The second last day of our trip to Kenya. I miss Taita Hills so much. The dusty and polluted air of Nairobi makes it hard to breath and everything is gray and dirty. It's huge contrast to Taita Hills fresh mountain air and the vivid colours of its rainforests. Maybe it just takes some time to get used to it. When we first arrived to Nairobi it was the most intresting and exotic place, and I'm sure it still is. Just in another kind of way.
We would have finally gotten the chance to sleep long this morning but the rooster at Scripture mission woke us up at 06.00 am. I kind of hope it was him we ate to dinner this evening... Just kidding. But I could really use a good night sleep.
Our buss-driver arrived only 2 minutes late this time, suprisingly enough since following Kenyan time means two hours late is close enough. We headed towards Matare Special Training Centre trough the kaotic traffic of Nairobi.
I'm not sure what I had expected. Some breafing of the School system and meeting the students maybe. But I sure was not prepared for the emotional experiense this visit included. The handicapped children of Nairobi are facing the hardest kind of life. They have been left outside the community and some are even abandoned by their parents. Some are kept tied inside, hidden by their family so that noone can see the abnormal and humiliating beeing they have brought to this world. But theese children we met today had been so lucky that they had gotten the chance to go to school, even though coming from the slum of Matare. When walking trough the classes the teachers spoke of their students with such pride and love in their voices. The teacher of the wood-workshop told us how everyone of these students werer worth just as much as anybody else. That boy over there was the best at sweeping floors. The other one wasn't able to do that but he was an expert on counting woodsticks. They were all experts on something. All the best. But this school is really the only place they meet this kind of treatment. The headteatcher told us about what treatment they face in their everyday life. They have to have their one schoolbus, the common ones won't take them up when they see that they are different.
In the end of the visit we even got to meet with the parents. The room we gathered in was so filled with emotions it was a wonder I was able to breath in there. I think everyone had a hard time keeping their emotions to them selves when realising what hard a life theese parents and their children are facing. They should be praised for beeing so brave that they bring their children out to the community, for being so brave that they bring them to school. There are few that is. The feelings were mixed. In the middle of all this poverty and unhappyness, this school represented a hope of something better, something good people are ready to work hard for.
After leaving Matare behind us we moved from the dark side straight to the opposite. We drove trough the centre of Nairobi and ended up in one of the wealthiest parts of Nairobi. The houses were enourmous, the roads broad and clean and the people few. But we just drove through to a shopping mal to look around for a bit. But I didn't feel like shopping. Buying unnecessary things for lots of money didn't feel like the right thing to do when you just had seen all the people in need of it on the other side of town.
Have to go to sleep now if the rooster is going to wake me up again. Really need some sleep!
Today we drove 6 hours back from the beautiful Taita Hills to the crowded Nairobi. There wasn't that much action even though one of the jeeps decided to get a flat tire in the middle of the highway. Apart from that, pretty boring... During our very long car drive some random thoughts appeared in our heads;
Random thougth nr 1: We are in Africa, not in the Western countries
Maria and Crista bought some hair masks in order to protect their hair from the strong sunlight. They didn't however think of the fact that the hair masks were meant for afro hair. They used it on Saturday evening, and still today (Tuesday) the protecting oil hasn't worn off. The hair is greasy and stiff, haha....
Random thought nr 2: Running water, not always running
Monday morning, everyone needs to visit the toilet and the flush is not working in any of the toilets. Neihter is tap water nor the showers.
Monday evening, all covered in sweat and Safari dust, no improvements. Solution; wet wipe shower...lovely!
Tuesday morning, still no success. Now the toilets are rather smelly and we are even worse...still coverd in Safari dust, as the wet wipes failed us. Pleasent bus ride with everyone.
Conclusion: do NOT take running water for granted....ever.
Random thought nr 3: Passport, anyone?
As we got closer to Nairobi and got stuck in the traffic jam, salesmen started to gather around our bus. They were selling everything from peanuts to pillows and safari hats, even fake passports! So: if anyone is in a need of an identity, please inform us and we'll bring one for you. However, you will have to change your skin colour to South-of-Sahara-black. But that wouldn't be a problem, no shower for a few weeks and you'll be there!
