I do apologise for not being such an avid blog keeper (gran....and adam) but i supose this can be a new years resolution.
The last month of work with the kids was much the same, more chopping of vegetables, sorting of beans/rice, teaching and general helping out around the home and school. As a goodbye i took all the BA kids to the beach, there was just over 30 of us and i the only adult in sight! You can imagine what chaos insued.
On my last day at the school all the teachers i had been working with and the 3 classes i had taught, stuffed themselves into one classroom and we had a few goodbye speeches. A few of the children said a few words and the teachers all said something, they all thanked me for my hard work and wished me the best of luck for the future. By the end i had tears in my eyes and was trying very hard not to cry, the children all gave me hugs and made me promise to visit again,, the time flew by so fast and i didn't feel prepared to leave at all.
I had a few days before a friend of mine (Ibi) arrived from the uk, so in that time i finished off my Dive Master - i'm fully qualified now! whoop! And made the most of Prisca, Charity and Steph while i still had them.
Once i'd left i still kept in contact with them by txt messages and phonecalls every now and then, i even took Ibi to meet them for a night.
The beginning of our travels started in Mombasa, we chose our base to be Sha's house (Ibis dad), left most of our baggage there, and then set off into the distance. First we headed off to Watamu for a night on a roadtrip with one of Ibis friends (Owl), we spent the night trying to squeeze three of us into a hammock and covering up to avoid the mossies. That night we paid the most for camping compared to anywhere else we stayed... and that was 700/= the equivalent of just under £7, but we did get the use of the hotel pool and the bar/resturant :D
The prices in the resturant however were well out of our price range, so we drove down the road to a little hotelli where the price of a cup of tea was 10/= instead of 100/= The mzee working there was a classic, although his little cafe was built out of tin sheets with rickety wooden chairs inside.. he wore a shirt and tie to work! He looked like he belonged in an office, not a dirty little Kibanda.
The next day we decided it was time to move on to Malindi, here we stayed in the KWS campsite where it was only 150/= a night to camp! It was also a lot closer to the beach, so on one of the two nights we were there we went to slum it on the sand.
In Malindi we made it a point to eat at a different Hotelli every meal time, all the them very cheap but with delicious oily chapatis and greasy tea, at one of them we had a waiter called 'sorted'!
While there we visited the famous 'silversands' beach, named because the sand sticks to you and looks like flakes of silver. Here the two boys decided to jump of the pier, it was only afterwards that they realised they'd jumped into all the fish chum that the fishermen had thrown in. As they were doing that i made friends at the fishermen who were insistent on trying to teach me to fish, although they couldn't seem to understand the concept that i was vegetarian and didn't like killing animals.
From here Ibi and i left Owl to make his way home and we hopped on a bus to Lamu. The bus company we went with had a brilliant motto 'We fly, others run' and its true, a suposedly 5/6 hour journey only took us 4... although at some stages i was worried that the bus might roll as the driver was a maniac and the road was not flat but a curved surface.
Getting of the bus we made our way to the ferry, a tiny little boat which managed to pack everyone who had been on the coach and what looked like their entire households of furniture and goods. The sun was setting as we made our ride and the view over the trees and water looked amazing, however pale in comparision to the other sun sets we were to see in Lamu.
We made a very grumpy and uncomfortable walk in the dark to our new home, a place called Dudu Villas which had the most eratic, crossed eyed man you could ever meet as the owner. The place was perfect, a double bed of both of us with an on-suite bathroom and a balcony where we could hang our hammock, Mr. Dudu left us with a goodnight and 'if you need ANYTHING just ask me!'
After washing what must have been a truck load of dust off ourselves, we made our way into town and treated ourselves to a huge dinner.. i think thats probably the most we ever spent on a meal during our travels.
Over the next few days we explored Lamu's little craft shops and the 'culture workshop' which was left in charge of two boys who i reckon were only about 10/11. In any case they did a brilliant job of trying to sell us everything inside and telling us how to recycle flip flops. We also went to the 'Wildebeest' Which was an old house that was now used as an art gallery and a place for travellers to stay. There were huge hangings that had been sown by hand, beads and glitter and bits of straw making up massive pieces of art.
