Sunday, 14 February 2010

4 weeks down, 12 to go!

So another week has flown by and I’m still loving it here in Kenya! I was just on my email and somehow the weather in Reading was showing up and it said highs of 4 degrees and I thought wow it’s good to be here! The sun is still shining, though its been a bit more cloudy the past few days.
So what have I been up to? I was ill Monday and Tuesday, the funny tummy finally caught up with me but it could have been a lot worse so it’s ok, got it out the way! On Wednesday we went to Kibera to the Woman’s group again. We visited a couple of the ladies homes and it is exactly as people tell you, like 5 people living in a shack that’s only about twice as wide as a double bed and a couple of feet longer. They literally just had half there house as the bed, in which all 5 sleep and the other half as the living area. the ladies were telling us how they'd been able to buy furniture through money from the Power Woman's Group. The slums are crazy, a million people packed in to these tiny houses, living on top of each other with the sewage running down the middle of the street, though you can't really call it a street, it's more an alley between houses. the how place is pretty much built on a rubbish dump.
Once again (after going to buy lunch, 3 of us ate for the equivalent of 3.50 and Debora was saying that café was expensive!) we did a bible study, and once again the ladies all hugged us and thanked us greatly for being there.

On Friday morning we visited LCC-K which is another pre-school. Me and Moon are going to be going there this week and hopefully start doing some teaching. The kids are awesome, they come and grab you and talk to you and you wish you could speak Swahili!
On Saturday morning we went to Jikaze to do another food relief and after all the bagging up stuff was done we were talking to some girls that were there. One of them was 12 and had such good English! There was another with her baby sister on her back, she was only 7 and had to look after her. (she is in the pic on the right, the girl on the far right, the white lump is the baby on her back! And that's me moon and Nicole) They were asking how old we were and i think they thought Nicole and I said 80 becuase they were like 'wow!'. Actually they said 'guy' which I assume means like 'man' or 'gosh' or the equivalent, from the contexts in which i've heard it. Several little girls came along tooand decided they liked me so I spent a happy half hour or so having my hands fought over and chucking them in the air and tickling them. They were so gorgeous! Carmen, Moon and Nicole ( she is another volunteer who came on Friday night, she’s from Canada) left but I decided to stay a bit longer and got whisked off with the kids miles through the camp to where they were having a kids program thing, run by Grace – the lady who comes to translate at the woman’s group. They sang some songs, which was cool! (They sang that Jabulani Africa song, for those who know what that is - Han do you remember our crazy dancing!) And then went outside to play games. I was just sitting being jumped on by the little girls who were too small to play when Phil and Megan came to find me because we had to go. Hopefully I can go back and stay all day one time though. It was just so amazing, being there with this awesome scenery all around and these awesome kids playing with you!
As we were driving down into the Rift Valley on the way to Jikaze, looking at the vast view over the valley with mount Longonot in the distance Phil said to me ‘once Africa gets in your veins you can never get it out again.' I said ‘I’m good with that!’ I can feel it seeping in and I love it!





3 comments:

  1. Wow!! They actually sang that song!! I remember our dancing!! I always use to spin round in circles and go completely dizzy and crazy!! Sounds amazing! Wish I was there!!!!!! OOh and I'm loving all the pics!! xx

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  2. I love that song! So glad you're having a good time :) You are definately lucky to be in hot weather, it has been so freezing here! And when you come back it will have started to get hotter, so you will only be slightly cold instead of freezing!! I tried to reply to your text the other day, it was really long aswell and then it wouldn't let me send it again :( and then my silly sony erricson phone went really crazy on me and deleted all my messages, and i had it in my drafts and i was going to write it on your wall but it went :( but consider yourself messaged! :) Love you lots :) xxxxx

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  3. Gentle warning; It s going to be very wet in kenya for a few days!

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