Only 2 more days?!?

Wow. I cannot believe it has been a week since I last posted--the past few days have flown by and I have not been able to use an internet cafe in quite a while, so just a warning: This may be another long post. I'll try to keep it fairly condensed though!

I just got back from a four day safari which was absolutely incredible! We saw lions (some about 10 feet from our van!), elephants, zebras, giraffes, buffalo, wildebeests, gazelles, rhinos, and a cheetah hunt down a gazelle. The landscape was so beautiful--I think I would have been happy just driving around and looking at the scenery, but the animals were definitely a huge bonus.

We spent the first two nights camping outside the Massai Mara Park. It was a really cool place to stay, because the tents were very nice--they had cement floors, bathrooms with running water, and beds--and it was located just outside the park. The stars were amazing at night. Our first night there, we were woken up at 2:30 am by a parade of cattle. It must have lasted a half an hour and they were wearing bells so it was quite noisy. It sounded like they were just outside our tents, and we could hear the shepherds talking. They were followed by a pack of howling dogs. We asked Safari Mike (our guide) what the commotion was all about the next morning, and he explained that it is illegal for animals to graze in the park, so the Massai shepherds take their herds there in the middle of the night to avoid being seen.

Our first full day on safari we spent 11 hours driving around in our van! We left around 7:30 am, and didn't get back to the campsite until close to 7 pm. We saw tons of animals and covered about 160 km. In the evening we passed a herd of lions (about 15-20) tearing apart a zebra carcass. That night we showered, ate dinner, played banana grams, and then made s'mores over a camp fire.

Sunday we left our hotel at 6:20 so we could see the sunrise and hopefully watch a hunt. We were very lucky and got to see a cheetah catch a gazelle. We visited a Massai village after eating breakfast, which was interesting but felt oddly disney-world-ish to me. It was a bit strange to pay to enter a community to look and take pictures of people. It was really interesting, but it felt more touristy than authentic. We then had a long drive to Nakuru.

We visited Lake Nakuru Park today. It is a big bird-watching park and has hundreds of flamingos. At one point our bus got stuck in the mud so while some of us pushed it out, others stood on "buffalo watch" to make sure we weren't attacked. There were monkeys outside of the gate and two monkeys hopped into our vans. One was crafty and escaped with a bag of peanuts. The other one was less fortunate and got hit by someone's newspaper and left empty-handed.

I am now back in Naivasha. My host family moved over the weekend, so when I get home I should get to tour the new house. Apparently we don't have running water, which is a little bit of a let-down considering that that was one of the big incentives to move, but I am hopeful that it is just a glitch and we will be showering by tonight. :)

Last Wednesday we held a medical camp in the slum. It was a really long day and I was relieved when we were packed up and headed home, but it was a big success and I'm really glad I got to be a part of it. 388 people from the community received treatment, which was twice as many as we expected. The majority of patients were mothers and children. We had four tents set up: A growth monitoring and immunization tent, a family planning tent, a minor treatments tent, and an HIV/AIDs testing tent. We also had a pharmacy and seminars on HIV/AIDs and family planning.

I am a bit in disbelief that I only have two days left here. I would really love to spend a few more weeks, but I am looking forward to seeing everybody again back at home. It has been such an enormous blessing being over here for the past month and I can honestly say that I could not have asked for a better experience.

See you all soon!!!

Bicylce Riding

Today I had two interesting experiences biking.

This morning I was biking from the slum to school, and when I passed this man he started running after my bike and trying to hop on the back. The bike is already very wobbly, the road is very bumpy, and so naturally, I screamed. I didn't mean to, it just slipped out, but he stopped running after me then and once I knew I wouldn't be eating a second breakfast of gravel, I was able to laugh it off.

Later in the day Beatrice, the cook at school, needed a scale to weigh beans so she sent me back down to the slum on the bike to meet up with a woman who had it. She asked me if I knew where the barber shop was? No. The tailor? No. The bike shop? No. So she told me just to bike to the end of the slum and I would find her. When you bike through the slum, you usually have a bunch of kids calling out to you and lots of people just watching you, so while I was busy smiling and looking around I biked right past the woman with the scale and just waved at her. I think she must have thought I was completely out-of-it. She called to people ahead of me in Swahili to tell me to turn around, and then a group started calling to me in English and told me she wanted me. I apologized for biking right past her, and then took the scale back to school. About 40 minutes later, there was quite a hardy laugh at school when she relayed the story to the teachers.

I almost had to take the bike to the slum for a third time because we ran out of salt, but luckily Sarah and Spencer came to my rescue and brought salt back with them from their trip to hang up posters.

