Hakuna Matata

Well, it's mid-afternoon and a beautiful 85 degrees in Kenya. I feel like saying hakuna matata. No worries. Love the weather here and have been having a wonderful time catching up with my college friends Heather and Jason. Jason works as a surgeon at Tenwek Hospital here 150 miles outside Nairobi. You can check out their blog at mccropders.blogspot.com.

I have to say ... Kenya is beautiful. My first two days were spent site seeing. We saw a baby elephant orphanage, a giraffe park, and Crescent Island. Crescent Island is a 400-acre piece of land used 25 years ago to film Out of Africa. Animals were brought in for the film and never left, making it a great tourist spot. We took a boat out to the island and then walked around looking for animals. Here are a few highlights from the sites:

Wildebeest below an Acacia tree

"Baby" elephant (about a year old)

The best part about Crescent Island was an unexpected gift. While we were walking across the island our guide Bernard spotted something. He called to us, "Come quickly!" We didn't exactly know what were were running toward but hurried down the hill to see. Bernard had just seen a baby giraffe being born. We arrived about 30 seconds later to see the baby on the ground, fluids still covering him. Bernard told us it was quite unusual to see a giraffe being born because births usually happen at night. Amazing. It wasn't long before the baby started lifting his head and trying to walk. We waited for 30-40 minutes to see him take his first steps, thinking out loud that it takes our babies a year to start walking. It attempted several times to get up but our boat actually arrived before we could see the climax. Below are some photos of the mother and newborn:

And a video of one of the baby's attempts to get up!

Hakuna matata. I am sure he was up in no time.