After Africa

Hey everyone: I wanna keep this short and simple.

This SATURDAY night at 7:30 pm at SANTA BARBARA COMMUNITY CHURCH in the High School Room my Dad and I are sharing about our trip via slideshow/presentation. The bags will also be on sale there for $15. Bring cash.

This is a great opportunity to come hear more about our trip, and to go from reading a blog to seeing and hearing all this in person so to speak. I really would love to see all of you who supported the blog come Saturday night and show your continued interest and support. It won't disappoint.

Please let me know if you have any questions at all - (805) 722-5514 or keatonhudson@gmail.com

See you Saturday Night!

Keaton

Capulana Colour

I thought I would wait till later to announce this, but I figured sooner than later is best...

When we visited Pieter and the villagers of Mukhatini, he gave us a little something to take back to the states with us. Capulana Bags. Now I am sure this phrase conjures up a large question mark, but I will explain.

The ladies of the village are trying to save up enough funds to buy a truck for their village. Their main export is agriculture, and they live virtually in the middle of nowhere (80 or so kilometers outside of Chokwe), so transporting goods to and from market can be tough. So in order to raise funds, a church in Tennessee, Cedar Springs, partnered with the village and together they decided these Bags would be a great way to raise support in the States. The money made is going directly back to the village via Cedar Springs.

Capulana's are local African cloth, decorated with patterns and colorful designs. These village ladies had the ingenious ideas to make purses/bags out of these and Cedar Springs would sell them locally in Tennessee. I will attach a photo after I take one of an already made bag... but essentially, I have 100 bags that we brought back with us, and will sell them when we get back.

The bags look awesome, and the cloth is beautiful. There are many varieties, and each bag is $15. This would be a great way to be a part of the work we were doing there, and support these women in their efforts to support their families and their village! Photos are soon below, if you are interested please let me know, however we won't start selling them for a little while... We are waiting on some more materials/info before they'll go on sale.

It's quite an exciting opportunity to be a part of the project of these women, and to help raise support and awareness for their goal. Please see back to this post as I will update it with more information soon!

Party in the USA

True Story (for the most part):

I hopped off the plane at LAX....

My tummy's turnin' and I'm feelin kinda homesick

Too much pressure and I'm nervous

That's when the taxi man turned on the radio...

So I put my hands up, they're playin my song...

Yeah, it's a Party in the USA

Yeah, yeah it's a Party in the USA

Feel like hoppin' on a flight

Back to my hometown tonight

It's a Party in the USA

***

Thank you Miley Cyrus. It's good to be back in the States... Not home quite yet, still sitting at the United Terminal at JFK (so technically I haven't "hopped off the plane at LAX" yet), after a jam packed 15 hour flight from SA... now just one more 5 hour to LAX, then a 2 hour drive back to SANTA BARBARA. It's gonna be nice to be back home after virtually 24 hours of traveling (we left our hotel in Joburg yesterday at 3:30pm). I miss all of you and am excited to see many of you soon!

Like I said, the blog is far from over, still check back please maybe once a day for some important information I would like to get out...

Lesson 2

"It ain't over till it's over"

I could also say, "Rise and rise again, until Lambs become Lions" quoted straight from Robin Hood, meaning Never Give Up. This one sums up our journey from Sena to Quelimane to catch our flight... and it goes like this. 40 km outside of Sena - flat tire. Spend 2 hours trying to fix it, literally trying everything in the book and more - no luck. Phone for help. David is confident we will miss our flight. Prayer, Prayer, and a bit more Prayer (goes back to Lesson 1). David tells our African driver to scoot over, he takes the wheel. Two hours and 125km/hr later - we arrive at the airport. Go through security quickly - and then wait because the plane is late. We made it. It ain't over till it's over.

Photo: a street vendor (likely younger than 15) trying eagerly to sell his chili's for profit

Lessons Learned - Lesson 1

"When traveling the world, faithfulness is key."

I thought this one appropriate to start them off - because it plays into so many situations. There were a number of situations where mishaps would come up, and we just had to trust the Lord to provide. A lot of the future lessons will stem from this one.

Literally 10 minutes after Mom dropped us off at LAX, we had problems. For whatever reason, they couldn't print my boarding pass for the connecting flight from JFK to Joburg (but they could print my Dad's. Typical)... But our bags were checked through all the way to Joburg. If LAX couldn't print it, who says JFK would be able to? What if my bags ended up in South Africa without me? These were all questions running through my head. We left LAX in faith (with a rather large question mark looming ahead) that they would be able to provide us with my boarding pass to Joburg in New York... and they did. No problem. Why LAX couldn't do it beats me.

Photo: David, Laura, and I in the sketchiest of sketchy elevators in our hotel in Beira

The Beginning

10:43am

Hard to believe it's Friday already. We fly out of Joburg tonight at 7:30, and will be back home to Santa Barbara by around 5:00 pm on Saturday.

As I sit in our hotel room in Sandton typing, a multitude of thoughts run through my head. It feels as this trip has come to quite an abrupt halt... on one level I'm excited to return to friends, family, and particularly the ocean, but on the next I am sad to say farewell to such a captivating continent. Three weeks is a long time, and looking back on photos and journal entries, Beira feels like ages ago. But the past 21 days have been quite a journey, and one that I will never forget. Through our adventures (for lack of a better word) I have learned much. That is why the next 10 blog entries or so will be 'Lessons Learned' (at the wise suggestion of my father). I will be recapping comedic moments, interesting experiences, culture clashes, humbling thoughts, and more... so just because I'm back in the states doesn't mean that the blog is over. I will still be "Painting the Story"... so stay tuned

Photos are: Water pools in the mountains/valleys of Entabeni. Rhinos (the highlight of my game park experience) sparring, various birds spotted (white breasted kingfisher, and a european bee eater) I will be including various photos in "Lessons Learned" that more often than not won't have anything to do with the text. But everyone likes photos

Entabeni

This is our second full day in the game park now, and there are far too many stories to tell, plus the internet connection is slow... So this will mainly just be a fraction of the photos accumulated from the past couple drives...

Tuesday morning (yesterday) we encountered this Lion finishing off the last of a kill (turned out to be the head of a water buck. In the photo you can see the horns of the dead animal

A Kudu we spotted on our first evening drive

The gorgeous scenery we are so fortunate to see every single day

A couple of previously fighting Impala, now at peace in the evening

Elephants

The ever elusive female cheetah - we saw her this morning completely on accident. Even our driver (who's been here for 8 months) has never seen her