I couldn't wait to get started on my safari so I was up early and ready to go. I almost made it out but Yanka caught me and wouldn't let me go without a good breakfast. After saying my goodbyes, I caught a matatu into Nairobi. I arrived forty-five minutes early and sat alone on the steps leading to the office. Slowly others began to dribble in and by 8:30 a.m. we were assembled in the office and being briefed by a bearded, safari suited colonial type the employees called Bwana. As we boarded a large Mercedes truck dubbed the "Ark" we were introduced to Greek-Australian Sam, a dark haired, swarthy country boy from Tasmania. He greeted us in typical Australian garb, t-shirt, shorts and sandals. We would be sleeping in tents within the game parks during our trip, double occupancy. My tent mate was John, a deputy director of a juvenile detention center in Sheffield, England. A quiet, pleasant fellow in his late twenty's, he warmed up when talking about his job and the kids. The rest of our crew was made up of three middle-aged Norwegian women on leave from an aid mission in Somalia and a Latvian born Swede whose opinions were a bit of a pain. Beatruch, a twentyish Dane, was a plump, blond museum conservator from London. Lisa, a buxom New Yorker studying archeology and anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. Then there were a pair of young teachers from a Catholic school in Nairobi. One was English the other Irish and they kept pretty much to themselves. Three English couples rounded out the company. Andrew and Mimi, husband and wife from Birmingham, late thirties. He, open and friendly, she, tan, good legs, blond. They would prove to be good traveling companions. Mark and Joyce were the type you see in clothing ads. She was tall, blond and slender, a teacher in Nairobi. He was tall, dark-haired and slender, looking for a position in an African game park. Nature types, minimal clothing whenever possible. And Richard and Janet. He, the handsome free-lance journalist, she, the fading ex-model whose past appeared to consist of travels to exotic lands and love affairs with mysterious men. So there we were, sixteen Mzungus (foreigner; literally "aimless wanderer" in Swahili) and Sam on the road north. At Nanyuki we made a brief stop to take pictures at the Equator. Then it was on to Mount Kenya and Uhuru Falls. That's Janet posing nicely for me under the sign. A note about foreign languages, what you hear and assumptions: As written above, we were called Mzungus by our Kenyan hosts. For thirty years I thought they were calling us Mazungas. When I looked up this Swahili word I found it meant Prepuce, which is a part of the female anatomy. I’ll leave it to you to find out what Prepuce means.