Outreach and Pride Rock

Thursday and Friday this week I went on Outreach 'weekend'. As in my first post, this consisted of visiting three slums/camps, as well as Hell's Gate National Park. There were 21 of us on the trip (excluding NVS staff), apparently a fantastic turn out for this time of year. Squashed into 2 vans (Toyota Hiace's, the main passenger vehicle in Kenya, used for matatus, and some with openable roofs for safari) and a car, we headed off to our first destination, the KCC slum project, set up by past volunteers to help with education and feeding of children in a small slum area. As soon as we arrived, the kids were very excited to see us, and we found ourselves walking either holding hands or carrying some of the kids. We had a look around the school, gave the children their porridge, and walked down to the slum to have a look around. This is also where the Olympic medallists have their placement, and their happened to be New Zealand reporters down that day too to interview them.

After KCC we went for lunch at what was pretty much a service station, but had a few cheap, good places to get food. I had a beefburger, chips (very big portion) and a bottle of cola for about 350 shillings (less than £3). Definitely needed the food for energy for what was coming next, a bike ride through Hell's Gate.

We arrived at Hell's Gate and our bicycles were waiting for us before the entrance to the park, which of course had to be further up hill, on a gravel road. Not a great start for someone who hasn't been on a bike for nearly 10 years, I was surprised to find I even remembered how to ride! Though it did take me a while to get my balance right. So off into the park we went, where it became a dirt road, trying to avoid rocks sending me off balance, drifting to the side of the road in a ditch, skidding in sand and dust from getting in my eyes.

Having already been on safari, the novelty of seeing the zebras, bufallo and gazelles had mostly worn off, but it was still kind of cool seeing them whilst not stuck inside a Hiace. We passed by Fischer's Tower, which I was hoping we'd get the chance to climb as was suggested by someone in a comment on here, but unfortunately we were short on time and it wasn't part of our itinerary. So we continued on, until we reached Pride Rock, probably the thing everyone was looking forward to the most, as we were listening to Lion King songs on the way to the park, courtesy of one of the girls, not me, I should add.

We were told we had about 5 mins to attempt to climb it, but since we're in Africa, that could mean anything, so we didn't rush. It probably took about 10 mins to find a route up, some people taking more awkward routes than others, pretty much everyone getting some sort of scratches. But getting to the top and looking out, remembering the scenes from the Lion King was pretty amazing. Unfortunately I can't say I was the first of our group to reach the top, however I was the first to find a route out onto the furthest ledge, raising my arms and shouting 'f*** yeahhhhhh', as the few who didn't fancy the climb took pictures from below. Also unfortunately, no one had a baby lion handy, so I had to make do with holding a large rock over the edge. Hopefully the guys that were below will email the photos soon so I can get them on here, hopefully I can also borrow a laptop from a housemate over the weekend to transfer my photos onto my tablet and upload next time I'm at The Junction.

Naturally the journey down was far quicker, and we were on our way again, with a nice long downhill stretch we could just coast along. We continued until we reached the gorge, where we dismounted for a hike through it. What was once one lake with a river outlet, is now 5 lakes, with the river now being a gorge, due to a volcanic eruption. As the lakes now have no outlets, they are getting quite high with the rainfall, very noticeable when we did the safari through Lake Nakuru, which risks being shut if the rain continues.

In the gorge there was some running water, and various signs warning of flash floods. Most interesting were the streams of hot (not warm from the sun, actually like hot running water) flowing down the side of the gorge, I guess heated by some molten rock within the hills. Then we to climb some steps, to a viewpoint looking down through the gorge, here we had a couple of group photos, then headed back to the bikes for the cycle back.