We also walked down to Shella most days to bask in the sunshine and try and defeat the waves, sometimes in the evening we would climb up the sand dunes which were the size of mountains! From there we would survey our land watching the sunset.
As one of the boat crew on the ferry had promised me, there was no traffic in Lamu as there are only 3 cars there.... but there is a lot of Donkey traffic! Everywhere you go you can see donkeys, and there is a donkey sanctuary to stop people mistreating their donkeys. One morning after breakfast we found our favourite donkey, 'bandit donkey'. He had a black bandana type cloth tied round his neck, black hair and his poor tail had been chopped off! We found a quite a few odd animals on our adventure, another being a cat who was most definately a direct desendant of a lion who stalked bits of fluff and had a broken tail.
Our breakfasts in Lamu were the best i've had so far on my journeys. We would wake anywhere between 7 and 11 and stumble our way into town with our eyes half closed like zombies, searching out 'the new star cafe'. There we would place ourselves for at least an hour if not two, and devour freshly cooked mahambris and cup of tea after cup of tea.. they also did a fantabulaticly scrumptious mango milkshake and once i'd discovered these there was no stopping me, i had a pint of it every morning.
After our breakfast we would try something new each day, we once decided to try and walk the distance of Shella beach all the way to the tip of the island... thats about 13k. Well... We got half way and realised we'd run out of food, water and shade, so in the blinding heat of the day we turned round and made our way home. In all i think we walked for 6 hours, we were VERY tired by the end.
Other days we swam to the sandbanks near by and played bao (an african game) with shells, digging holes in the sand to use as a board.
When we had planned our travels we were only going to stay in Lamu for 3/4 days, however we fell in love with the place and decided that a good excuse to stay was the 'Lamu Cultural Festival' ... so we stayed for 10 days! Definately worth it though, part of the festival were donkey races, dhow races, swimming races, live music, dancing, food and craft stalls. We made a group of friends so every day we would meet with them and amble round town stopping whenever we felt like it to see a race or some music. Ibi and i survived on mango milkshake takeaways, shake in a plastic bag with a straw.
We went on a dhow ride to watch the sunset, then again with our friends to Manda island for dinner around a campfire and swimming with phospherance under stars.
On our last day in Lamu Ibi, Monsoon (a friend we had made there) and i all swam across to Manda island. We timed it so that we were swimming at low tide just turning, but the current was still very strong and it took us about half an hour to swim each way. Anyway the fact that we got to the other side was enough to put a grin on my face for the rest of the week. On the swim back to Lamu island we had dolphins following us and Ibi got really excited as it was the first time he had seen dolphins in the wild.
The day we left Lamu i think was the worst day of our travels. Neither of us wanted to leave so we were in bad moods, we had reached the end of our money so our breakfast wasn't as large as we'd have liked, the coach back was over packed so we both got claustothrobic, we needed to pee, we were thirsty...just everything was awful.
After scowling and moaning at each other we finally started to see the funny side of it and we decided the only thing to do was laugh. So although we were both fed up we at least weren't fed up at each other, and we endevoured to try and cheer each other up. I shared my ipod with Ibi and when we got to Malindi (where the coach stopped to drop off some passengers - phew!) he spent his last 50/= on buying us a soda each. We had also put aside some money especially for some Malindi Halwa, so we had lovely warm, squiddgy Halwa to fill our tummies on the second part of our journey.
From Mombasa we caught the over night train up to Nairobi, we played bao to chase away our boredom and made funny sandwiches for dinner. I discovered that kit kat, cheese and crisps make a very good sandwich!
In Nairobi we met up with dad and spent the night with him in his new cottage, we got to eat yoghurt, cheese and cereal! There are no words to describe how much i'd missed dairy products!
Early the next morning i drove us down to Elementita for the weekend. There we stayed with Juliet going for long walks in the bush, having gorgeous sundowners by the lake and getting attacked by all the crazy animals... poor dad - Ester the donkey fell in love with him.