Random thought nr 4: "Raha condoms- pure happiness"
In Swahili raha means happiness, and in Finland raha (=money) also generally equals happiness (or so is the common thought). Even though most of the Africans do not have that much money, they still have raha. In Finland we have raha, but that doesn't necessarily equal happiness.
Because of this picture our school principal has promised me the art schoularship.... :) It was supposed to be posted at the same time with the Day 5-post, but there was a problem with the internet connection.
This was wrote Saturday at 22.00, after dinner and an exciting day!
Today was the most giving experience so far. At nine, after spending some time blogging at the local net-cafe', we jumped in the jeeps and headed for Cannon Kituri School. I met the students for the first time, since I was one of those who arrived to Taita yesterday. We walked around looking at everything intresting and talked with the students. Some were locals and seemd to know everything about everything, atleast about the agriculture. We got to take a close look at how bananas, coffee, beans, broccoli, tomatoes and of course corn is grown. The most intresting thing was though, to talk to the local farmers, some only spoke Taita so the teatchers from Cannon Kituri translated.
Everything was so green, and the steep hills, with terasses to keep the soil in place were amazing to look at. Local kids, who saw as walking by, followed us on our trip, and their little beautiful faces lit up with joy when they got to pose for our cameras. Although everything was so intresting, it was still a long walk and really hot for us cool Finns, so we got pretty tired. My friend from Cannon Kituri laughed at my red and exhausted face, he said he was cold although he was wearing a shirt, a wool-west, a woolshirt and a scarf...
I spent the rest of the day at Hebron, but some of the girls went to the local market and bought some mangos and passion-fruits (they were actually avocados, but we found that out later, so it was a waste of money (very little money though, 5 shilling/"mango", because avocados grow in Hebrons backyard).
I have to go to sleep now, all the new experiances are really making my head feel heavy, my nose with new smells and my ears with new sounds. Have to give them a rest.
// Nora
Just to let you know: we are alive! Our car stopped working a couple times more, which forced us to walk for a bit, cram into everyone elses' cars, and finally leave the overheated car in Voi, to pick it up later. But beside this, our day was amazing! We sat on the roof of our jeep, enjoyed the sun (with 50s sunscreen on, of course. We all learned this the hard way ... All I can say is AUTCH), and saw lots and lots of animals (impalas, waterbucks, gasells, dik-diks, elephants, giraffes, and one group even saw cheetahs, to name only a few. More about animals later on.) We're sorry for the terrible update lately, we've hade so much to do, and do to heavy rain there hasn't always been internet connection. But tomorrow we're leaving for Nairobi, and once we get there all the blog posts ( and pictures and videos!!!) that have been written these past days, but have not been published yet, will come up!
So, good night from, once again, a sweaty and dirty team Kenya (we have no running water here whatsoever and everyone got extreamily dirty of all the sand today...). We're all sad becouse this is our last night in Taita Hills, and at least I loved every second here. The view, the locals ... Oh well, got to make the best out of it (ie sleep) . We'll update tomorrow night from Nairobi. Think of us in the sweaty bus tomorrow. Hugs to all our wonderful (36000!!!) readers!
//hanna, nora and ica
We, Ica, Hanna, Eero, Kari, Jouko and Nora, are right now in the middle of nowhere, on the savannah 20 km from the nearest civilization. Our car just broke down. Jouko just saw lion pawprints in the sand so there's lions nearby... Great. And yeah, the roofwindow won't close. Mums and dads please don't panic, someone is coming to pick us up. I hope... Nora
Early in the morning we got an unpleasant surprise - the shower six girls are sharing doesn't work before 7 a.m. And there is no way for six girls to shower and eat breakfast in one hour. Well we survived, and
left only a little late (one hour...)
After a bumby ride the cars took us up the hill to the gate of the rainforest, called Ngangao. We were thrilled by the sight. Two local men showed us the most interesting sights in the forest, meaning two giant mother trees and this enormous stone which had a cave underneath. I'm mean they were Huge! We felt like cave people...