Of course I completely ignored earlier as I enjoyed the coasting downhill, that to get back to where we started, we have to go back up. I'd also not worked out how to use the gears at this point, which just made it even worse, but I had started, I had climbed Pride Rock, and I was determined to finish it properly. I was desperate for a drink, but I knew that if I stopped, I would just lie down until the van caught up with us, so I kept going, and despite how tired I was, and how long it had been since I had ridden a bike, I was within the first 5-10 back to the entrance. Glad for it to be over, I sat down to have a drink, until we were told we had to go back to where we collected the bikes. Whilst it was all downhill from there, the bumpy gravel road was not nice, and my butt was getting pretty sore from the hard seat by this point. But I made it, and I'm glad I did it, definitely a great experience. In total we cycled for about 10 miles, which probably isn't a lot to some people, but for someone who barely does any exercise and doesn't even know how to work the gears properly, I'd say its quite an achievement!

After the bike ride we headed to the hotel, which basically looked like a prison. We heard conflicting things as to whether it actually was a prison previously, so we're still not quite sure, but we're going with that story. I don't think my mum was impressed when I text her to say I'm spending the night in a prison! Some of the girls were worried about sleeping alone there, so ended up sharing rooms. Despite this, they still ran out of rooms in the main building, so I ended up in solitary confinement in another wing (or another building across the road). It was actually only me and one of the NVS guys there, lucky I wasn't scared about sleeping alone. The hotel was very basic, not even somewhere to get food there, we had to drive to a restaurant. I read a news article about Anders Breveik (is that right? The Norwegian guy who shot people in Oslo) complaining about his prison cell being inhumane, seeing a picture of his cell I'm fairly certain it was bigger than our rooms, and seeing some of the complaints, well he'd have hated it here!

Day 2

Friday morning I woke up hearing people chatting away and banging in the corridor, I checked the time thinking it must be nearly time to get up...3.30am, apparently that's an acceptable time to be making a noise in a hotel in Kenya. So I went back to sleep until breakfast time. When that came around we headed to the restaurant again, for egg, samosa and chips, which seemed a little odd. After breakfast we went back to the hotel, where we had sacks of flour and blocks of butter to separate into smaller bags to hand out at the IDP camp and garbage slum.

So we headed off to the first project of the day, IDP camp. We arrived and were shown around, the houses were made of any type of fabric they could get hold of, to form some sort of tent. Some materials had been donated by organisations, but would only remain waterproof for a few months so most would be leaking. We went into one of the houses where an elderly, ill lady was in bed. Since they can barely afford to eat, hospital was out of the question. We were also told of a baby who was in hospital with a few problems, including yellow fever. The family were behind on their hospital bills, and they were growing everyday. We all put some money together towards the bills and were able to bring the bills almost up to date (a few people took the money direct to the hospital to ensure it was all going towards what bit was intended).

Before leaving, we had to give out the flour and butter. One woman had a list with every family living in the camp, so one by one each family was called and given one bag of flour and butter. Some would not react at all (which is apparently normal in Kenya, they don't often thank people for things), but others were clearly grateful, one woman even dancing here way to us. Some of us had also bought other things to give out, such as lollies for the kids, and bread and pasta, so we gave out this also (I had children line up for a slice of bread each, and some of the pasta was given straight to the school there, whilst some people gave bread to the family with the ill lady). Once finished here, we headed off to the final project.

Arriving at the garbage slum, it was exactly as it sounded, a garbage dump site, with houses built along side. We even saw trucks coming in to dump stuff. As this happens, some of the residents race to the truck to find food, materials they can use to build, or items they can take to the recycling plant for very little money. As well as handing out food here, there are some volunteers who help to give the children here an education, in a local boarding school to get them out of the slums. Though most families can't afford to send all their children to school. Some are also sponsored by an organisation, or even individuals, though one organisation had just dropped out, meaning if the money isn't raised soon, they'll have to be taken back to the garbage slum.

Again we were shown around a little, including meeting a family and seeing their house, pretty much built from items found in the garbage, and flies flying around everywhere. It was quite horrible to see, and the smell in the whole area was disgusting, but due to running late we didn't stick around for long, which I guess we were all pretty glad about. So after handing out the remainder of the food, we headed off, back to the service station to eat, and were given a breakdown of where all our money for the trip went (apart from fuel, meals and accommodation (which NVS also put money towards) and Hell's Gate fees, all was split between the projects, and given how many of us there were, that was a fair amount). Then we were taken back to The Junction to enjoy the rest of the day however we liked.