Saturday, August 30, 2008

Family holidays!

To continue to tell you about our family holidays.. The boat trip was awesome, we did see crocodiles huge ones – the biggest was 4.5 meters. Not sure how many inches that is, but it’s big. We also saw white monkeys by the river side. At night we slept in tents on the riverbank, which was great. The first place we stayed at, they had killed a crocodile that day – and had the tail right there so we could see it, and some crock meat hanging in the sun to dry. Thought it was a prank, but it was fresh…

The river was so low, that sometimes the guys that worked on the boat had to jump into the river – where the crocodiles were – to push us of the banks that were visible. The water was knee deep, so they would have been able to see them if they would come. At one of the places we stopped it was so hot that the workers went for a bath, on the shallow part of the river – just in case the crocks would come. My brother-in-law and his oldest son went and joined them, when they saw that there was no danger.

From the boat trip we went onto the mainland again, where we saw some baobab trees, the ones that look like they have been pulled up and put back down, up side down. Just like the one you can see on the photo. We drove to meet up with the rest of the family in Morondava, where we stayed the rest of our time in Madagascar. Morondava is by the ocean where we used to go on holidays when we lived there. We played in the sand, built castles with the kids… and enjoyed being together.

It is quite amazing to me that we all could be there at the same time, 17 of us with all the children included. And we had a great time, no disputes or anything. Good to be with the family and hanging out together. I’m so blessed to have such a loving family.

Something that became even more real for me in Madagascar, is that it’s not the places but people and relationships that is the meaning of life. Having friends, relationships is what makes life valuable and worth living. People will come and go, but friends/relationships will make an impact on your life for ever!

Then we flew back to the capital and the family took off. I stayed a couple of days longer, and hung out with some new friends before going back to Uganda.