Can you believe it, we made it all the way through the forest to this open spot on the top of the hill, without any (serious) accidents. The view was incredible, so surreal very hard to describe. We could see everything from there. Too bad it was a little bit cloudy, otherwise we would have seen Kilimanjaro!
After the visit in the forest we went to Canon Kituri high-school, the same school with whom we had worked before. But this time we said goodbye to all our new friends, Kwaheri!
The food-market in Wundanyi was visited once again by us. The more we bought the more expensive everything got. But we didn't complain, because compared to Finland these prices are nothing. Now we are heading back to our Lodge Hebron to have dinner with our bags full of passsion fruits, pineapples, mangos, oranges and beans. I'm telling you - nothing tastes better than the fresch fruits of Kenya.
Well this is all unbelieveable, I hope you could all see the things that we see!
// Emilia and Micky
P.s. they keeping the internetcafe open just for us..!
1. Make sure you don't have any flight tickets.. if the case would be, that you then somehow anyway end up with tickets you should do this, like we did.
2. Lose your passport, money, flight tickets and vaccination card (but find them in the last minute after causing a heart-attack to everybody you have called)
3. Be on time at the airport just to find out that........
a) plane will be approximately 50min late, but you still have a slight chance to be on time to your connection flight
b) Be told that you have to leave the aircraft because the airport you're flying to is closed for about 4h due to a snow storm
c) When you are finally allowed to enter the aircraft again you sit down and are anxious to leave..(.beacause you still might have a chance to get to catch the connection flight because also it might be delayed because of the bad weather).. only to find out that the plane will be even more delayed because of a technical problem. And the technical problem is caused by the cold air that the airplane had to wait in because of the delay. Ironically the problem was that the cooling liquid had become too cold and we had to spend time on the airport waiting for them to warm up the cooling liquid again..( what?!)
4)Stress and panic so much that you almost are mentally so exhausted that you could just collapse and turn back home
5)When you are at the airport make sure you get lost (that didn't happen to us.. but just if you want to be 100% sure you won't make it)
6) When you have arranged your new connection flight, a hotel room for the night and everything seems to be ok..leave the airport with good beliefs, grab something to eat and let your carry-on luggage be stolen.
7) Go to the police station, make a report, take the last bus to your hotel and sleep for a few hours.
8) Oversleep in the morning and miss your new connection flight.
Fortunately we didn't oversleep and made it to our plane (even though everything else actually happened). The stolen luggage was returned, and after manymanymany hours we all made it to Nairobi, Kenya. One thing you can also do is to not get in touch with your contact person when you arrive at your destination. But that's another story.
Wundanyi is absolutley stunnig, the terrain is all about beautiful excotic trees and steep hills. We visited the small town in the morning, and we met some local people. It isn't very far away but we still got a quite nice picture of the surroundings. It's green all over the place and we even found our Lodge's backyard well interesting. There's an avocado tree, no two actually.
Wundanyi is a bit up the hill, which means we saw the most terriffic wiew on our way up. It's like from a movie, very hard to explain its beautines. We are in the tropical zone, which means the place is full of excotic surprises for us. We got thrilled when we saw a banana tree in town and all the palm trees all around. There are even a couple banana trees on our yard!
On our way to the local school, Canon Kitori, we all fell silent. The slopes are so steep that the locals uses terass growing. So what we see was fantastic, nothing we are used to back in Finland. The road was very bumpy, but we were comfortable in the jeeps, amazed by the wiew. Everything is green and the air is humid. We still have so much to absorb, we must stay awake every second so we won't miss any interesting plant or tree.
The first impression we got of the people, was that they are very beautiful, especially their faces and the shape of theirs heads. Most people are so friendly and happy. Everytime when we got lost the people was always so helpful. We would be so lost without them.
The local peoples' impression when they see us is shock, happiness or they great us waving and smiling. Usually it is the kids or the younger men that great us.
Well today... we went to the Canon Kituri secondary school. The students are from 12-20 years old and everyone of them can speak english. They were all so nice and sweet. We got to know 12 students and they who showed us around.
