The Rift Valley

Hi, This us Gavin's Mom, Gail here. It has been about three weeks since we arrived in the Rift Valley, but I wanted to describe to you our journey here!
We traveled here on and Ezee coach, which was anything but easy! We took several gasps as crazy drivers overtook on blind bends or drove headlong towards us. It was a long and tiring nine hour journey, but the views were spectacular. We noticed that the land heading west was very fertile and green, a stark contrast to the dry red sand of the Maasai area from the Marusha district. There were corn fields, rice paddies, and rolling hills of tea plantations in the Kissii area (which made us think of our friend Heather.) As we climbed the mountains and looked down over the valley we could see small fertile fields and hills dotted with round thatch huts and mountains in the distance. It felt like we could be in Switzerland. It was beautiful.
We have, however chosen to fly back to Nairobi!

Kakamega Forest, Hippo Point and the Impala Sanctuary

Last Saturday, I went to Kakamega Forest. Kakamega Forest is the oldest forest in all of Africa and once, it covered all of eastern Africa and we took a tour though it! We saw three different types of monkeys, the Colobus, the Blue and the Red-Tailed monkey.
there are actually 4 types of monkeys in the forest, there is also the Sykes monkeys but we didn't see any of them in the forest, we saw them at the impala park, which I'll tell you about later. The monkeys live in groups of up to 40 and they mix, as in, there can be a colobus and a blue monkey in the same pack. Also, we saw lotan of types of trees. there were lots of trees like Fig trees and Eldon teak trees and Red and White stink trees.The Fig trees eat other trees by growing in and around it. There was also a tree that is really wide at the bottom and the baboons pound on it like a drum! Some of the tree live to be up to 400 years old! They also have a butterfly conservatory which is part of their education program.
After Kakamega, we went to Hippo Point, on lake Victoria. Once there, we went on a very long boat(which had a leak in it, so we had to keep bail it out), we saw three hippos, the parents and there young. It was really cool but I didn't I didn't get to see them open their mouth. We also went to a fishing village to look at the fish that they caught and I learned that there is a very big fishthat isn't supposed to be there and it is eating all the smaller native fish.
after that, we went to the Impala Sanctuary. They had lots of different animals like leopards, cheetahs, lions, hyenas, baboons, ostriches and bison. They also had wild impalas and Sykes monkeys. One of the female Sykes monkeys was carrying a baby monkey and I went over to it but it ran away and a big male jumped out of a tree and ran towards me like he was going to attack me!

School, Games, Songs, and milking the cow

I did alot of things while I was at the village. One of the things I did was going to the Kandaria Secondary School. I was In Form 1 which is equivalent to grade 9 but the work was only grade 5 level. Kenyan schools are alot different from Canadian schools. Some of the differences are that in Kenya they have much longer days(6am-5pm!), they have nothing on the walls but in Canada,the walls are very colorful, they have to have a school uniform, and they cane people who misbehave!
At the centre, I taught the kids lots of games using rubber chickens like Capture The Chicken, Chuck The Chicken and Duck Duck Chicken. I've also taught them lots of card games like Ratuki, Jungle speed and Uno. There are some somgs that I've taught them too like Bananas Unite and The Penguin Song, which I learned at Camp Bimini. Something else that I did was milk the cow! It was very hard because I had to do it by hand. Simon, the boy who usually milks the cow can milk it in only 6 minutes and he does it every day of the year!!

Ligusa Crossroads Community Centre & Childrens Home

Right now, I am at Bondo University College. I wasn't able to post any thing at the Lou village because there wasn't any electricity or wifi but I can tell you all about it now.
The community centre was not like how I expected it. It has lots of buildings, lots of animals and it is very green because it rains alot since it is the Short Rains Season. Also, it has no running water right now but they will have it soon.
The children here are very nice. They don't usually talk much and I don't see them very much but they do under stand English.
As I mentioned, there are alot of buildings; some of them are dormitories for the kids, the church, George's house, Mama Ananga's house, the international visitors house(that's where we live), and two other spare mud houses. There is also a school that they are still building and a health clinic that is still being painted but has delivered 4 babies.
Let me tell you a little bit more about the children's home. In each dormitory, the boys and the girls, there are seven bunk beds, which we helped pay for, 14 beds in total in each room and some don't have mattresses and they sleep two to a bunk. That means that 56 of them are in a bunk and some have to sleep on the floor! They don't have very many toys, in fact, all they have is the stuff we gave them and a box DOUPLO LEGO and a busted soccer ball(they especially liked the skipping ropes, the soccer balls and the rubber chickens for the chicken games). another room is the dining room,m which is just some benches and tables. It is very dark in there. Outside, they have a place to play but it is very dirty and rocky.

