What impressionist painted the painting shown here?

Trick question. It was just after dawn, at full zoom on my phone camera. I focused on the black bird and waited for the elephant to walk behind. The low-ish light and pixellation from the zoom made a pretty cool effect.

We finished the safari and went back to Ngong to start the next stage of the trip. We will visit with our sponsored kids. Ginger and I have nine that we sponsor through an organization there. The schools start up either 1/8 or 1/15. The first week is crazy, so we have been asked to stay away this trip. We will have some classes at other places, mostly for women.

We went to meet a bunch of our sponsored kids on Saturday. Below, Cameron is with Ronald. Ronald graduated from secondary school last year. He came over, in part, to discuss college plans. He wants to go to school for automotive engineering. We are in the process of picking a school. He is a bright young man and a hard worker. He will do well.

Ronald is one of, I believe, about 8 children. His mother left over 10 years ago, taking the two youngest. His father, Anthony, has raised the rest of the family singlehandedly, working two jobs.

Below, we are with Wangari. She is not one of our (or anyone’s) sponsored kids. I got to know her when she volunteered to help teach self-defense classes with me. She learned about it as a volunteer for the Kenya Red Cross.

Wangari has what I believe is the equivalent of an associate's degree in electrical engineering. She just finished another course in plumbing and pipefitting. She is on her way to an internship in plumbing at a hospital.

Below is Gladys and her 5 daughters who we sponsor. Gladys has been a widow for 7 years. She has 6 daughters total, but we haven’t met the oldest. Front row: Ginger, Cecelia, Patience, Marion, Sarah. Back row: Cameron, me, Valary, Gladys. We started sponsoring Sarah when she was in an orphanage. Gladys had given up the three older girls, as she couldn’t support them. We needed to move Sarah out of the orphanage for academic reasons. We had to move Valary and Marion at the same time. If we had removed Sarah (sponsored) and left the other two (unsponsored), there likely would have been retribution on the two remaining girls. So we began sponsoring them.

During a home visit in 2022, we found out about Patience and Cecelia. So we now sponsor them.

Sarah is interested in early childhood development. She is looking for a program to get that certificate. In the meantime, she was just accepted for an unpaid internship working with young kids at a school.

Below are Ginger and Beth. We started sponsoring Beth in 2019 when she was 9. Beth was in day school at that time. We visited her home, and no one was there. Through some digging, we found she mostly lived there alone. Both parents had left, leaving two older brothers and an older sister with Beth. The sister was in boarding school and the brothers had left to find work.

Beth had about a 3-km walk to and from school on a busy dirt road. She attended school regularly, as it was her only guaranteed meal of the day.

We immediately moved Beth to boarding school and Virginia (social worker) was able to reach her father. He is now somewhat back in her life. Beth is attending the equivalent of sophomore year in secondary school, still boarding.

Cleaning up a few loose ends, the day we went to the Maasai village, we also traveled through Masai Mara a lot. We saw some more noteworthy animals that day. Below is a rhino. This completed the “big five” for us on this trip: rhino, elephant, leopard, lion, and water buffalo. The rhino and leopard are the hard ones to get. We’ve never seen all five in one trip before.

A wildebeest. These are great animals.

We encountered two giraffes fighting. It was very slow motion and awkward looking. They stand side by side and swing their heads around to hit the opponent with their horns.