Elephant in the hood

I took our daughter to the school bus stop this morning and as we were waiting, whaddayaknow, we see an elephant walking down the street. I didn’t have a camera on me because I didn’t expect to see anything unusual but now I know better.

The bus picked Nia up and Max and I took a cab to go get a sim card for my cell phone. I took a while because I had to provide all kinds of information in order to get a sim card. They wanted two copies of the passport page of my diplomatic passport, two copies of the visa page, two passport pictures, address, etc. I was quite puzzled by that but was told that the Government of India is collecting that information as part of their antiterrorism efforts. It is related to the Mumbai terrorist attacks in which bombs were detonated using mobile phones. The Indian Government wants to prevent something like that from happening again, so they collect info from anyone who buys a cell phone or a sim cards. Who would’ve thunk?

But be that as it may, the cab waited for us and took us back home. As we were riding back, around the corner from our house, I see the elephant again. I was ready this time. I asked the cab driver to drop us off there and camera in hand, we went to see the elephant. It was in front of the Embassy of the Dominican Republic. There were a bunch of people. Several kids were taking a ride on the elephant. Someone from the Dominican Embassy had rented the elephant for the day because his sons were visiting and because people do these kinds of things here on special occasions. They saw Max and I and asked us if we wanted them to take our picture with the elephant. How did they know?

So, here are a couple of shots of Max’s first close encounter with an elephant.