Pre-Safari Adventures

Hello again everyone!

Made it back from the safari safe and sound, sorry that I couldn’t update the blog until now, we have been playing catch up since we got back.

Okay so I will give you a quick run through of what has happened over the past 7 days, and will hopefully get lots of pictures in there too.

Last Friday Katie, Lisa, Victoria and I headed in to town for a rapid fire visit to pick up groceries and run some other errands before Lisa and Victoria stopped by the airport to pick up Robyn, Elisa and Hannah from the airport. Thankfully Katie and I somehow managed to bring all of the groceries home with us, although it took us a while to detach ourselves from the matatu on the way out! It did feel much better to have the kitchen well stocked again, even though I doubt that it will last very long now that there are 10 of us here. Once we got home we washed the shirts for the soccer tournament on Saturday and relaxed until the new girls arrived. We had only met them once or twice before coming so it was fun to finally truly get to meet them. (It was also helpful to have them actually introduce themselves to other people since I had Robyn and Elisa mixed up in my memory!) After we ate lunch and showed them around the house they headed into Obambo to meet Maurice, unfortunately while Katie and I had to stay back to do more work.

That afternoon once everyone got back they took a quick nap before we all settled down to some dinner and welcome cake for the new arrivals. To cap off the night we started our preparations for the soccer tournament the next day by having the education girls run us through the condom demonstration. Needless to say that lesson was a pretty funny affaire! It is hard to keep a straight face while working our way through the 12 (yes 12) steps to using a condom correctly.

After making a few welcome calls back home I headed off to bed to get some rest before the soccer tournament on Saturday. We got up bright and early to head out as a group. Since we are short on bikes currently, 7 of us had to make the ~45 minute walk over to the school. This did give us a chance to talk with Hannah, Elisa and Robyn a bit more, they are very friendly and easy to talk with. At the soccer tournament we helped set up all the posters and tables before playing some keep-up with the referees, linesmen and Kennedy. It felt really good to kick a ball about again. I also got to find out that Robyn is a pretty good player along with Victoria as both used to play a fair amount. Once the games got started we actually didn’t have much to do other than talk with some of the kids not playing and making sure that things stayed more or less on schedule.

Some of the children checking out our informational posters

Getting all set up

Big crowd!

Time to play!

Allie hard at work

It was pretty amazing though to see them all playing barefoot, the quality of the games was not super high but I think that is mainly due to the lack of equipment, a good pitch and trained coaches. Much of the play was in the air or some kind of boot and chase, but with spurts of good passing play. Most of the games ended up going to a penalty shootout unfortunately since most teams struggled to score. The visiting schools won all the games so the crowd was a little subdued but it was neat to see everyone’s reactions to each penalty kick. Once the first 4 games had been completed we ran the condom demonstration activity where we showed everyone how to do it before getting some volunteers to help out. It was very good to see how many people were interested in trying and how many people (guys especially) that came up to ask questions afterwards. In some ways it was a little worrying to see how proficient some of the younger students were at putting the condom on the ‘model’, but I would prefer that they know how than not.

Sarah, Chaviva and Allie walking through the 12 steps

Success!

Once the demonstration was completed we hung out while watching the last games before cleaning everything up and heading back home. We had been planning on going to sleep on the rocks at Kitmaki that night but it was threatening to rain so we decided to postpone it until another time (a good decision in the end). That night Katie and I were pretty unproductive due to tiredness but decided to get up early the next day to finish up some more work.

More football

Time to relax with our new friends

As I mentioned, Sunday became a working day for us. The biggest thing remaining with regards to the board is that we are having a close up meeting on the Tuesday before we leave to close out any lose ends and give them a guidebook which we are going to put together. This will likely be our last or one of our last touch points with them before we leave, and should set the stage for everything that will happen during the year. Therefore we want to be very thoughtful with what we put in there and how we present it. We decided to get as much of this done before we were to leave on Monday for the safari so that Liz could take a look at them for us. That evening after a nice dinner Katie (finally) admitted that she had been feeling sick so I convinced her to get an early night’s sleep while I finished off the work we had to do. Thankfully she felt a lot better in the morning, but I think all the hard work we had been doing was getting to her. In addition to working that night I got sidetracked on a long conversation with Victoria which I really enjoyed. Going to sleep early is clearly not my forte! My brother Michael’s friends were convinced after living with him for a couple years that ‘Clarks’ don’t need sleep, and a few of the girls seem to agree with that sentiment! If only I could replicate this trend during the school year I would be much better off for school.

Time to prepare breakfast

Monday morning was a lot of fun, we invited Maurice, Pamela and Syprose over for an early morning surprise breakfast. I made crêpes and chicken sausages (with maple syrup) while Victoria made french toast and Allie made scrambled eggs. We all then settled down to the feast together with all 13 of us crowded around the table. Once all the food was finished Maurice convinced us to partake in some dancing, which was a lot of fun. Once we were fully danced out Katie took a look over the work I had done while I packed, got ready to leave and sent out a couple final emails. Once finished we then rushed out the door to head into town for a couple final errands and to catch the matatu to Nakaru. In town we had some lunch and picked up some last minute supplies before heading over to the matatu stand. Alas I continue to struggle with my attempts to withdraw money so I will have to be extra stingy for my last couple weeks here.

Time to feast

Time to dance...

and jump!

Okay I will leave it at that for now to talk about the safari shortly. I will need some time to sort through all the many pictures I took. For now I will simply say that it was amazing and we got very lucky with our animal sightings, although the transport on the way there, while there and on the way back was a little uncomfortable. We are home now safe and sound though.

Best,

Graham

Ps. I apologise in advance for my funny use of verb tenses, I tried to fix them as best as possible but probably missed a few