Thank you David Bonderman!

Because of Mr. Bonderman's generosity, I have been given the opportunity to travel the world and learn about culture. As a Bonderman Travel Fellow I plan on traveling through Western and Eastern Europe, East Africa, Northern India and Southeast Asia. I am excited to experience new and amazing things that will better enable me to empower and inspire the next generation of young students.

ALSO!!! If you are interested in following the nasty development of my beard and hair....you can follow it at

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Zebras, Camels, Black Mambas and Ants

First, Zebras:

Several days ago, John Fisher and I decided to go on a little piki (dirt bike) ride in the Great Rift Valley near Kijabe...the goal: find animals and chase them. After 30 minutes of riding on the highway and 20 minutes of riding through 2 feet deep and soft dirt/sand we found some Zebras! There were between 25 or 30 of them (4 of which were little babies) grazing in an open field. So, John and I geared up and chased them for a solid 15 minutes! It was unbelievable...chasing 30 zebras and coming within feet of them made me feel like a wild animal on the hunt, which is fitting because I look like an animal right now.

After zebras, we scoured the valley for Giraffes, but didn't find any...maybe next time

Camels:

Camels on Christmas Eve?? Yes. I felt like one of the Magi. John is on the right.


Black Mamba Christmas:

It definitely didn't feel a whole lot like Christmas this year...no family, no christmas tree, no christmas music and lots of mosquitos. On Christmas Day there were two girls swimming in the pool when they saw a snake hop in the pool with them, swim across the pool and climb out on the other side. After hearing a scream of death I ran over there to see what the problem was...a 6 ft long snake!! Shortly after my arrival, a wise African man came with a ten foot long stick and smacked the mamba on the head several times, killing it. After decapitating the monster, I picked it up (it was just as tall as me) and we determined it was a black mamba (the most deadly snake in Africa). Baller

Ants:

To finish our wonderful adventure on the coast of Kenya, the Fishers and I declared war against the invading ants. If any of you have seen the TV show "McGyver" (sp?) and the episode where those intelligent ants invade the city....the same thing happened to us on Dec. 26th. At around 9 pm million upon millions of ants starting streaming into our house. It was insane! John, Warren and I took it upon ourselves to attack fire, fireworks and DOOM (basically the "cruciatus curse" for ants). We took down well over a million ants in 1 hour and deterred the rest of the ant population from invading with our strategically placed fire works and bon fires. Thanks to McGyver, humans 2 - ants 0

Godspeed and Good Fortune

3 comments:

Lucy said...

joey - much love from the Martins this Christmas. You are an unbelievable man. Stay safe and have an amazing time changing the world and being forever changed.

Erika said...

I mean... yep.

laGrimstad said...

I really hope you took a video of you chasing the zebras haha. That needs to be in the return home presentation.