Our safari to Lake Manyara and Ngorogoro Crater and was great and full of adventure...but not all of the wild-life variety. Lots of car trouble! Luckily, it was only at the end of each day so despite having to go to find a mechanic BOTH days we still got to see lots of wildlife. A little scary though as the fuel line filter got cracked when the underside of car hit a rock causing it to leak petrol!! The exact, same thing happened the next day to the brand new part but that time the petrol was gushing out so fast that we were on the red when we finally rolled into the service station. Soooo lucky. Had to tell 2 people to put out their cigarettes very fast! Mechanics here are amazingly efficient and both times, they managed to check the car immediately, source the new parts by whizzing off somewhere on a motorbike, install them, test drive adn have us back on the road in 30-45 minutes. Most impressed! We were told the fuel filter was mounted very low in the suzuki making it easy to hit on rough roads so we didn't dare do our third day of safari-ing. We'd seen lots anyway. We got surrounded by a heard of perhaps 60 elephants- mothers, babies and all. Amazing but a little scary too as many dwarfed our car. Felt very relieved when another, bigger car (with a guide) arrived and created a pathway out. Saw a group of 7 hyena, several pairs of lions lazing in the grass, baby zebras on wobbly legs, serval cats hunting and a big group of hippos wallowing and rolling in the water, waving their stumpy legs in the air. Gotta love AFRICA!
Dropped the others home and I raced off to splint my patient with the 30% burns to try and stop her wrists and elbows contracting. So much to do in our last few days! She has been transferred to a 12 bed clinic about an hour from our house as she can get nursing care there. She was still just sitting on a bed with a mossie net over her to stop the flies landing on her open wounds. Her scars have contracted significantly in 2 weeks and now her chin is almost completely pulled down to her chest and she can only partially raise her arms. Heart breaking. However, her wounds are slowly improving and she will be seen by the plastic surgeons from America on their visit in March. Her mum, a beautiful warm, traditional Maasai mamma, is fantastic and does stretches with her every day. On Boxing Day, we took her a Pembroke bear, balloons and a rubber ducky and to see her smile and play was just fantastic. We played balloon tennis to get her moving her arms and the duck is to strengthen her hands. I won't get to see her and her lovely mum again which is very sad. Her future will not be an easy one. Glad to see her smiling though before I left .