KICC Tower

Lazy Weekend

Having had a fairly busy week, and visiting the city centre the previous weekend, I haven't done much this weekend. Though I have been considering extending my trip, as school finishes on Wednesday, I'll be switching placements, but will barely be there for a week before having to leave. I had seen a Kenya Airways office at one of the shopping centres earlier in the week, the Ya Ya centre. So I headed back there Saturday to see how much it would be to change my flight. 222USD, ~£140, I was hoping for a bit cheaper, but not too bad. I still have money in the bank, and with the most expensive things being done in the first week, I've not spent much recently. This week I'm going to head down to the NVS office to discuss what is happening with my placement after Wednesday, and what it would cost with them to extend my stay. I've pretty much decided I will extend it, it's just a question of how long I can afford to stay.

I also did some laundry for the first time Saturday, it's a long process, filling 4 buckets with water, 1 of which has some washing powder in, the other 3 to rinse. I opted to not wash everything at once, that wold take far too long, so I'll just wash some every few days to keep me going. Of course, when I have laundry hanging outside to dry, it has to rain.

Saturday evening the power went out again (it's becoming almost a daily occurrence, for varying lengths of time, but it doesn't really bother us too much, we're used to it by now), but instead of heading to the cinema, we sat in candle light playing card games and chatting for hours. A couple of us also headed to a local shop (even the shops stay open in candle light) to get a couple of beers, Kenya's local lager Tusker, about £1 per bottle, and you get 20 shillings back when you return the bottle. The power eventually came back on about 11pm, but we were happy enough charting away for a couple more hours (Kenyan TV isn't that great anyway!).

Now Sunday, we woke up to no running water, not too much of a problem, there's a tap outside we can use to get water to boil for washing up and tea. The water came back after a while, only for the power to go out shortly after. The shower is electric, so no hot showers for us this morning. With the weather being pretty crap today, I've taken the time to finish writing up these posts for the past week. I'll head down to Junction in a bit to upload this and hopefully some photos too, if the battery will last. I'll try to update more often too, hopefully with details of my new placement and when I'll be staying until.

Free weekend and week 2

With no safari and Outreach over I had a free weekend this week. I took this time to explore the city some more, catching a bus into the city centre to have a look around the Masai market and the shopping centres. I also went up the Kenyatta International Conference Centre tower, where you can get a view of most of Nairobi. A couple of volunteers living with us who have been in Kenya a while were kind enough to show Grace (an Australian girl who started the same time as me) and I around, as we'd probably have never found the tower on our own. I was also hoping to go to the monkey park over the weekend but the matatu conductors were wanting to charge us twice the price for the trip (we confirmed with a couple of locals what the price should be), so we gave that a miss. We did, however, head to the elephant orphanage on Saturday morning (we had a few people stay at the house Friday night after Outreach, so we shared a taxi between 6 of us, the driver was pretty good, waiting for us there then dropping us back off at The Junction for little extra cost as he had to go back that way anyway).

Saturday night we decided to head out for dinner to a bar at The Junction, the only place I have seen bacon whilst here! So I had a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a few drinks. Sunday night the power went out at the house, so rather than sitting in candle light not knowing how long it would be out for (sometimes up to 24 hours at a time), some of us headed to the cinema to see Skyfall, 550 shillings, less than half the price of most cinemas back home, so much more leg room and the film was great!

On Monday I went back to my placement, it was only my third day as I had been busy with safari and outreach the previous week. The children have exams this week so the main thing was revision, the teacher gave me a textbook and asked me to ask them questions for English and science. As they had exams the rest of the week, I wasn't really sure what use I would be at the school for the next few days, so I joined the feeding programme in Kibera. Every Tuesday and Thursday a few volunteers head into the slums with flour and beans, visiting families who are a part of the programme to give them food. This is to help them get back on their feet while they try to find a job, so NVS monitor their progress to make sure they are trying, and not just using the programme as a way to get free food.

As we visit a few families, it also acts as a tour around parts of Kibera, with some history and information on the slums, and background on each of the families, why they are a part of the programme. It was good to actually learn about the individuals we are helping, unlike the Outreach feeding, though no doubt there are far more families NVS don't know about that could do with the help too.

