself, though I have no photos to share since my excursions are solely in the realm of my hyperactive imagination . . .