The workshop students; Protestant chickens; Carmelite nuns ... and a bit more safari.

Today I went to the workshop for the morning after seeing off D. and A. to the airport for their flights home, D. to Thailand and A. to UK.   Its been good catching up on the past with D.   I gave him lots of photos of Maseno and Kisumu in the 'old days' .... I think now we almost qualify as old colonials types !

There were six students working at the workshop, and I observed Paul teaching three newer students about joints, and he set them a task to make a sample piece of certain size.   They had a rough piece of wood which they first had to plane and cut to the correct dimensions .... and tomorrow I hope to see the finished work.   Two students (Bonaventure and Evans) who passed their exams last year are now working upstairs in the workshop making mahogany chairs, as supervised but paid work.

Then back on a tuk-tuk for lunch; two lovely Carmelite nuns had arrived for lunch from Kisii.   They wore brown habits and scapulars and the baggy brown check aprons women of a certain age often wear here.   Father Hans related one of his stories from his past over lunch .... he had picked someone up on the road after an accident and taken him to the hospital.    The patient was very grateful, and his family thanked Hans with a couple of chickens (live, of course !)   But his fellow priests were horrified when he put  them in with their chickens at the priests house; they were Protestant chickens, not Catholics .... so the other priests banished them to roost in a tree.     In the night the Catholic chickens were killed by a mongoose, but the Protestant chickens in the tree were safe !   Hans thought there was a moral there somewhere ....

Safari continued:-

The park allows 'game drives' in the early mornings, and late afternoon, but we persuaded our new driver that as we had missed one drive the last night, maybe we ought to fit it a third drive during the day, which we did.   So we left at 6 a.m., and drove around for two hours, and found lots of lovely animals to watch.

The various tour drivers have in-car radio's so they are talking to each other the whole time, advising where they have seen various animals, and so directed our driver to this lion guarding the remains of its zebra dinner.   He was one of two male lions there; probably young adult brothers; neither had the scratched faces and torn ears seen on older, solitary males.

Below are topi; strange antelopes, the males of which often stand up on termite mounds to see if any strange females have entered their territory, with whom they might be able to mate.   They have a charcoal coloured mark down their thighs, which on their sleek and shiny coats, looks like a sweat stain !   The young topi do not have this same colouring.

Then, the highlight of the drive was a pair of mating lions.   Our driver spotted a male and a female lying near to each other and we stopped, hoping something would happen .... and after a while, the male got up and nudged the female, as if to say 'Come on, shall we ?' .... and they did.   He growled open-mouthed as he climaxed, but she only gave a small grunt ... 

In nearly fifty years of living in and returning several times to Africa, I have never before seen copulating lions, so I was well pleased !

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Later:-

I am reliably informed by a friend that male lions have barbs on their penis, and that is why the female grunts or growls and snarls as he withdraws !!    There .... you didn't know that, did you ?!    My blog is nothing if not educational !!