can you see the elephants?!?!?!??!

So, Emma and I went for a walk the other day, even though she has malaria and she's pretty sick. We walked through a coffee plantation and a banana plantation, and this guy yelled after us part way through the bananas. The only word he could really express in English was 'elephant!' and he pointed over a nearby hill. We asked him where, and he said to follow him. Two young kids joined us as well, screaming, "Tembo! Tembo!" (Elephant! Elephant!) We hiked through some pretty crazy junglish region, and came to a clearing with a tall tree. One of the young boys shimmied up the tree trunk to look out, and he told us that the elephants were just up the hill. We thrashed our way through more gigantic leaves and brush, and came to a second clearing, where the older boy looked out and smiled, and pointed at a herd of over thirty elephants. We were probably 100 meters away!

In other news, I am teaching and I love my students quite a great deal. I sort of hate the school, though, because it is run by a group of really really reactionary Christians, who demand that the girls get baptized and change their Kiswahili name to a "Christian" name... so I feel like it's sort of a colonial effort on behalf of these people, like they're trying to "civilize" these young girls. Of course, the school provides a place of refuge and education for these young girls who would probably otherwise be fated to marriage at the age of 13, childbirth at the age of 13 or 14, and female circumcision. So there are benefits to the school's existence; I just wish that the girls were more free to choose their religion.

I do not want to leave Africa at all, but I am sure I'll be back. I've got to go now, time is up.

Bye!