German Volunteers

The next week, Juli and Sabrina arrived. I put them right to work doing another layer of mudding on the chicken house.

Here we are preparing the mud..... I hate this part of the job, it is so tiring to stomp the mud.



We finally got another layer on the inside of the chicken house. YAY! This means that the chickens can finally move in.




Mud houses are so much work. Luckily, the end is finally in sight. It's nice to have been here long enough that I can see the project through to completion.

Some Fun!

About a month ago, we had a volunteer named Wayne here, I think I told you about our adventure in Eldoret to get chickens...

Wayne was here on an interesting week, there was no school, so we were running around doing all sorts of crazy things. We were also able to take some time to relax and have a little fun too.

We went for a birthday lunch in Mumias... had chicken... which is a pretty big deal here!
Here is the market in Mumias...


We were at the market with one thing in mind.... a photo of a Chinese baby for our wall. Wayne wanted it to be his lasting legacy. It sounds so funny, but for some reason, people in Kenya like to hang these big posters of Chinese babies on their walls. Sometimes the babies are doing sports, or talking on cell phones. It's really funny and strange.

Although we didn't find what we were looking for in Mumias, Wayne was able to secure this beauty from our very own market in Harambe.



I love the straw hat superimposed on the baby. We also got a poster of a mansion to put on our wall. I have found that people in Kenya love putting posters of huge mansions on their walls too. I have tried to explain that not everyone in Canada lives in the equivalent of the white house, but I'm not sure they believe me.

The other thing Wayne and I did was prepare for the arrival of our next volunteers. We were getting ready for Juli and Sabrina, two German girls coming for three months.
We had a lot to do, up to this point, we hadn't been using one of the rooms in our house. I will admit...I was a little scared of the room. There was no window, so it was completely pitch black, and it was pretty dusty. There was also a whole bunch of junk in there, an old couch, some broken tools, some old clothes......

After getting rid of the rat that lived in there (gross!) we actually put in a window. I suppose that is a big plus of having a mud house... you can just decide to put in a window. All you need is a hammer to knock out part of the wall, and some mud to put around the frame.

Here is Wayne and our landlord, taking a little break from our work to play some soccer..


Oh... and here is a picture of Rose, wearing the necklace that Rachel and I brought back from South Africa for her. She wears it on market days or for fancy occasions...I think that means she likes it!!

Canadian Nurses for Africa

Due to some missed communication, I found out a little last minute that we were going to be getting a visit from three nurses from an organization called 'Canadian Nurses for Africa'. As in... I got a call that they were on their way and would be here in two hours! Yikes!

Africa is funny though, things sometimes just surprise you and work out better than you ever imagined. The nurses were bringing de-worming tablets for the kids, as well as some material to host a sexual health information session for women of the village. I set out for the head teacher's house, called the chairman of the community organization and before I knew it, we had ourselves a community gathering!

In fact, the nurses had brought enough tablets for 50 kids and we actually ran out.




Luckily they also brought some treatment cream which we were able to give out to families and keep at the school.

One of the nurses was an expert in HIV/aids, which was so perfect for the village. The existing community association is currently undertaking an HIV/aids awareness campaign, for which they have even received some funding from the Kenyan ministry of health. The nurse was able to sit down with the group and give them a personalized session where they could get lots of information and ask tons of questions. It was great!

After that, we had the sexual health session. It was actually quite well attended, the ladies from the village were really interested in talking to the nurses. I don't think that they receive any sex ed in school at all!


Here are the nurses giving their talk, while the head teacher does translating.


During the session, there was a guy hanging outside the window trying to get the attention of a girl inside. I must admit, I panicked a little, I thought it was maybe someone's brother or husband who was not happy about the girl talking to the nurses. Ahhh!

Turns out... he just wanted to talk to the nurses himself! We ended up also having a 'boy session' where three guys were also able to talk to the nurses.

It was a great day all around, it was nice to meet some other volunteers who are working in the area.

plus.... they brought toothbrushes for the entire school!! yay hygiene program!

Are there chickens in that chicken house?

One of the main reasons I had to get back to the village in a certain time frame, was the chickens! We ordered 16 chickens to be picked up on April 27th. We ordered the chickens from Eldordet, which is a town about 2 hours away. The reason for this, was to get a new breed of chickens for our project. This breed, called Kenbro, is a cross between the local variety of chicken and a broiler. This supposedly makes the chicken very disease resistant as well as larger than a local chicken. We shall see! We picked 2 month old ones, so that they no longer need heat on them. Heat without electricity is a little annoying, it involves keeping a fire in with the chickens.

The day before the big chicken pick up, we received a new volunteer. Wayne had come from the UK to stay with us for a week. Since school was still on break, he decided to come along for the day. We made plans to get up SUPER early so that we could get there and back all in the same day. I think Anerico misinterpreted what super early meant, he got up at 5 am before the sun was even up. He sat in town for over an hour waiting for us!! I don't know how he expected us to get there in the dark so early. Haha... He was just THAT excited.

Luckily, we were able to get a little nap in on the way...


And what a day it was. It wasn't looking too good at first. I thought we were going to have to spend the night in Eldoret, despite our order, they hadn't brought the chickens into town from the farm for us yet. Luckily, they were able to get them to come, but I think Wayne started learning that nothing happens too quickly in Africa. Once they finally did arrived, the fun began. While we were trying to determine if they had brought us the 14 hens and 2 roosters as ordered, on of them jumped right out of the container Wayne was looking in. It made a run for it down the street. I couldn't stop laughing, but I think Wayne thought he had lost a chicken before we even got them home! It was a pretty funny scene, Wayne running down the street after a chicken. According to Wayne, he would have caught the chicken, but someone pushed him out of the way to help him. The chicken was returned.... and we were on our way.

