Sunday, December 2, 2007

meetings of all sorts, a giraffe, and a charging baby elephant

the view from my hotel room

the first day was meeting the VIPs. the US amb and US team, the zambian ministers

introducing the delegation... r to l
the permanent secretary for sport, youth, and children; praya; me; mike; minister of sport, youth and children; and susan

after a couple more meetings we were off to a candlelight vigil for people living with HIV/AIDS
(sat was world aids day, so this was the eve of world aids day)


the choir


this is ester. she told us about being married off at age 14 to a 41 year old man. how he would rape her and infected her with HIV and also other STDs. she got away from the marriage, and is now getting treatment for he disease and is back in school

the candlelight vigil

you can tell this guy was once an alter boy


my candle was more like a torch


saturday we went to the big World AIDS Day event.

there was traditional dancing

you can't really tell here, but traditional dancing is all about the booty


we had a break to get some errands done and then we were off for a gala celebrating good HIV/AIDS journalism

we waited for a long time for the awards ceremony to start.
we got there at 19:00 for and event that started at 18:30
it sat empty like this for another hour and a half

the lights in the lusaka convention center

we wandered around, hoping to discover something fun.
we did
this is art
art with dumpsters spewing out corn

who knew?

the gala finally started
it was not as exciting and you would imagine
the annual

photo essay:
boredom


after suffering through many official meetings
we decided that on our day off
we would take a safari
below is some of what we saw
the internet is shifty and i have to be up really early
i am catching a 6:am charter flight to luapula
so forgive the lack of captions


there is a warthog in the middle and the others are impala

mike and the impala

water buck

impala

cape buffalo

HOORAY GIRAFFE!
i got really really really excited


can you see him?

praya and the giraffe





this is the aftermath of me chasing the girafffe.
we had to leave and i LOVE to see these guys run so i asked if i could chase them
i ran like the wind in crocs
it was beautiful and super fun!

these are called zebra

this elephant started walking towards me and africa (our fearless driver) and i got scared

then the whole family arrived




the baby elephant decided it wanted to trapple over me.
i would squat down and look it
he would move his head up and down
and then come really close
this little guy was 300 kgs
about 800 lbs

this is not zoomed

a beautiful end to a wonderful sunday

4 comments:

Dianna said...

These pictures are beautiful. Be careful out there, crazy!

KamilahNYC said...

amazing pictures - loved the commentary as well

andi said...

I can't believe how beautiful these pictures are! Good show, kimberly. Tell me that half of these shots are really postcards from the World Aids Day gift shop. Well, they should be then.

Kikibug said...

WOW! Your life is amazing. You do things I dream of doing! Good for you for REALLY living and doing.
I don't understand half the political stuff you write about, but it is all very interesting and eye & mind opening.
Sorry we didn't make it to the Bombay house while you were here, the football game didn't end until almost 10:00pm. Let me know next time you will be in town, I really would like to get together.