Some of the students are rich and live in Mombasa or Nairobi but go to school here in Taita hills and other live here in Wundanyi, were Hebron, the place we live, is.The economical difference is pretty big. When we walked in we all felt like animals in a zoo being wathced. Before they saw us, it was very quiet but as soon as they saw us a huge mumbling came arose from the class rooms. Most girls talked with a low voice to us so it was hard to understand them but in the few days we have been here we learned to understand their english accent. The other male students that didn't show us around behaved like girls, giggled and were shy. :D
The smaller kids are so cute. They often say hi and ask how we are today which is adorable. When we drove back from the school two small boys ran after the car and wanted to be photographed. Some of the people don't wan't to be photographed like an older woman that we bought mangos of. The excuse was that se thougt that here clothes were too ugly and old. some people,on the other hand, just love being photograped.
I hope you get some kind of picture of the people that live here :D
YAY! Our wonderful Team Kenya is finally reunited - Maria, Sofia, Emilia, Crista, Nora (and Julia, one of the finnish students) have arrived! Blog post about their adventure is coming up NOW!
Since blogging at the internet café(where we ALL(yes, everyone's arrived)are sitting right now, soaked by the rain on our way here.....) is very slow (not expensive at ALL though, like 60 cents/hour) we decided to blog from the computer we have with us, so now we're gonna insert the text we wrote yesterday night.
This was written at 18.00 yesterday:
Day3
So, at the moment I'm sitting on the couch in our dining room, looking out at the beautiful yard nand the breathtaking mountain view through the window. Pauline, the cute 11 year old girl living here, and the house dog Soffin, are not far away, based on the noise. I'll have to show you pictures, they're so cute! (both Pauline and the dog).
The rest are in their rooms, waiting for the dinner to get ready. We just got back from Canon Kituri Secondery school, where we met the students ... exciting! But Ica will tell you more about this in the next post!
Soonsoonsoon the other girls will arrive and we can't wait to see them(!!!!).
Now we're moving down to the boys room.... okay, it doesn't matter, since you're not getting this streamed live. But I just wanted to let you know we're moving downstairs to the basement full of (boys and) bugs! Geckos, ants, mosquitos.... you name it.
We figured we probably haven't told you very much about Taita Hills, where we live right now. So posts about that coming up in a second!
After a tiring adventure, we are finally all together again! The 6 hour drive from Nairobi to Taita Hills via Voi was both bumpy and exciting, since we saw a bunch of exotic animals: giraffes, baboons and zebras. The relief was enormous when we arrived at Hebron Lodge and saw the others - now the real adventure could begin!
Now we are sitting in a Cybercafe in Wundayi, a 5 minute walk from Hebron, all wet and moist from the tropic rain. Soon we who arrived yesterday will meet the students in the school we are doing the research with, and we will visit farms and ask them about their lives. We are doing the research in a SWOT model, which means we are asking them about the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of living in Taita.
The local people have been really nice to us, all smiley and happy :) Let's just hope that the weather will get better!
Jambo from Taita Hills!
Ica, Mikaela, the rest of the finnish students, and I are sitting in a little internte cafe in the little town close to the place we live, Hebron guest house. We\ve been trying to upoad pictures and videos, but it wont work. We'll have to try again tomorrow, so come back! ;)
Nora, Maria, Crista, Emilia and Sofia are on their way here from Nairobi, so they're probably sweating in their jeeps, as we did yesterday. We hope they'll arrive soon, because today we're going to meet the local high school students, and we're very excited! So far we've been brainstorming about questions to ask them, and walked around in this cute little town. Apart from two americans, we're so far the only "mzungus" here, which is, at least for the kids here, quite exciting. We walk around shouting "Jambo, Jambo!" to everyone we see.
The weather is very humid, and it's been foggy, and even rained a little. But as soon as the sun comes out it get's hot, hot, hot!
We don't have that much time right now, although there would be loads to tell! But if there's something special you're wondering about -ask! We do have time to read comments :)
And, we see we've had quite a lot of readers, which is very exciting! We'll try to update as often as possible, and get up videos and pictures asap!
For now, enjoy this amazing video that Reima, from the finnish group made about our first day!
if you can't see it (very possible...) then here'te the link:Day 1 - video
No we have to run to the market place to meet up with our teachers.