We got them home, and I was a little worried that not all of them would make it. The roads here are not so smooth, so they had to endure a pretty long crowded bumpy ride. They made it though! Here they are arriving home.


Unfortunately, while I was gone, not as much progress was made on the chicken house as I had hoped. It turns out that Anerico was very sick and even admitted to the hospital. He claimed it was 'stomach malaria' and that he didn't drink enough water, so they had to put water right into his arm with a tube. After talking to Rose, she thinks it was actually Typhoid, but everyone here calls everything malaria! For now, Anerico is insisting on keeping the chickens in his living room. I think he actually likes doing this because he was using the chicken house as a kitchen. Oh boy.








Therefore, my mission for the next couple of weeks....get the chickens in the chicken house! I enlisted Wayne's help for the first layer of mudding.

And a friend, Hamza, who was back from school for the holidays.
We are making progress....pole pole (slowly by slowly)
Think we can also enlist Anerico's son to help??

Return to Village Life

And now that I have finally posted all the vacation pictures... I can do some updating about getting back to the village. Ahh.. back to the familiar road to our house. It was lots of fun to meet and catch up with all the people from the village when I got back.


Before I left, I was talking about doing the planting with the start of the rains.. well...it's full fledged rainy season now! It's actually not so bad, it is still mostly sunny during the day, then at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon it rains really heavily for about an hour. Really really heavily, like, we sometimes have to take shelter in a random house along the road if you get caught in it!



Look who else was here to greet me! Maximus!! Rose has been taking good care of you, look how much you have grown. This is his newest hobby, sitting by the door of the Jiko while Rose waits for the coals to light to cook dinner on. It drives her crazy, they really have a love-hate relationship.. hilarious!



Look what I saw on the way to school! I love Africa, you never know what you might run into.

Trip Update # 4 - Namibia - Part 2

More Namibia!

Here we are in a canyon, just wandering around. It was good to get walking around after sitting in a bus for quite a long time. We stayed here for the sunset. The sunsets were pretty spectacular in the desert!

Here are the two people I hung out with the most on the tour, Tara and Thorsten.










Finally, we were close to the dunes. The next morning, we all woke up really early, like at 4 am so that we could climb one of the dunes to watch the sun rise.

Climbing a sand dune at 5 am is not an easy task. It sure is tiring!



Good thing it was well worth it when we got to the top. It was just crazy looking around. It sounds silly, but I kept thinking of that windows background image that is one of the defaults on the computer. It looked like that!!






We spent a lot of time just hanging out at the top of the dune. I think Tara, Thorsten and I were the first ones up to the top, and the last ones to come down. I took so many pictures! It was basically like a huge photo shoot, kinda silly, but I do like the jumping shot!




A little critter in on the photo shoot action??



This tree was at the base of the dune, where they set up breakfast for us. Pretty hungry after crawling around in the sand for so long. We were also COVERED in sand. My feet were so heavy from my shoes being full of sand, there was so much sand that it looked like my ankles were swollen. I suppose that happens when you slid down a sand dune. Thorsten thought it was pretty funny that Tara and I were willing to be silly and roll down the hill.....

The rest of the day was spent hanging out in the dunes. It was beautiful, it didn't even seem real when you were looking around.






We then head out towards the town of Swakopmund. We saw a little wildlife along the way, mostly springboks and ostriches, but no huge snakes unfortunately. I was hoping to see a huge snake, but only out of the window from the safety of the truck.


And here....the obligatory tourist photo. I almost didn't take it... but you know, I was here so I thought I might as well.


Same spot...but I like this one more. Me and my desert friends.


Arriving in Swakopmund was both good and bad. It marked the last days of my 7 day tour, but this part of the desert beside the ocean was really interesting to see.

It was also our chance for some desert activities!!
I knew right away that I wanted to try sand boarding. It was pretty good, very similar to snow boarding, but in really heavy snow. I little more hot and tiring though! You have to climb up to the top of the dune everytime... phew! not easy. I think I went down the most times of anyone in our group that day, and it was only 8 times. The views were pretty amazing though. Sand as far as the eye can see.


I had convinced my friend to go sand boarding with me, but in exchange I promised to do one hour of quad biking with him. I wasn't as keen on the quad biking, but I figured I was here so I could try it. We almost didn't even go, after being tired from the morning of sand boarding....





Am I ever glad I did. It was AMAZING! I can't even describe how incredible it was. Even with all the beautiful views we had already seen, we hadn't really gotten a sense of really being in the desert. Driving all over the dunes, up and down and seeing the ocean off in the distance you started to feel the expanses of it. It was absolutely crazy. The pictures just don't capture it.






And that, my friends was my trip. From Swakopmund, I started a ridiculous journey back to the village. I had to take a 4 hour shuttle to Windhoek, then a flight to Jo burg, then stay over night in Jo burg, a morning flight to Nairobi, then an overnight bus to Bungoma. A short Matatu and Motorbike ride and I was back to the village. I arrived on April 22!

Now I can finally fill you guys in on what is happening in the village. It has been quite an adjustment to get back here. I think there was more culture shock the second time around than the first!