And now, a quick weekend update:
Saturday we went to our host's sister's wedding. It was an interesting experience, but incredibly long--the ceremony lasted over 4 hours, plus there was an opening ceremony of traditional song and dance and a reception after the ceremony. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready, and we didn't get home until after 8 pm that night. The biggest issue was we all ate breakfast around 6:30, and didn't have lunch until after 4pm. We were all ravenous. The wedding was very beautiful though--it was held outdoors on a really pretty piece of property--and it was neat to see how so many people show up.

Sunday was very relaxed. We caught up on our sleep and then went to Lake Naivasha in the afternoon. We took a short motor boat ride out into the lake to see hippos. It was exciting--kind of scary, since I've heard they're the most dangerous animals on earth. We didn't get too close though.

Check it out!

http://kccslumproject.wordpress.com/

:o)

I have a hunch that tomorrow is going to be a good day. I am finally going to get to take a bucket bath after a full week! :) Our host's sister is getting married on Saturday, and we were invited to the wedding (very exciting!) so I decided to save my bucket for the night before the event. Special occasions call for more than babywipes.


Today at school was fairly relaxed, as we served Ugi for lunch and did not have to sort through beans and rice. I got to work one-on-one with some kids from the "Baby class" (they were about 5 years old). We practiced writing the letter "A", and writing their names. I tried to get each kid to repeat the alphabet with me, which was a lot harder than anticipated. A little boy named Duncan (who squirted me with his coughs about 5 times and wiped his runny nose across my sleeve) was probably the funniest of all. This is how our lesson went:

Me: "A"
Duncan: "Eh"
Me: "B"
Duncan: "Eh"
Me: "C"
Duncan: "Eh"
Etc.

By about the sixth time going through the alphabet, the letters started to sound a bit different, although the default was still "eh" for the trickier ones.

I got to work with my little karate-kicking-favorite, Patrick, which was just wonderful. He is so sweet. As soon as you make eye-contact with him, he breaks out in this sheepish little smile and bats his eyelashes. Adorable.

Meet Patrick. He is awesome.

I think Patrick is giving a thumbs up in every photo I have of him.  He is so precious!!

I spent part of the day a bit annoyed, so here is a quick rant. I asked one of the women I work with at the school what she does on the weekends, and she mentioned her church. Then she said, "We are doing renovations. I would like you to help and give money. How much will you give?" It really bothers me when there is an expectation that you have money and are able to just donate it as you please. There is so much need here, and it is impossible to help everyone, so when people expect or demand money I tend to feel irritated. I want to give graciously, not resentfully, but when I feel pressured into donating money I think I counteract the good of sharing with feelings of resentment. I know I have been blessed with so, so much and I have the privilege and responsibility to share what I have been given, but I want to do it in a loving way, not because I feel put-on-the-spot or pressured.

... alright, enough of that. Thanks for reading my rant.

Life in Kenya is still great. I am going on Safari my last weekend here which should be incredible!

Also, I know this post is getting really long but I want to give a quick description of Naivasha, the town I'm living in.
-If you stand on the street outside of my house, you see an awesome view of the lake and mountains
- The most common stores in town are coffin shops, electrical shops, and butcheries. There are also little mango and banana stands on just about every block.
- There is this little gem here called "Back to Eden". It is a fruit shop where you can get a huge bowl of pineapple, mango, watermelon, papaya, and bananas for 30 shillings (about 40 cents). Yesterday I purchased 4 mangoes, 1 pineapple, and 6 bananas from Eden to make a fruit salad for our dinner, and the total came to less than $2.00.

Alright, that's it for today! Thanks for reading :)

The Weekend

This past weekend was a lot of fun. On Friday night four other volunteers (Jill, Mikaela, Chirag and Katie) came to Naivasha. They arrived during a power outage so we got to enjoy a candle-lit dinner, and then play a murder mystery game called Mafia in the dark. We also played a couple rounds of Banana Grams (holla Yellow House girls!! :) )

Saturday morning we woke up and walked to the grocery store to get PB and bread for lunch, and then took a matatu (the public vans here) to Mount Longonot. The matatu dropped us off on the side of a road, and after a little confusion, we decided to just walk towards the really big mountain in the distance, which thankfully brought us right to the Longonot gate.

The hike was really steep and really dusty, but the view from the top was great and the trek was pretty fun too. As we got closer and closer to the top, our hiking began to look like this: take 20 steps, rest for a minute, take 20 steps, rest....

Going down the mountain was pretty funny, as it was so steep that you had to run for stretches on the trail. Every now and then a pack of Kenyan men would just come full force down the trail running and fly past us. I'm pretty surprised none of us wiped out on the way down. We were all brown from the dust after the hike.

We found our way back to the road and began quite a long wait for a matatu returning to Naivasha. We finally caught one, and we headed back to our house.

