Part II - Maasai Mara Safari

 Sorry, I had to start again.....this was one of the first animals we saw, he was just sleeping under a tree, a wonderful, mature lion (Simba), altogether we saw 8, some cubs and a female mother.  During the day the sleep and hunt at night.

A face only ....a mother could love, our guide said warthogs are made from..."a bunch of spare parts", we saw way more than we wanted to see, besides no one wants to eat a WARTHOG.Pretty typical vista, don't you love the sky?

 Our favorite animal...the cheetah!
Very graceful, day hunter, most elegant of the cats.   We saw quite a few, took many different pictures, saw a mother and two cubs, stalking their prey.

This female lion was very hungrey, she was digging in a warthog hole, but no lunch for her that day!  Her cubs weren't too far away.  Wisih we could help.

 We came upon a den of spotted hyaena's -- a pack of 14-16, with many cubs.  They weren't too shy and we observed them for quite a while, kind of ugly and vicious, but the cubs were cute.

 Quite often we were able to get multiple animals in the same picture.  Check out the Lion along with a family of elephants.  It was amazing they were not spooked by the jeeps as we rolled up and watched them.

 This mother elephant didn't want us to close to her baby.  Cute guy huh?

Here is one of the more elusive of the cats....full grown Cheetah.  There hard to find and we were lucky to see 6-8 of them over the 3 days.  So, the goal was to see the Big Five - they are the Elephant, Lion, Leopard, Cape Buffalo and the Rhino....we looked and looked, but we never did see a Rhino, there was a sighting but he was too elusive and went into the bushes.

We love this shot of the Cape Buffalo, he was whallowing in the mud and lovin' every minute. 

Just as a final note, Kenya has many wonderful animals to see, but the numbers are dwindling, too many poachers, too many people occupying the land and eliminating these amazing animals.  Its not like what you see on National Geographic and Disney's Nature....there are 1/4th of the animal numbers that used to be in Kenya.  So now you can see why we treasure this experience.  Kenya has so many resources but they just don't have the expertise to preserve the natural wonders when there is so many people/poverty and so little money.  I worry about the future of both!  

Wish we could have included more pictures, but I'm limited on this blog.

We'll talk soon,  Love to All

Sr. Couple's Safari to Maasai Mara, April 2011

 A little change of pace from our mission life, we're off to the Serengeti located in Western Africa, close to the Tanzania border.  Its referred to as the Maasai Mara because its on the Mara river right in the middle of the Maasai tribal land, also it's where the amazing migration crosses the Mara River.  We (nine senior couples) were only there 2 nights 3 days, spent most of the time on game drives in open topped safarai jeeps.  It was amazing - of course, you know how much we both love animals, Dad has never had so much fun, he was always trying to "call" the animals closer.  As you can see from the pictures, the animals were everywhere, completely out in the open.  Its not like hunting deer/elk in the Utah mountians.  The Serengeti is a large, wide open grassy savannaha, with a few trees here and there. 

Sit back and enjoy mostly pictures this time, I will try to name them if its not obvious what they are.  To put it in perspective, Dick took 250 pictures and I took 205, we deleted about 50 percent, tried to only keep what was focused.  What I wouldn't give for a good zoom - but as you can see we were so close most of the time - it was unbelievable.



We stayed in these tented rooms - it was just like "Out of Africa", all the night sounds, monkey's running on our roof at night.  Our beds had the nets around them, and yet we had hot running water, electricity and the food was gourmet.   Now you can see why we could have stayed longer.                          

We flew in and landed on a dirt air strip, with giraffes and zebras right next to the runway.  Our game driver/guide was a native Maasai named Rueben (his Christen name) he was very knowledgable, he seem to know all the floral and fauna, recognized especially the pride of cats, cubs, who was the mother/father etc.  There was never a dull moment, the service, the weather, the animals, the beautiful skys, landscape, trees - everything was out of the world.

Thompson Gazelle

Sorry, I just realized that I have to post all the pictures at once so I need to start another post.  Please log back on because there are many more wonderful animals to see.