Kwaheri!
.//Hanna, Ica and Mikaela
So, after all the uncertainty if the rest of team Kenya, that is Sofia, Crista, Maria, Nora and Emilia, will make it here or not, we were all fairly relieved when getting the news this morning that they were finally on the plane to Nairobi. This means they will arrive in Nairobi later tonight. We are sure they've had quite a stressful adventure, of the more unpleasant sort... But that they still will have plenty of things to tell when they get here, about all the chaos they've experienced. It's horrible that they've already missed two days! But we can't wait to see them, and we honestly hope everything will go smoothly for them from now on, that they get their visas and luggage!
Meanwhile we, that is Ica, Mikaela, the rest of our group and I, are having a slightly unpleasant adventure of our own. Today we've sat five hours in our bus heading for the town of Voi in southern Kenya.
Don't worry, we made it to Voi for sure, but that's that. Now we've been stuck at a gas station in Voi for nearly two hours, since only one of our promised jeeps have arrived so far. And compared to Nairobi, with a temperature around twenty degrees Celsius, the thirty down here is killing us. Though, we are not complaining, at least I am not - I love it, sweaty or not!
Ah, now a man offered to drive four of us to Taita Hills, while the rest keep on waiting. So, our principal, Mikaela, Ica and I, leave the rest behind, once again - this is becoming a bad habit, I hope everyone will catch up SOON, and head for our destination up in the hills. The landscape is beautiful and the breeze woonderful. But you can't help thinking that this trip has sure been a bumpy ride full of surprises and obstacles, but Ica, Mikaela and I have been unfairly lucky. So far that is, since now our ride is definitely bumpy, literally that is! Hold on, everybody!
So while reading this, think of us four in a tiny car, bumping up and down more than a kangaroo on speed. Hopefully we'll be able to videoblog tonight and that we'll hear from the rest of Team Kenya! And a special thanks to Sophia in Finland who helped us get this text to you in real time
After receiving Maria's happy text earlier (scroll down) about how they finally were on their way... we later got a distressed textmessage telling us their flight is late! This set us all into panic state over here - will they make in time for the flight to Kenya?!
But since then, things have only gotten worse... first we found out their flight was three hours late, because of a snow storm in Amsterdam. So long flight to Kenya. However, hotell reservations in Amsterdam where quickly booked, and we were trying to stay positive over here. (We can only imagine what they are feeling...!) Now, we just heard they're STILL STUCK IN HELSINKI! We can't believe it. Does this mean they won't even make the morgning-flight to Kenya? Does this mean they won't arrive until FRIDAY? We don't know. We keep hoping for the best.... but honestly, this is not how this trip was supposed to be. How can we enjoy being here, when the people who should be here with us are still stuck in Finland??
-nothing much we can say, really. We hope things will somehow work out, and they'll get here as soon as possible. For now, all we can do is wish them strenght and pray for a miracle, or something.
This is a horrible, horrible situation.
Ken, our guide took us to "Hellsgate", that's a national park, where we saw many African animals and exciting mountain sort of things.. The rocksall had an interesting pattern, but that's another geographic story I'm not going to share with you right now, since I'm all too tired. We saw buffalos, even an albino one, which is very rare. Then we saw zeebras, PUMBAS, (from The Lion King) impalas ang giraffes. It was amazing to see the animals in real life when they chased eachother on the meadow. What a fantastic sight!
Then the climbing and hiking started in a narrow valley, formed by heavy rains during the rainperiod. The way through the valley was a bit difficult, because it was all slippery and labyrintic, and because we stopped every second to shoot thousands of photos.
But we made it. Afterwards we were pretty tired and pleased with our day. It was a great first day!
When we came out of the airport it was sunshine and 20 celcius. We couldn't believe how beautiful and sunny it was. In the buss on our way to the residence where we are staying we could't believe how many people we saw on the street. Everywere we looked we saw some new buldings comming up, some really huge modern buildings. The recidence is lovely. Me, michaela and hanna have a half bungalow to our self :D but haven't been there a lot. We were so tired so we went for a swim in the tiny swimmingpool, the wather was cold but you got used to it. Tried to get a little colour on our very white skins, but we have to careful because the sun is very strong.