Sunday Jono, Chirag, and I headed into Nairobi, with plans to visit the Giraffe center and Monkey Park. I think Jono and I spent a total of 6 or 7 hours in matatus and cabs and buses yesterday. We had fun though. We visited the Karen Blixen Giraffe Center, where you can "kiss" giraffes by placing food pellets in your mouth. I was rejected time and time again by the giraffe though, after I missed my first chance and dropped the pellet when the giraffe licked my chin.We met up with two other volunteers at the park (Megan and Jack) and then took a little wander through the bush. Then we caught a matatu to Karen, where it poured rain. Jono, Chirag and I took a bus to Nairobi from there. It was so crowded and we were soaking wet. It was the first time I have been really cold since arriving here. Jono and I made it back to Naivasha around 9 last night.

Our first day back at school this week went well. We began treating kids with ringworm this morning and I got to rub medicine onto a bunch of little heads. The kids were so well behaved and just waited in line, then stepped up, got their medicine, and went to class. We even had a few kids who were ring-worm free try to get in line... I guess the idea of a free head massage sounded pretty nice?

T.G.I.F.

Today was a looonnnngggg day. It was a good one, but just pretty exhausting. The farmer who owns the land that the school is on had a non-marketable crop of cabbage, so Spencer, Jono, and I went down to it this afternoon to get some free veggies for the kids' lunches. It was very hot and sunny out. We each took a sack and a kitchen knife and started chopping down cabbages. They were brown and dry on the outside, but after peeling a few layers they looked pretty good. We must have picked 100-180 pounds.

I made some more posters at school today, and at one point I had an arc of 16 kids circled around me while I painted. The kids would say, "Teach-ah! Teach-ah!" and when I would look up they would start speaking in Swahili.

Tomorrow I am hiking Mt. Longonot with a few other volunteers. They are all coming to Naivasha tonight and staying at our house so that we can get an early start in the morning and beat some of the heat. Apparently the views from the hike are outstanding, so it should be lots of fun!

Whoops

Also...I forgot to pack my photo-uploading cord so I might not be able to share any of my personal pictures until I get home in March.

School

I made posters today at school. Marcus, the school's founder, is hoping to brighten up the classrooms a bit, and I was given some old flour sacks, paint, and a pair of scissors to add some color to the walls. The process is taking quite a while, so I just went to the store and bought some poster board for tomorrow--hopefully this will be a bit more speedy.

We wake up every morning at 6:30, and a taxi comes to our house at 7:30 to drive us to school. We stop in town to pick up Rahab, one of the teachers, and then in the slum to pick up Beatrice, the cook. I often get to ride the bike from the slum to the school, which is lots of fun because you are usually followed by a crowd of laughing kids.

Our days at school consist of a lot of repetition. We sort through huge buckets of beans every day, removing the pebbles and bugs, as well as large buckets of rice. Preparing the meal for the kids usually consumes almost the whole morning. We use a gigantic pot on top of a fire to cook for about 150 kids. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, they are served Rice, Beans, and Vegetables, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays they receive Ugi (a porridge). We have an assembly line of progressively cleaner and cleaner buckets of water to clean the dishes, and after about an hour of scrubbing down plates and pots you feel like you have just finished a weight lifting session. After school ends (around 1:15) we walk down to the slum, pushing the extra food on the back of the bike. We unlock a unit in the slums, dish up the remaining food, and wait for the kids from primary school to come and eat. Then, we take a cab back into town around 2:15, and have the afternoon to nap, grocery shop, read, play with Shiko and Israel, etc.

We eat dinner around 8pm every night. On Wednesdays, we cook for the family, and last night we made burritos. We had all been dreaming of Chipotle for days, so we decided to try to make our own burrito bar. They don't sell tortillas, salsa, or sour cream here, so we used chipate (fried flat bread), and chopped up tomatoes, onions, and cilantro. Our host family had never heard of burritos before, so Spencer gave them a demonstration of how to fill and wrap one, and they really enjoyed them. As did we. :)

Last memory--yesterday at recess I sat down on the grass to be on the same level as the kids, and within seconds I must have had five kids braiding/twisting/petting my hair. I also witnessed one of my favorites---this little guy with huge eyes and long eyelashes and a very sheepish smile--karate kicking some other kids in order to hold my hand, which was flattering but definitely not encouraged. He redeemed part of his sweet image today when I saw him walking to class with his arm around a friend : )

Oh...I take that back...it's not the last. I also wanted to mention a brief detail. Yesterday, my lunch cost 50 shillings-- about 60 cents. Today it was closer to $2.00, but still, quite a good deal!