Love you all,

G & G Tuttle, Dick & Janet, E/S Tuttle

Big Shooter is Finally on the Blog

Well my honey ( sister Tuttle )  finally got me on the Blog. This is'nt my one of my strong points, but I'll give it a try.  When it comes to office work I am as sharp as a bowling ball.  Get it?  Don't expect much and then you won't be disappointed.  But I'll give you the straight scoop.  Office work is the pits at least for me but Janet loves it because she is the best when it comes to that. Another thing that is'nt very fun is answering the cell phone cause I can't understand any of these people. So the best thing to do is to play dumb then hang up.  But the bad thing is they just call back.  I have a real big offfice with air conditioning, big window and computer and printer.  This makes me feel real important.  But I don't feel like I have any body fooled yet.  But I'll keep trying. 

Now I'll tell you what I am good at ( this won't take long ).  I am real good at combat driving,  I can run any matatu off the road just like they do to me.  I mastered this very unusual way of driving in only 4 days.  Now that made me feel pretty cool.  I like to go out in the bush and meet the villagers look at sand dams, boreholes, latrines, shambas, the little kids and animals.  That's what I am good at.  I will go into more detail at a future blog.  This is how you keep everyone tuning in for more blog talk.  When I figure out how to attach a picture I will start that also.  Well how am I doing so far?  It is way past my bed time so this is all for now.  I'll do better next time. At least everyone is happy for now.  This is Elder Tuttle signing off for now.  See you soon.

Pictures From Mt Elgon National Preserve near Kitale, Kenya

 So far this is our favorite Kenya animal, Dick was looking out over the valley with his binoculars and sure enough spotted these giraffes about a mile away in the acacia trees.  We jumped in the truck to get a closer view.  E/S Beecher, were with us and with Dick doing his magic, he called them in closer to us - they were quite curious who was making all the "barking" noises.  It was thrilling to say the least!   There were 3 adults and one teenager-type, beautiful patterned skin.  If you look close in the picture below you will see one in the bushes right behind us - we were only 20 yards from all five.  During our visit to Mt Elgon we saw (12) collubus(sp) monkeys, (30) waterbuck, 15 common blue monkeys and some type of pronghorn and lots of baboons.  Of course we love animals - on our return to Nairobi we also saw small herds of zeebra, several pronghorns in the Nukuru area.  The most memorable experiences we had we seeing the very  modest LDS buildings that the branches are held in and visiting the possible springs and well sites where the local villages go 3-4 times a day to fill up their gerry cans of water.  The majority of the mud homes with grass roofs have no electricity, refridgeration, no plumbing.   

 We visited 4 branches, 2 district hospitals that will be used for neo-natal training of nurses/drs/mid-wives and several well sites that LDS Charities have completed + we were able to see the "famous" collapased latrines that will be one of our first projects.  The school has 1,500 students and only one working latrine.  The students are required to be at school for nine hours six days per week.  Unbelievable .... they have no electricity and just benches and tables, the well isn't working and so they have to bring bottled water from home.  After we were out amoug the rural villages - we really had our "eye's" opened to the living conditions and yet the kids seem so happy - it tears at one's heart.  We feel this was a life-changing type of experience.  It is so hard to put into perspective the lifestyle we all are so fortunate and blessed to have - its hard to explain unless you experience the stark differences as we have this week.



The Branch in Nitiri - See our truck!!!

Its getting late so I better close this post, our mission is
starting to change drastically - no more are we just the new kids on the block, its time to get to work and start our own projects.  The workload is very demanding, because the needs are so great.  We do have to work within a budget, manage several types of projects, 1. clean water, 2. food and nutrition, 3. wheelchairs, 4. neo-natal training, 5. Area initiatives projects that we can pick, plus finish up some ongoing projects that were left from other couples.  But it all good - because I promised Dick I wouldn't complain too much. 





Dick with Pres. Odero at a spring in Busia

Yes, we are homesick and miss all of you....we are working hard to become good servants and try to make good decisions as we develop the humanitarian projects.  There are two things we haven't told you about and that's the roads/driving issues and the amount of corruption/fraud/deception issues we face as we try to implement the projects - I'll let Elder Tuttle talk on the next blog.   Bye for now.