Hello, I am Ica and I'm the one who can't sit still. I love visiting different countries and I've never been to Africa. I suck at every language I know but I always think that a smile can get you far. I'm in to sports but somehow I always manage to hurt my self. I can't figure out why. :D
I recently turned 19 and I'm probably moving to India, Delhi for a couple of months after summer. I like all kinds of animals and can't wait to see them!!
Crista
If everyone else is boasting with their language skills, I may as well present mine: I speak Swedish, Finnish and English fluently, passable French and I also know how to say "you are a little pig" in German. I'm a winter child (hmm, adult?) and I love snow and ice, I've kept a diary every day for five whole years, I always used to play mum when I was little and I'm a huge fan of the TV series Friends. I'm also the one who sometimes go too far when I make jokes. I'm as confused as ever of what I want to do when I grow old and wrinkly, and I'm hoping that a lightning or something will strike me and give me an idea. What I DO know is that I want to see lions in Kenya, and that we will have the most wonderful time!
Emilia
hello! I'm the young one, the baby in the group. I'll turn 17 only 3 days before we leave, so I'll probably need a little more explaining and help than the others. But that doesn't make me any less excited about this amazing trip of ours!
Hanna
Jambo Jambo! I'm Hanna, and I'm the bossy one. Apart from that, I'm also 18, live in Kauniainen, speak swedish, english and finnish, and I never shut up. My bouldering shoe size is 35½. My real shoe size is closer to 38 and you can follow me here, if one blog's not enough.
I'm going on this trip, because I want to ride on zebras.
Maria
Hello, I am Maria, and I'm the one that's fluent in Swedish, Finnish, English and German. Other than that I'm planning on learning Spanish, Russian and French, and in 2 weeks I will also be fluent in Swahili. Ever since I found out about this trip I've been excited, and after it became clear that I actually would be going the level of excitement has just grown, and grown, and grown. I can not wait to get out of Finland, it's ridiculously cold here. I think I like the Kenyan weather a lot more. I'm a person who is up to anything new and exciting, I have travelled quite a lot, and I hope this will be the best trip so far (I'm pretty sure it will, at least it will be the most excotic!) The third contignent I will conquer - watch out!
Mikaela
Hello! My name is Mikaela and I'm the oldest one, of us eight, so I should be the smartest one but I'm not so sure about that.. I love Afirca, I've been there once before (last Christmas) and I really got bit by Africa. I can't wait to go there again. I'm fluent in swedish, finnish and english. French is a challenge but not impossible. I love animals and nature, as I also love people, so I will not cause any troubles during our trip! Looking forward girlies, we're gonna have FUN!
Nora
This is me: I'm Nora and I don't know what I am, althoug I'm pretty sure I'm eighteen and I might live in Espoo in Finland. I think I want to become a proffesional adventuress when I grow up and I think our trip to Kenya will get me started on my cureer. My favourit hobby is bouldering (climbing without safety-lines u know, duh) but sometimes it might be soccer or running or hiking or gymnastics that I love the most. The others brag about their language skills but I have to admit that I don't speak any language fluent but swedish (someone please fix my spellingerrors in this text), but I speak finnish,english and norwegian and german a little. And now you are getting bored so I won't say no more than Byebyebye, looking forward to sharing this adventure with all our blogreaders!
Sofia
Hello! Jina langu ni Sofia. If Hanna describes herself as "the bossy one" I would probably be "the slow one". During meetings and such I'm always the one who needs to hear the directions twice and the one who you have to check with afterwards if I've understood the task in question. I've never been to Africa so I'm very excited about this trip. I hope the animals will be as funny as in the movie "The Lion King" :)
A man walking in Mahtare. The infrastructure in Mahtare is very poor, and the trash is only dumped somewhere where there is space.
A small view over Mathare. In the "buildings" in the back of the picture about 400 000 people live,but who knows how many people there actually are..
Some mentally handicapped children of about 10 years are practicing counting with capsyles.
Some "houses" and shops on the way to Mathare.
