Wednesday, 6 November 2013

When The Mzungus Went To Kenya. (pt. 1)

The next three blogs will include parts of my African adventure, the second one will be the longest and most likely the most interesting, but that doesn't mean the others are boring! The tense changes quite a bit because I'm typing this straight from my notebook that I took out with me. There is stuff that will have been written as it was happening, a few hours after and in some cases the day after... Enjoy!

Thursday 24th October 2013

Thursday 24th October 2013: my first ever flight and a long day!
A manic morning! I decided to leave quite a bit of my packing to last minute. Took Misty to school - who went off surprisingly well! Then a mad dash! Got to the airport with a good amount of time, but of course leaving behind sunglasses and a belt! Had a few mini panics before getting on the plane, but got there! Now, sat on the plane, take-off was an odd experience but an alright one! I've watched 20 minutes of Monsters University, part of The Lone Ranger, which is pretty good and I'll probably watch the rest after eating... Speaking of which, the menu just came up, it's an interesting one and I'm stuck on choice!
I decided to go for beef in a sauce with some veg, so ended up eating veg and sauce, with some chocolate mousse and cherry thing, which was tasty! Been a long flight so far and still got three hours left. Unfortunately, I'm sat in the middle of the row, so no view for me! Apart from seeing Wembley as we took off and turned. It's funny how even though it's 6.20pm at home and 8.20pm where we're going, it's really dark and I'm feeling quite tired. I guess that's just because it's been a bit of a long day. Probably going to try and sleep on the next flight but I'm sure I'll be too excited!
Soo, at 11.30pm (not English time) we got in to Doha, I didn't enjoy the landing and my ears hurt! Had a nice 'best wishes' moment at the end of the flight from the person sat next to me. Then we looked round Doha airport, sat down and played i-spy and chilled.


Friday 25th October 2013

25th October 2013: Rift Valley and travelling!

Sat on the second plane of our journey to Kenya, after getting on the plane at 1.20 am (Doha time). Managed to get a window seat (which I felt would help my lack of confidence in flying - that's a joke by the way, I just thought it would be nice to get a hgih up view...) and I did! Luckily sat next to Eliott again so I didn't have some random person laughing at me and my flappy arms (and the non-stop talking). We got a seriously good beautiful view of Doha lit up, with the skyscraper style buildings and stuff. This flight I opted out of the meal, as I'd eat quite well already, plus I didn't fancy fish or lamb. I'm now chilling with a cup of water, a stunning view of the stars, although I can't see the upside down moon! (Don't ask! Haha) Now back to top up my half hour sleep whilst listening to The Croods (which sounds like a good film!)
Had a good amount of sleep on the flight, watched Bug's Life and Miranda. I had a few breaks from sleep because of the sunrise, which was beautiful. It was a pretty good landing - I think?! As we were going down we saw giraffes and a few other herds of animals, which were a light beige/brown colour. When we got off the plane and onto the bus they played Kenyan music - which was a nice touch! We got our luggage and made our way out of the airport. We then got on the 'Starbus' and headed to Nakuru.
I'm writing this whilst on the bus and it's going all over the place! We've had an exciting journey so faras well as a really odd one! The culture is great to see out here, although there is a weird divide no matter where you go, to be fair we've only been through Nairobi and a few other places, but they're all the same, just with different name and faces. Seeing slums next to high towered flats, and pretty impressive buildings just on the other side of the road/fence - it's definitely a change to London, our country's capital! The roads are a bit manic, there doesn't seem to be many laws etc. We stopped at the Rift Valley viewpoint, which was a great view and some extremely friendly Kenyans! (We all know why that was!) Whilst driving we've seen lots of wildlife, baboons in the middle of the road and they had some babies which were cute. Lots of donkeys and cows and thousands of goats. We've also just seen gazelle (I think?) and lots of zebras. Just seen the first dog as well! No cats yet... Some of the landscapes here are stunning and definitely beats most views in England! We stopped at a hotel for dinner and had a welcome and debrief about what we were going to get up to and what to expect from Nakuru and the Kenya people. Then we headed to the supermarket for water, which is VERY cheap over here! Then we headed to our accomodation. We arrived and as we were sorting out our rooms it tipped it down. We sorted out a bit, had showers, went a chilled for a bit, got a bottle of Sprite for the equivalent of 70p. We then had dinner, which was delicious! Spaghetti bolognaise type thing (with a meat that probably wasn't traditional beef like we'd have). There was a lot of time spent messing around and moaning in general... Still, we headed back to our room, sorted some stuff out and then got ready for bed. The mosquito net was a fun challenge! Highlights for the day have to be: the sunrise this morning, having little Kenyan kids waving at us and seeing the insane view at Rift Valley view point - even if the road it was on deserved to be on a Deadliest Roads TV programme! Oh, and getting to see and speak to Misty on FaceTime (what would I do without technology?)

