Hilly and the Lion Cubs

I'm finally updating, yay! So if you haven't already heard I have been pretty busy these last couple months; you know, seeing Hillary Clinton, playing with baby lions, planting 40,000 endangered mangrove seedlings. Just the usual. My friend Hilly decided to make a little trip to Dakar to do some "work stuff" and wanted to hang out with all the cool Peace Corps volunteers and some embassy guys, so she made a speech at the Radisson Blu Dakar and swore in the new community enterprise development volunteers. No biggie. 

Waiting to meet Hillary

The Ambassador to Senegal introducing Secretary Clinton

There is a game park near Toubacouta called Fatala, which is on the Delta (southwest of Kaolack). Recently two South Africans have taken over the park which hosts a rhino, giraffes, hyenas, zebras, gazelles, and their newest addition: five lion cubs! This litter of lions were born in South Africa and were shipped to Senegal when they were about a month old. They have been in the care of a South African woman since they were two weeks old. A couple of my friends and I were able to go make a special visit to see the two month old cubs and have dinner with their caretakers at the park. It is currently rainy season, so the cubs were pretty wet and muddy. They are already huge! It was so fun to play with them and watch them wrestle each other. While some of them were fiesty, one was really sweet and kept licking me. Imagine a house cat's tongue times 10! The lions are now enclosed off the main house, but have started to take supervised walks outside in the park. Pretty soon they will be too big for visitors and will be in the park full time. To see and play with lion cubs in Africa was such an amazing experience, one I will never forget!