Wild

 We went to South Africa to enjoy a holiday and met my parents there for a planned week vacation. We were supposed to return to Ethiopia to spend 2 weeks with my parents accompanying us to Injibara. However, because the Prime Minister suddenly announced his resignation on February 15th, the situation was unsteady enough that we were not able to return to Injibara. (Ironically, the President of South Africa stepped down on February 14).  Instead of returning to Ethiopia and waiting out the waves of political upheaval at a guest house in Addis Ababa, we extended our stay in Cape Town and fly back to Ethiopia tomorrow, February 28th, where we pray we can go to our station together on March 1st. 

I am thankful for the Lord’s provision that once again, in the unsteady political climate, we were out of Ethiopia. A state of emergency is put into place for the next six months for the country and there is talk of a new Prime Minister being named this week. Pray for peace, wisdom, justice and protection of innocent lives. As I am sure you can guess, this also isn’t my favorite situation to take our kids into but we are peaceful. 

And I can’t think of too many other places where I’d rather wait out a situation. Cape Town is ocean, remote beaches, tidal pools, warm bays, mountains, sunshine, braai and animals.  Just wildly amazing and beautiful. Also, wild in an untouched sort of way.  In a penguins swimming around your legs, ostriches grazing on deserted beach, baboons in our kitchen, seals on the pier, a pod of orcas sighted off the balcony, baby shark laying at my feet kind of way. We made a list of wildlife we had seen and not counting bird and fish species, we are at well over 20. 

Putting up these pictures, I’m laughing at how non-chaotic we look. At the risk of being a broken record, traveling with babies is chaos. We’ve got some sweet babies and people are gracious.  

Wading between boulders looking for penguins There are 3000 penguins in the colony. 

They are wild and we respected their perimeter…

All but Tiger, he just wanted to touch them but we kept stopping him because we wanted him to keep his fingers intact. 

They would swim all around us.

Then we were down at the Cape of Good Hope and I am exclaiming, “GIRLS! WOW. This is just what we studied! Who was the first explorer to come around this Cape?” and they blankly stared at me. They did like the wild ostriches though.

I didn’t get a picture of this mama baboon and her baby sitting on our kitchen counter. I noticed banana peels outside on the steps, along with a knocked over jar of peanut butter and assumed J and A had a snack. Then I noticed spilled granola, moving into the kitchen, there they were. We stared at each other and I slowly walked towards Miss T, who was alone and crawling around the kitchen floor. “Umm. Guys, baboons are in the house!” The mama baboon loaded up her arms with a cereal box and fruit, she left an apple she had started on the counter, her baby jumped on her back and they ran out. 

The seals were jumping onto a pier, clearing out fish the fishermen had dropped. Jon decided to try and touch it and…

Oh my word. I wish I had a video. Jon leaping backwards as the seal aggressively came towards him, barking and chomping. 

And following our theme, here’s Tiger, so bugged he can’t pet the animals!

Look at this shark…it was kind of cute, only because I wasn’t in the water. 

We have babies obsessed with birds. 

Thank you so much for your prayers. 

 

Here’s our child-friendly “horsey” we found.