the sunrise whilst on the plane!


Saturday 26th October 2013

26th October 2013: Adventure Day!

We woke up at around 6am, I got up at about 6.30, went for breakfast at 7, it was sooooo good - I know now that even if dinner/lunch aren't great, breakfast will be! We had mandazis, which is basically an unsweetened doughnut, we also got a slice of toast with it! It was then an early trip to Lake Nakuru National Park, which wasn't very far down the road from our accomodation. We saw quite a few of the animals, but only a few of the big cool animals... It was still really cool to see animals you'd normally see in a zoo in their natural habitat. We saw lots of birds (surprisng amount of magpies and pigeony things around) Then a list of animals: zebra, black rhino, baboons, lots of buffalo, guinea fowl, velvet monkeys, white rhino, a mongoose thing, a few lizards, waterbuck, a tortoise, lots of birds of prey, giraffes, gazelle/antelope things, lots of impala, not as many flamingoes as I thought there'd be but still lots, warthogs, and some dik-diks - although annoyingly I didn't manage to get a photo of them, due to two people in our minibus getting excited. Then a trip to the equator, where we got a demonstration of the experiment of the water going clockwise one side and anti-clockwise the other way, then staying still in the middle. We then attempted to teach some kids some dancemoves, but that didn't go as well as we thought! Then onto Thompson Falls, and on the way lots of kids shouting, running and waving 'Mzungu!' even though this is all going on, right now it still doesn't feel like I'm in Kenya. Still, the falls were great, we walked down all the way to the bottom (which was muddy and wet) but we got a great view! The walk back up wasn't as great, and we came across a mouse! Then a pretty long mini-bus ride back with lots of singing! Dinner which I didn't enjoy, it was rice with beans, sauce and veg. Then I had a shower and after went to the bar area to watch footall highlights. Then had a bug drama, which was basically me sorting out my mosquito net a bug ending up on my bed, trying to catch the bug in my soap case, catching it, it climbing out even though that seemed impossible! Losing it - getting the boys to look for it, they couldn't find it, so left, Tilly and Lai got into bed, it took me an hour to work myself to get back into bed, as I kneel on my bed to get in under the net, the bug climbs up from the side of my bed, I grab my shoe and whack it, it falls on the floor, rolls around a bit, and then I hit again so it's dead and won't share my bed again! Sorry, and karma will probably getting me back for that - but there was no way it was staying in our room to find it's own way out alive!

white rhino, zebra and flamingoes at Lake Nakuru National Park.
at the bottom of Thomson Falls.

Sunday 27th October 2013

27th October 2013: church, cards and chilling.

Woke up at 6am on the dot, yet again and couldn't get back to sleep so wrote up yesterdays entry. Whilst getting ready we could hear some gospel style church singing which helped us get in the mood for a Sunday! Because we forget the clocks changed we missed breakfast, luckily we weren't too late and we still got some toasted sandwich with fried spam stuff in! We headed to the church, in a church bus which was renamed the 'Jesus Wagon'. Three hours of singing, clapping and dancing, it was definitely an experience different to my local church at home! We then headed back to Kivu Retreat (where we're staying) chilled for a bit, had a game of pool, played cards whilst it rained, then went to the supermarket to get some water and snacks. We then went back to Kivu, had dinner, which wasn't great, dry mash stuff with stew. Then we had a quiz, our team came third, which wasn't too bad out of 6/7 (can't remember how many teams there were!) No bug drama tonight, a FaceTime with Dad and a fairly early night ready for tomorrow, the first day at our projects!

to be continued...

Thanks for Reading! 
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