Call Me Ernest

Ernest Hemingway that is. Why not, i mean first there was the big game safaris. Although i never shot anything except with a camera but that counts, right? And now i can use yet another phrase i would never have thought to use about myself: 'deep sea fishing in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa'. Wow, we had a ball. I will upload pictures from the camera when we get home of the 6 foot Sailfish I caught! We caught 4 Sailfish altogether which we threw back but the 14 lb Tuna we are on our 2nd day of sushi. [photo]

Ahoy Mate! Shiver Me timbers

We are in Watamu famous for its protected reserves and world famous fishing. We have rented a magnificent villa with pool, cook and house keeper on the beach. Up at 5am today to fish. I will let you know how we do.

Happy thanksgiving!

We are on our way to Malindi to spend Thanksgiving on the coast hanging out on the beach and possiblly deepsea fishing. We are traveling with our friends Allen and Marta and their two kids clare and Brise.

Whew! Dodged A Bullet

Wednesday night Kayla and I returned home after dark from a dinner to find Kidogo, the puppy (who doesn’t look much like a puppy anymore), acting strangely; just lying around, won’t come when you call. Apon further investigation we notice her mouth is all swollen and the side of her lip is very droopy and she’s drooling profusely. Anyway she is showing all the symptoms of having been bitten by a snake.

We call the only Vet we know several times and he’s not answering. Then we start call just anybody looking for something to do for her. No one knows what to do or they are saying there’s not much to do. Never did get the Vet on the phone. And Kayla and I were pretty distressed as we decided there wasn’t much to do but wait it out and hope that by morning she would still be with us. Luckily the kids were asleep and unaware.

Morning arrives, I got up early to check, incase anything had to be done before the kids woke up. I poked my head out the door to find her sitting up by the gate staring at me! A good sign that she made it through the night. I called the Vet again; he answered and agreed to come out.

She actually looked pretty good. The swelling around her mouth was almost gone although her throat was somewhat swollen and she acted more like her old self again. The guard then showed me that he had found a baby, headless snake in the yard. Kidogo likes to chase birds and lizards of which there is no short supply around here so it would make sense that she chased this snake and bit the head off. The disconcerting part of this is that the snake was identified by the guard as a Black Mamba. One of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world. Nice. And where there is one baby there is sure to be more and maybe even a parent somewhere!

The Vet gave her some injections for pain, an antibiotic and something else; no anti-venom as she seemed to be recovering on her own. We are told to watch her for 72 hours now for changes. She is so luck, but the bigger concern now is it seems we might have Black Mambas in our compound and with kids around this is no joke.

I have been told about a company that will come out to deal with finding and eliminating snakes so I’ll be calling on them soon!

So you’re gonna have to excuse me while I gloat about our kids a little.

We were walking to school as usual. Typically Esther will say bye to me as we enter the school compound gate and run to her class on her own. Leaving me to show up afterward with the backpack containing snacks, et al. but this morning, as she approached her class, she yelled out ‘hey everybody!’. And when Esther shouts, I think it’s possible the entire block could hear her. It is amazing the amount of sound that is capable of coming from such a tiny person. Anyway, of course her entire class turned their heads to see her coming (yes, her entire class was already there. We are typically late even though we live one block from school) and, no joke, they all responded with a long and loud ‘heeeeeeyyyyy Essstthhhaaaa!’ and completely emptied the classroom to meet her, surrounding her in a huddle of hugs and giggles.

I stopped dead in my tracks to watch this; looked over at her teacher who could only respond to my wonderment with a smile and a knowing shrug. Actually it’s really no surprise things like this happen to Esther. Watch out Hilary, move over Obama, this girls got charisma too! Esther for president!





Every once in a while I have this ‘ah ha!’ moment about these kids where I realize the incredible amount of growth that has taken place in an incredibly short amount of time. In less than 5 years this creature called Max who could only poop and cry can now write on a piece of paper the symbols that signify his name … and continue to poop an cry, of course. There is intelligent life in there after all! Actually he is doing more that write, he’s doing addition and subtraction and knows about maps and animal life cycles, loves jigsaw puzzles and Ben 10. And knows how to protect his sister when she’s in trouble and knows how to taunt her if he’s feeling left out








Oh yea, this weekend our so called consumable shipment arrived. Nevermind that it was suppose to take 6 weeks but took 6 months! I had totally forgotten what we put in there which made it all a nice surprise when we opened the 17 boxes. Seems that none of the Cheerios or Doritos are stale and nothing is passed it’s expiration date so we lucked out.