We took our first trip to Africa (and perhaps the only). The weather was warmer since it is in the southern hemisphere. They were having unseasonably rainy weather so there was a lot of mud. There were about 60 Americans and Canadians on the trip, which was part sightseeing, part conference and part safari. For the first week we stayed in the Maasai Lodge on the outskirts of Nairobi down a long bumpy road.
The lodge consisted of large main open air lodge surrounded by bungalows and ours looked out on the Nairobi National Park. Quite peaceful from our perspective, although there were monkeys out in the evening and reports of a leopard wandering by at night. From there we went to see an elephant orphanage and a giraffe sanctuary. We were scheduled to go visit a slum school where our minister there holds classes, but the roads were too bad so about 60 children came to visit us at the lodge for the day. There were sweet, friendly and very soft spoken. They sang for us and we sang for them. Then we ate lunch together and they played on the lawn before getting back on the bus.
The last night we were at the lodge the staff preformed a traditional Maasai friendship dance and we were invited to join in with them. After that they served us a lovely traditional dinner.
