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going to africa Yesterday really was a good day for me and today started out on a high note as well. A little after midnight I watched another episode of Globe Trekker with Estelle in Kenya. Now Africa isn't that high on my travel list, but I might make it there eventually. Something about tribal unrest and that third world status makes me leery of going there. That may or may not be fair, but my mental image of most of the continent isn't that friendly. I like to travel, but I also like the thought of being able to come back home again alive. Despite my misgivings about Africa, Estelle did manage to impress me with some of the things that she saw in Kenya, others of course made me want to stay as far away as possible for years to come. After the main portion of the episode there was the usual shorter segments with Justine in one and Ian in another. Justine talked about the Bandiagara Escarpment in Dogon country, Mali, which was something completely new to me and very interesting. Ian, however, was somewhere more familiar to me. He climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and once he was at the top he said that it nearly killed him and he wouldn't ever do it again. He couldn't understand all of the people who thought that it was one of the greatest things in the world to do. I think that he was serious too. He sounded genuinely miserable, which was so unlike his usual self. ... As is usually the case on Mondays, I fell asleep only to wake a few times before finally getting out of bed. Unlike other people I can take my time on Monday morning, because I don't have to be anywhere. Once I was awake I had to call my buddy Nicole and tell her about something that I saw in the Globe Trekker episode. Since she loves animals so much, I wanted to see if she knew anything about blowing down their trunks. Yes, that is what I said. Estelle said that elephants learn to recognize a person by having them blow air down their trunks and then she did it. Okay. Now when I told Nicole about this strange habit she said that it was news to her and we both thought that it was more than a little odd. She then questioned as to what might come out of said trunks when they blow back. There might be more than hot air coming that way, because animals have a tendency to explore other parts of their body. ... I got a few more things accomplished in the early part of the day, but the oppressive heat kept me inside for most of it. The one time that I did venture outside, I couldn't believe the oven like conditions. Just walking around was an effort and I pitied the guys laying asphalt at the local grocery store parking lot. What they were enduring seemed almost inhuman to me and made me think of the prison chain gangs from the South.
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