Week 1

So I've been in Kenya almost a week now, this is the first chance I've had to post on here. Currently sitting in the local supermarket food court with my Nexus tablet using the free WiFi' unfortunately got no photos at the moment, so I won't go into detail on everything for now, but will try to when I get computer access.

Day 1 - arrival
Wednesday we landed half hour ahead of schedule, customs seemed pretty laid back, no questions asked with the visa application (though they did take fingerprints of everyone on our flight, but not other flights according to other volunteers). Didn't even see anyone get their baggage checked, England are more concerned about what is living the country than Kenya are of what enters.

Picked up my baggage to find no on waiting to pick me up, fair enough I thought, as we had landed early. I waited so e time before deciding to call someone to find out where the pick up was, 10 minutes away apparently. So I waited some more, until the driver called me to say another 10 minutes. Shortly after, I saw a girl on come off her phone and start heading towards me, turns out she was on the same flight, also volunteering and waiting for the same driver. We were both quite glad to have found someone to talk to at this point, as we waited a total of about 2 hours before the driver eventually arrived.

We were finally picked up, having no idea where we were headed for our first night, the driving in Kenya is crazy! Pulling out in the smallest gaps, tail gating as close as possible. Though after a few days in the country, I'm actually getting quite used to it. Still wouldn't want to drive here myself though.

We arrived at a house, where the only person to be found was a cleaner, we had no idea what to do, as we had the whole day left, and no idea what the plans were for orientation the following g day. So the cleaner called the owner of the house, who sent someone to pick us up and take us to a school where the owner works, where we sat in on a class and helped a little. We then headed back to the house in the afternoon as we were quite tired from the flight, and found one of the other volunteers who was living there, then there some new arrivals, and we began to feel like there was some sort of organisation to it all, rather than we had just been sent to a random house and left to fend for ourselves.

We had diner at the house, and were told what was happening with transport to our orientation the next day, and all headed off to bed for an early night.

Day 2 - orientation
We had our second experience of 'African time' on this day, as our pick up for orientation was an hour late, but this wasn't as big a deal, as we could take our time with breakfast, and get to know some of the new arrivals. At orientation we were introduced to the other volunteers and the local team, as well as told what our placements involved and some of the other things we can get up to in our time here. Afterwards we were transferred to our permanent home stays (apart from a few who would be taking an overnight bus to Mombasa the following night, so they stayed in the volunteer house where I was now staying.

Some of the other volunteers already at the house took us down to the local supermarket to show us around, then we went back to the house for dinner and to relax before our first day of placement.

Day 3 - first day of placement
As per tradition, we were picked up late to be taken to our placement. There we 3 of us to be taken to the Olympic Academy in Kibera (although one of them was only here until yesterday due to not being able to get time off work).

We were taken to the school and introduced to the pastor and head teacher, before being taken to separate classes to help. The students are mostly revising for exams next month, so after introducing myself to the class, the teacher asked me to go through some maths questions with them, doing a couple of examples on the board, then getting them to do the rest and marking as they do so. During this the teacher disappeared, I'm not sure whether to another class, or whether he thought he doesn't have to be there whilst I was there. I'm hoping its other first option, otherwise I can't help but think I may be better placed elsewhere.

The teacher reappeared at lunch time, then as the next lesson came, gave me the next set of instructions for their religious studies class, asking them questions from a text book in groups they were split into. At the end of the class I took out my camera to take a few pictures, the camera was hijacked and I now have many pictures of all sorts of things, guess I'll have to go through and delete some of the random ones at some point!

At the end of the day, we were picked up from the school and walked back to our home stay, from this week onwards we'll be making the journey on our own/with other volunteers working in the same area.

Day 4-7 -  safari
Over the weekend I went on a safari to Maasai Mara national park, and Lake Nakaru national park with some of the other volunteers (including 2 olympic medal winners from New Zealand, Rebecca and Juliette of the rowing team). Unfortunately I left my camera at the house, but one of the other girls was kind enough to let Meuse her spare one, so I'll get the pictures from that and do a proper write up of the safari at some point. Some of the highlights include watching lions feasting on a buffalo, and baboons causing trouble at the entrance of a park, raiding bins and getting in a car to steal fruit.

I'll leave it that for now, as it will be getting dark soon so should get home whilst its still light. Will try to get back on here and update again soon.