After the feeding programme on Tuesday, I finally got to the monkey park! We couldn't be bothered with haggling with bus and matatu conductors so we got a taxi. Our hosts Milcha and Wambui were helpful with negotiating prices with the driver before we left (it was only Grace and I so the cheaper the better). Again the driver was happy to wait (he had never actually been to the park before so he seemed to enjoy watching). The park is free entry, as it is literally just a park with trees and benches, that monkeys like to hang out at. All you have to pay for is peanuts or bananas for the monkeys, otherwise they wont be interested in you. We bought a few bags of peanuts and headed in, as we barely got in a monkey came running towards Grace and stole a bag from her. She had a total of 7 bags stolen, whilst I managed to keep hold of my bags, feeding them a peanut at a time. They don't like to share much, trying to snatch the nuts whilst I'm trying to feed another, and fighting with each other. I had a monkey sitting on my shoulder when suddenly another dived out of a tree, tackling the other one off my shoulder. Though I soon had others jumping up, having 2 at a time on my shoulders at one point. Got quite a few photos, which hopefully I'll get on here soon, and I plan to hear back there at some point as it was awesome!

With more exams on Wednesday, I and a couple of other housemates decided to visit one of the orphanages where another volunteer, Jack, was staying, Madison House. NVS helped arrange us a taxi as we had no idea of the address, and we headed down hoping to get there before Jack had to take lunch to the children at school. Unfortunately NVS hadn't let the orphanage know that we were coming, and he had been asked by one of the children to attend his pre-exam ceremony. So the lady at the orphanage walked us part way to the school and pointed us the rest of the way. I've no idea how Jack manages the walk everyday carrying the kid's lunch!

It was almost lunch time she we arrived, so we sat in on the ceremony for a bit, then sat and had lunch with the kids. There is also a dog at the orphanage, bought for them by a past volunteer not long ago. Simba follows Jack to the school everyday, and so he was wandering around the school grounds. Some of the kids at the school also feed him a little, then he lays down with the kids from the orphanage until Jack is ready to leave (and of course helps to finish off any left over lunch). After lunch, we head back to the orphanage with Jack and Simba, and have a tour of the house, and seeing the cow we had helped to raise money for at orientation. I had also brought lots of colouring and craft stuff which I thought would be better placed at the orphanage than the school, Jack was very appreciative of this, but unfortunately as our taxi was coming to pick us up at 4, I never got to see the reactions of the children.

Thursday I joined the feeding programme again. As orientation for new volunteers was also today, Kylie who usually gives the tour wasn't able to, so Grace volunteered to stand in (with the help of the pastor who comes to visit the families with us, and another local who works with the programme and disability school in Kibera, as we still don't really know our way around too well). It was also Grace's final full day in Kenya, leaving Friday morning, so Thursday evening all the volunteers at the house headed to the bar at Junction again for a meal and a few drinks to say goodbye.

Friday exams were over, so I went back to the school, along with another volunteer, Kyung, who had her orientation the day before and was staying in the volunteer house also. I also had to say goodbye to Grace before heading to the school as she would be gone by the time I got back. It's a shame she had to miss out on the last few days of school, as these involve lots of singing and dancing, she was signed up for the music education programme at the school, but ended up teaching in a nursery class, so never really got to do what she wanted.

Kyung also taught them (and me) a bit of tae kwon do, as she is signed up for the sports programme, though most of the day was spent watching them rehearse for their graduation ceremony on Wednesday. Still not quite what we signed up to do, but still an enjoyable day doing something different.

A bit of a long post, hopefully it all makes sense as I've been writing it in parts throughout the week. It's now Sunday morning as I finish this, but I'll do a separate post for the weekend so as not to make this any longer, and hopefully try to update more frequently over the next week.

Safari Photos

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.

Obama Day

Today I and an Australian girl I'm living with are American for the day. All the other volunteers in the house are actually American, but as we're all muzugus (technically a person who speaks English, but the word is used towards all white people) we all get 'happy Obama day!' shouted at us. Someone from NVS (the local organisation partnered with IVHQ in Kenya) even came to pick us up from school at lunch time to take us to a party in the slums. Unfortunately we could see there was a storm coming so left before the party got started properly, but it was good to see how excited the Kenyans were over the US elections.

I realised I can write out these posts offline whilst at my home stay and then post them when I get to The Junction, so I won't have to spend so long there. So I did that whilst waiting for the storm to calm down, then hopped on a matatu for the first time, not too bad, but not as packed as they usually are either. For only 20 shillings, can't complain!

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.