Subject: something to consider
From: "Rob Norton" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:08:05 -0400

You are probably locked into summer plans with your family, but here's an insane option you might want to consider...  

On July 18-21, my nephew (Andrew Bernstein) and his friend are visiting Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in central Kenya.  I helped set them up at Lewa - it's a fantastic wildlife conservancy that has one of the world's largest populations of endangered rhino and grevys zebra. My dad is a big supporter of their operation and we have visited several times.  In addition to the wildlife, Lewa has a huge development program to support the surrounding community with schools, health clinics, etc.  Check it out here: http://www.lewa.org/  In my opinion, this is one of the best places in East Africa that's working to balance tourism, conservation and the need to sustain the people who live on the land.  

In any event, the Andrew and his friend were planning on going alone, but I am thinking seriously about joining them because it would be fun and because it would give Josh and Lisa some peace of mind that the boys will be accompanied in Kenya.  If I do this, it will need to be relatively inexpensive (either fly coach or use miles to go business) and pretty quick - normally I would spend at least 3 weeks in Africa.  Liz and the kids are already tied up and it's too quick to drag the whole family along, so I'm solo on this.

If you are even mildly interested, it would be great to have you (and anyone else who we would want to invite) join a 'quick and dirty' trip to East Africa this summer.  Maybe we could try to fit in some interesting professional stuff for a day on the front end in Nairobi, while the boys are occupied with the program they will be doing in the city.

Totally insane plan, but it might be pretty cool.  I'm not sure I'm convinced this is feasible (will need to look into costs a little more), but it would be an easier decision with 1-2 willing co-participants.

Let me know what you think - you won't hurt my feelings if you say 'no' right away.  I know this is a crazy idea.