Tomorrow I'm buying some chickens for the orphanage. I will post more on Thursday about what I have been doing.

Visiting a maasai village

Yesterday, I visited a maasai village because I am sponsoring a child through World Vision named Solitei. He is part of the maasai tribe which is one of the 42 tribes of Kenya. The maasai is a nomadic tribe which means that they move around following the buffalo herds but, right now, Solitei and his family are at a permanent location. To get there, we were picked up by some
World Vision staff in a land rover, then we drove down the high way for about 2 hours and then on a VERY bumpy dirt road for about an hour then we arrived at Solitei's school right in the middle of the bush. All of the children seemed very excited to see me. They ran uptp me and wanted to touch me and shake my hand. The girls all touched my mom's hair a lot. The classroom was very simple. It was just a cement room with a chalk board and lots of desks which were just wooden slats. My mom told them a story about a zebra and i taught them a song about hippos that i leaned at Camp Bimini.
After the school we drove for another half our through the bush to Solitei's home. He lives in a small hut that is made of mud and cow dung that cover a stick structure. Inside the hut it was very dark and small. It had a fireplace. Solitei and 8 others slept there, but it was smaller than my bedroom even! They had a lot of animals; there was a cat, three dogs and about 10 ten chickens that roamed wild. I enjoyed chasing the chickens, and I even got to hold one. His family were very appreciative of us and gave us gifts of Massia beaded necklases that they had made. We gave them some games and clothes. They also gave us tea and rice with meat. We sat under the trees and chatted with the for some time. When we left, Solitei's father said some really nice words of appreciation for our sponsorship.
We also went to see a water project built by World Vision, that our money supports. It now gives water to 417 famiies in the area.
It was a very fun day. I will try to post photos later.
Today we will be going to the Luo village to the community centre - not sure when I will be able to post again!

Elephants & Giraffes!

Yesterday I went to an elephant orphanage. At the orphanage they help the orphans grow unti they are three years old, then they send them to a rehabilitation camp for 5-9 years or until they are accepted into another heard of wild elephants. Right now there are 14 elephants at the orphanage. The youngest is only 11 months old. Soe of their stories are: one fell down a man-hole; one was found in a forest when he was only 2 days old, and the people who found him wanted to eat him, so he had to be smuggled away from them! The elephant keepers have to feed them with milk out of a big bottle every 3 hours, 24 hours a day. I thought it was really cool and the elephants all semed very happy.

I also went to a giraffe centre.  At the centre they breed Rothschild giraffes which are almost extinct because the dictator Idi Amin from Uganda allowed the soldiers to use the giraffes as shooting target practise.  Did you know that the only living relative to a giraffe is an Okapi which has legs like a zebra, a body like an antalope and it waks like a giraffe!  It's very confused isn't it?
I thought the giraffe centre was really cool and I even kissed a giraffe.

My Firt Impressions of Nairobi, Kenya

We arrived in Nairobi airport two days ago and I think Nairobi seems a lot like Toronto. I think this because it has LOTS of construction, there are a lot of tall buildings, and there is a lot of traffic and people. I noticed that the dirt here is very red just like in PEI and it stains a lot. Also they have very bad sidewalks because there are sections missing and they are really dusty.
Yesterday I went to the National Museum of Nairobi. I learnt that there are three main periods in Kenya's histoy: the precolonial period, the colonial period of British Rule, and the Indepenant period. Kenya got its indepenance in 1963 becuase of the Mau Mau freedom fighters. I even saw some home made wooden guns that the freedom fighters used. At the museum I also went into the hall of mammals and saw examples of African herbivores (plant eaters) carnivores (meat eaters) and omnivores (plant and meat eaters.) I learnt that the earliest fossils of mankind were found in Kenya. They also had a room filled with show cases of stuffed birds - there is a rich diversity of birds that live in East Africa.
At the snake park at the museum they had a tree with chamilions in it and I got to have one on my head!

There were a lot of school children at the museum and they seeme to have neer seen a "mazungu" (white person) ever. I think that becuase they stared at me a lot and whispered with each other. They would try to get cloe to me and touch my skin.

We will go to a Massai village in 2 days to visit my sponsor child - Solitei.