Hi Everyone,

Still safe and sound with a few minor adventures and some major experiences!

"Pudding" (our Pajero) is doing fine - she is driving like a dream and we put her through her paces in some of the worst roads we have ever been on.

Short version: We are on route to Nanyuki to record a song for B'Ware which is an HIV/AIDS awareness group. We are travelling with a Canadian drummer/singer who met a Dutch couple who have set up an underground recording studio about 3 hours North outside Nairobi.

On the way we detour to Hell's Gate National Park for some excellent game viewing and lakeside camping (with some semi-aggresive hippos scaring us sleepless). We spend a night at Lake Elementaita and wake up to thousands and thousands of flamingos and pelicans. Then the drive to Nanyuki - about 230km. It took 6 hours.

Driving rain meant we didn't want to take the scenic route through the bush. Mother Life on the other hand had a different plan. We took the scenic route through some mud and Pudding was engaged into 4H and we slipped and slided across the road through wild bush on both sides stretching to the horizon.

You get nervous in the wet spots and you're greatful in the dry spots but you just keep going - pothole, holes with water, ridges, rocks, just don't stop! We get to a point where there are these high voltage wires hanging about 5 metres suspended off the ground and dangling car roof level. We drive through a bit nervously - we do this twice more - on the last one we read the sign that says this is for elephants. But the people we are going to said that they have never seen elephants there as it's not close to any official country park - this is just Africa.

So by now it's getting late and we're getting a bit more nervous as the sun's setting and we don't even see any lights on the horizon. Then we see him - at a distance he's huge. Up close (as close as we dared to get) he was enormous. Our first elephant sighting and we weren't even on a tour or in a national park!

Anyway, we arrive in Nanyuki late with a broken shock and broken starter coil -for the next 2 days there were a few things on the African menu: recording a song in record time with the awesome Joost and Patricia, bush mechanics and some roadside assistance from Joost and a deaf mechanic, a drunken preacher guy, 40 kids playing football and with our Canadian drummer/singer (Thanks Gilles!) and a visit to Theo Kappe, a Dutch artist's studio. All happened and solved in record time and everyone smiling as they go about their life.

Obama won the election and the next day was declared a public holiday in Kenya. Maybe that was why everyone was smiling, but you got the idea that this is simply Africa and the way they do it.