I finally got out of the city this weekend when 8 of us went camping at Lake Naivasha. It was a beautiful place. We spent our days trekking and on boat trips to see hippos and flamingos and our evenings round the fire in the woods. It was a much needed break from the pollution and filth of the city. I spent today in a clinic in Kibera. On my way down to the orphanage I saw a health clinic and stuck my head round the door. I started talking to one of the doc...

Since I last wrote a lot has happened. We have managed to compromise with VICDA and will now spend the next two weeks working in an orpahanage in Kibera, testing and counselling the children there. The following two weeks will be spent with our mobile clinic in Saiaya, western Kenya. This has cut costs, which we were struggling with and also means I get to spend some time with kids, which I enjoyed so much in Nepal and have been missing here. So it's kind of the ...

Things seem to be looking up. Today Shiama and I designed and organised a project to work on while we are here. We have set up a mobile HIV/Aids clinic that will travel to remote villages where people have no access to HIV testing, offering free tests, counselling and follow-up treatment and refferals. Our team consists of Shiama, myself, two Kenyan HIV counsellors and hopefully a driver. We have managed to obtain testing kits and other instruments from the local...

Jambo My first visit to Kibera (it's the slums area that appears in The Constant Gardener if anyone is interested) last night went off with a bang - literally. It was dark when we got there and we were swarmed by hundereds of people eager to catch a glimpse of a Misungi (white person). The smaller fireworks went off fine - the kids were completely amazed. But as soon as the bigger ones went off, people scrambled and ran away asuming it was the all too famili...

I'd have to begin this entry with an apology for the amount of times I will compare things to Nepal but on first impressions I suppose that is all I have to go by in terms of NGO's. So my last 36 hours have been pretty hectic but I think I'm beginning to settle in. The host family I have been living with for the past couple of nights are great although I am a little disappointed at the high standards of the house. There was something very liberating about n...