KCC

The Basics

We just finished our day at school and now Jono, Sarah, and I are using the computers at the local supermarket, Naivas. Today was almost entirely devoted to preparing, serving, and cleaning up from lunch. We sorted through rice, removed the pebbles from beans, chopped vegetables, and cleaned about 200 dishes. Jono and I also untangled and set up a 200 foot hose in order to refill the school's water tank. The hose was quite dusty and now my white t-shirt is a nice shade of brown.

Here are some of the basic, everyday parts of Kenya:
-The weather is really nice here. It is very hot and sunny during the day--probably high 80s--and it cools down nicely at night. The sun is pretty intense, and it is also very, very dusty.
-Our meals consist of a lot of "filler" foods--we eat tons of beans, rice, chipati (fried tortillas), and ugali (a cornmeal dish). Sometimes we get a bit of mango or pineapple for dessert as well.
- It is really, really hard to blend in here. Most people identify us as "mzugus," meaning white person and everywhere you go you have kids wave at you or come over to say hello (and sometimes demand money). It seems that there are always eyes following you.
- Water is very limited. Our house does not have running water so we are sked to limit our bathing to one bucket of water per week. I have a whole new appreciation for babywipes.
- The driving is pretty crazy here. People drive very closely to one another, cut each other off, speed on very bumpy roads, pass cars when other cars are coming straight towards them in the other direction, etc.

Alright, I am off to buy some drinking water and mangoes! Thanks to all those who are praying and reading this blog!

I have arrived! (...nearly a week ago)

Hi! I have finally had the chance to find an internet cafe! Sorry I have not been able to post sooner.

Kenya is wonderful so far. Although I expected to be placed at an orphanage, my work is at a school outside of a slum in Naivasha (about an hour away from Nairobi), and I am so thankful that this is where I was placed. The school is only about a year old, and it serves and feeds children from the KCC Slum. (Check out kccslumproject.com if your interested). The school aims to prepare these kids for primary school.We leave for school every morning at 7:30, and play with the kids, prepare their meal, clean dishes, etc. For many of the children, this lunch is the only meal they will eat during the day, and I am continuously amazed by how much rice and beans these tiny kids can fit into their bellies.

After school ends we head down to the slum, where we provide lunch for the kids who have moved on from our school to the primary school. These students walk 45 minutes to and from school each day. The primary school doesn't provide food, so the KCC project makes sure they get a meal each school day.

I am staying with a very welcoming and kind family in Naivasha. They have a six year old son, Israel, who is continuously trying to involve me in a karate fight or wrestling match, and a three year old daughter, Shica, who is just learning English. There are two other new volunteers here with me--Jono from Sydney Australia and Sarah from Connecticut--as well as the program director, Marcus, and a long-term volunteer, Spencer. A really lovely woman named Grace lives in the house too--she watches after the kids and performs housework. Everyone is awesome and really great to live with.

Alright, this seems to be getting long and I still have tons more to say so I am going to try to break this down into some of the highlights so far.

- My second day here, I randomly bumped into Dianne Bizarro, and old family friend from Philadelphia! It was the craziest thing. My mom had told me she was studying abroad in Tanzania after reading her family's Christmas card, but I never imagined I would just run into her!

- Friday morning on our drive to school we stopped at the slum. The bike, which we use to transport food to the slum after school, was there and needed to be brought back to school, so I got to ride it. It was the most amazing experience. I hopped on the bike within a few pedals I had about three little children running along side me. They kept on running and running, and more children joined them. They were probably all around 5 and 6 years old, and they laughed the whole way there (about 3/4 of a mile!) I stopped the bike to give them high fives and a few tried to climb on the back. The bike was a bit big for me and very wobbly, and so I waited for them to dismount before cycling again. It's a good thing too, because when I got to the school I had an incredibly graceful dismount of falling off the bike into the gravel road. I think all of the kids were a bit shocked.

-This weekend I went on Outreach, and got to see two other incredible volunteer placements and bike and hike through Hell's Gate National Park. Our group visited a Displaced People's Camp and the Garbage slum outside of the city of Nakuru. Both sites were very eye-opening. It was incredible to see the conditions that people were living in. We got to go inside a home in both communities. The Garbage slum was unlike anything I have ever seen before. The people living there have literally built their homes out of garbage on heaps of garbage. They live off of garbage, and even make crafts to sell out of the garbage they pick through. Pigs, dogs, and huge birds scavenge through the trash alongside the people.

Hell's Gate was a ton of fun--we biked about 5 miles through the park and saw zebras, giraffes, warthogs, baboons, and water buffalo. Then we took an incredible hike through the gorges. It was amazing. There were waterfalls and lots of big leaps and rock-climbing required to get from start to finish.

Alright, congratulations if you made it to the end of this post--it was definitely a long one but I wanted to  cover some of the highlights from this past week. Hopefully I will be able to post a bit more frequently now that I know where to find the internet!