The Masai Mara and 'Zoe, why did you exhibit signs of dying?'

The Masai Mara was AMAZING. We were staying in little buildings on a site just outside the reserve, and did three trips inside the reserve to see the wildlife, all bouncing along in these awesome safari vans which you could stand up in and peer out the roof.
I can't adequately describe how beautiful the wildlife was, but we saw zebras, giraffes, cheetahs, elephants, lions, crocodiles, hippos and a lot of very pretty birds. We got SO close to some animals, and just watching a group of four lions strolling around on the grass, sunbathing and eating was unreal. Knowing how powerful they were, it was insane being just 5 metres away from them. I also loved the elephants and didn't quite realise until now how weird elephants are as an animal!We also visited a Masai village, which was really fascinating, but smelt rather bad as their houses were literally all built from excrement. They all lived in insanely small mud houses, with absolutely no light in them, and often 5 or so people living in one tiny little room, and all of the houses were built by a single woman, taking about 9 years to complete.

The Masai Mara itself wasn't how I expected it at all - I'd pictured an enormous desert with lots of sand and everything being yellow, but it was very green with a lot of bushes and trees, and absolutely enormous. One day we spent all day in the reserve and ended up in the middle of nowhere, surrounded entirely by grass and sky and cactus-trees wherever you looked.

Interesting points of the trip include me being really silly and jumping out of a safari van with no shoes on, straight into a poisonous thorn bush (it sounds like something out of Disney), and thus having a poisoned and painful foot for a few days, and the slaughtering of a goat, which was foul and started a lot of vegetarian-related debates.

I am now back in Nakuru, and shall now explain the hint of me dying. Basically, yesterday I woke up with a horrible stomach ache that just got worse and worse, and during the day managed to display almost every symptom of malaria. At the stage where I couldn't even sit up for more than a about 5 seconds without collapsing, someone decided it would be best to take me to a hospital, where I discovered that I thankfully do not have malaria, but do have some kind of bad bacteria in my stomach. Despite them wanting to admit me overnight and put one of those scary IV drip things into me, I escaped with a painful injection in my hand and went home. Today I am not feeling very normal, but I feel SO much better than yesterday, so I am happy :)