Ibi and i lay on the lawn moonbathing both nights we were there, to keep warm i was in two jumpers and a sleeping bag with a hot water bottle! We both felt that our faces were dry and lips cracking, and we were wearing jeans and jumpers during the day... i was amazed at how different the air and temperature was between the coast and central province. We agreed it was good to get a different view on Kenya and disappear into the bush for a few days, away from the hussle and bussle of people on the coast.
After our lovely peaceful weekend it was ..guess where?.... Back down to the coast again! We just couldn't keep away. More funny sandwiches and Ibi won the bao game so he got to sleep on the top bunk... and then in the morning i woke feeling ridiculously overdressed in jeans and a t-shirt.
For Ibis last week we camped in Tiwi on the beach, every night we slept under the glare of the full moon (or just about full) and every day we swam in the pool of Africa. The pool of Africa is a giant rock pool thats in the shape of Africa, its fairly deep so we took it in turns boastfully jumping off the cliff into the pool below. As we had reached the end of our travels, so had we reached the end of our money. We lived on 100/= a day (about a pound) having a fairly large breakfast and then bread and oranges, or bread and bananas, or bread and coconut for our second meal at about 4/5 in the afternoon. Ibi told me, once he got back to the uk, that he'd lost 5kgs.
Living the tiwi life we met one of the more interesting people on our travels, a crazy 15 yr old who told me 'i want you to introduce me to your sister' and then offered to buy us sodas. He was apalled at how little we were living on and we felt like true 'down and outs' the way he pitied us. One night by our beachfire, he cooked some crab claws in a coconut shell,, with sea water and orange peel for a 'bit of flavour'. I was very impressed by his creativity and i dont think i'll forget his crazy cooking any time soon.
I also took ibi to meet the divers i'd been working with and they all bonded very well, my divers joking and offering to pay ibi for my hand in marridge.
At the end of a very lazy week on the beach, ibi and i finally said our farewells and he made his way grumpily back to England. I didn't realise how inseprable we'd become until he'd vanished off on a plane and i was still thinking 'he must have just gone to the toilet, i'm sure he'll be back soon'.
I didn't have much time for sulking though as a couple of hours after Ibi i hopped on a plane to Zanzibar!
There i really lived a fancy lifestyle, i was completely spoilt by my godmother(Shelley) and her friend (Paola). We stayed in posh hotels and ate meals costing what i would have spent on a weeks worth of food! Everytime i tried to pay for something they would glare at me and refuse my money, 'you need it for Nepal!' they said.
Shelley had lived in Zanzibar previously so she was a great guide and took us to the best bars and beaches, showing us the quirky shops of stonetown and the beauty of the island. I had a really lovely time catching up as i hadn't seen Shelley in 2 years! We discussed all the work i'd being doing and the different experiances i'd had. It was really good to talk to an adult who knew my background and the way i worked already, so we could really thrash out all my feelings and ideas of Kenya.
After 4 nights and 4 days of the two oldies, they left me to fly back to Tanzania and i was met by Hezena. She's the daughter to Shelley and i've known her since i was 9 yrs old! She took me to stay in her dads VERY POSH hotel on the north coast of Zanzibar and there too i was treated like a princess. The two of us stayed in the prestigious honeymoon suite, ate all the deserts available and relaxed in the infinity pool. I also made friends with her 3 yr old brother (Jacob) who i think i've fallen in love with. He was the sweetest little boy you could imagine, each morning he woke us up with flowers he'd picked from the garden,, and he was always hugging us and trying to give us his food.
The 3 of us, with the help of Lesley (jacobs mum), made the best xmas tree imaginable. We spray painted sticks from the garden and then wrapped ribbon around them and hung ball balls everywhere. I didn't think i'd get the chance to decorate a christmas tree so i was very happy at the opportunity to.
Looking back on my photos now i cant help but notice was a huge contrast in lifestyle that week was to my time with the children in Kenya.
I thoroughly enjoyed both lifestyles though and wouldn't trade either of those experiances for the world.
From Zanzibar i travelled back to Kenya and upcountry again to meet my family for christmas... unfortunately that involves uploading a whole lot more photos so you'll just have to be patient.
I've now also got a heap of photos of my first week in Nepal so you can look forward to those too. Tomorrow i meet with GVI and will be briefed on my project before i start work, so give me about a week!
Namaste.
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