16th September 2010
Morning!! 6am, late to bed and a not so great sleep. Have breakfast and help get the children ready for school we then plan our day and week to follow. Kally and I have decided we will spend the start of the day planning our visit to Mathini a place past volunteers found approx a few hours in travel mostly walking, where a family of 9 are live in a houe with no roof, the children have one shirt each and no food. We will sort through donations we have and take some to these people along with supplies.....rice and beans etc we will somehow carry. There is a mountain we need to climb so this will limit the amount of supplies we are able to take. We will try to arrange a donkey to take some of it part of the way and the rest of the way we will carry. This will be our hardest day yet.
The 2 American boys have started the project of building them a house and construction should be underway when we arrive. They have been waiting for the bricks to dry and everything seems to be going to plan.
Our day today also spent planning our trip to Lake Nakuru for some of our free time we have on the weekend. Can't wait to see the Flamingo's and we have heard from the others they have HOT showers. Very excited 5 days and still no shower :-(
Back to the Orphanage for dinner...rice, ugali and beans. Hang out & play with the children, feed them, say their prayers and sing songs, before the brushing teeth check list. The kids really make my day, they are just beautiful :-)
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Day 4 Visiting the local school
I awake to the sounds of the squealing pigs, each morning this sound....my alarm! But this time it's different, one of our girls has given birth to 6 little piglets right outside our window. This is a happy event for the children in the orphanage, distracted from their normal morning routine of breakfast and getting ready for school.
When the children leave for school we prepare ourselves to visit another school nearby. When we arrive we sit and chat with the principle who's office consists of a desk in a small old tin shed a dirt covered notebook and a chair with a broken leg. He allocates us a classroom and we discuss what we will teach the children and he gives us exams to mark. The classrooms each a small tin shed consist of a couple of benches and a bench seat with the roof of the shed falling off and a blackboard with one peice of chalk. The children are happy, laughing and extremely excited to see the Mazungu's (white poeple). In this town and the surrounding one's we are the only white people, and to some of these children the first they have seen!! We spend time with them teaching them english and about our country, also learning from these beautiful children appreciation for the education we have received.
We then make our way to the nearest town with internet access to make contact with the rest of the world and our families and a shop with the luxury supplies of home, deodorant, soap, bread and the all important CHOCOLATE!!! Unfortunately you have to be lucky though as power supplies in Africa are limited and often have power cuts that last for hours. We meet up with some other volunteers at a restaurant owned by a British man, so it’s chillout time where the boys can have a well deserved local beer for $1 and we can use a “Real” lavatory J
I catch a motorcycle back to the Orphanage carrying 3 people to meet with Kally finally, a volunteer who has been on Safari for the last few days. Kally is from Alaska, we have been chatting for the last month leading up to our trip and are both excited to meet. She is the beautiful person I expected, we spend a few hours catching up on stories and amazing photo’s from her Safari. I also meet a few other volunteers who have been away Josh and Nate. At the orphanage now there is 3 Germans, 3 Americans, 2 Australians (that’s us) and Bristish guy. With no power at the orphanage we meet in darkness and use a torch to get more acquainted.
It's lights at 11pm for another big day tomorrow.......
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