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Hi All! My first blog! Where to start ........
we arrived in Naroibi, Kenya on the evening of the 7th oct and where collected from the airport by James and Andrew who took us to our accommadation. that was a bit of a scary experience as we arrived in the pitch black, drove through a small slum and got to a locked gate which was opened by a man with a scarf covering his face! luckly our house was behind another house and was nice! after we where shown our bunk beds by Regina (host mum) we fell straight into bed!
The next day we were shown around the area by Kathy, a volunteer from USA, who showed us the supermarket, the volunteer office and how to walk there and back, very usefull! in the evening we went to the cinema and watched Taken! good film!
The next day we did the tourist stuff and hired Andrew, who picked us up from the airport, to drive us around. We went to the elephant ophange, the giraffe centre, a place for lunch, the animal ophange and the safari board walk! It was a good tourist day and at the animal ophange, after bribing the zoo people, we got to cuddle 2 week old cheetars and go in the cage with 2 5yr old cheetar sisers! dont worry parents they were hand reared so very safe! they even purred!
On the thurs night we meet some more volunteers who had come to reginas to go on the safari on friday.
Friday morning 8 of us left to go on the safari. it was a 4 day safaria starting in the Massi Marri and ending at Lake Nukura. The 4 days were amazing and we saw every animal apart from lepords and crocodiles! we even saw lions guarding their kill, a buffulo, and then dragging it off - it was amazing! pics will be up soon! at lake nukura we saw hundreds of flamingos which were pretty nosiy and smelly! and here we also saw white rhino! you are able to get pretty close to the animals which was amazing! the only scary bit was getting stuck next to the elephants and steve and some of the oter boys getting out to push!
We got back from safari monday night and all went to the cinema! Tuesday we went into the centre of nariobi and did some shopping!
On wednesday we were picked up for our orientation and we meet the other 5 volenteers in our group. The volunteers we had meet so far had been in africa for about 2 weeks.
At orientation, where they told us what not to do and where to go for things - me and steve had already found all this out after being in kenya for a week, they also told us about our placements! Steve and I would be going to Thika, a place about an hour north of nariobi to work in a school for disabled children.
After orienation they took us to our host family's house in Thika. Steve and i are now living in an amazing little house with Mama Ann, sister Lucy, and cousin Ruth! we were also glad to discover we have hot showers and running water and a flushing toliet! some volunteers have been washing with buckets of water!
Thursday moring we started our first day of work at Joytown school. The school is amazing - it has 300 pupils all disabled and has its own small gym and outdoor pool. The pupils are amazing - im wondering how many i can fit into my suitcase - they are all so smiling and get the giggles when we practise our swahilli on them! unfortuantly the school has no physio service and some of the children are so disabled its horrible to see but they all smile at you!
Hopefully we can make a real difference at the school and it seems they are glad to have us there!
Our host family are lovely and friendly - today they are teaching me to cook while steve plays football with some local children and tomorrow we are going to see our other sister Maggie who is about to sit her final exams!
We are both loving Kenya and our placement! Love to all of you xx xx
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