Shocking that i have left my blog for so long! A year infact! But i think it is time to fill in the gaps and finally finish my Kenya Blog...
So after our sad farewell to Makongeni, and an even more emotional one to the lovely Nadia who was just signed on to the 6 week project, and who we would all miss so very much! we started our long drive in Rusty to Imani, located in Tsavo.
We arrived in the camp after a good 5 hours and drove up a long dusty track, dodging through masses of cows and Cammels being herded by their owners. Now, something i learnt straight away was that the people around here were not quite as friendly as they were back in Makongeni. We drove into our camp and waited for the gates to be opened and closed behind us and saw 4 large tents set up for us, large enough to stand in, each with matresses and blankets all set up for us. Here there was very iittle water, so we had bucket showers and semi working toilets. We had a briefing in their meeting hall, a nice cemented building with plastic chairs and tabels, by the lovely mama Mercy. This week was a completely different experience to the rest of the trip so far.
We were not used to this kind of heat, it was dry, unlike the humidity we were used to. some of us struggled but some of us prefered this kind of heat. It was dry and dusty and you could tell how water deprived this part of Kenya was. This was the poorest part we had seen. The people were also different. We did not see as many smiles here as we were used to. Later in the week Mama Mercy explained to us that the local people here did not like us, and did not think we were any good to them. She went on to say that they didnt realise we were trying to help them and thought we brought nothing to them and we were no good. Rosie told us one day that people had been banging on the gates and shouting things like "go back home whites, we dont want you here". So this was why we were building a base for a watch tower.. i see...
One night one of the girls got up to go to the toilet, and as she was walking past some of the buildings on site to get to the toilets, she saw someone shaking the door to the shop the women have there with lovely hand made items, then when he saw Sarah coming, he ran and hid in the gap between the shop and another building. As she walked past she could see his eyes following her. She locked her self in the toilet and waited for a while before she ran back to her tent, but by the time she went back, he was gone.
But it wasnt all that bad. We worked hard here, and sometimes it felt so strange in this new confined space. We didnt often leave this site, only to visit the local school where the children were so lovely and charming and sang us adorable songs. And on one day, a man Rosie knew said he would give us a cheap safari in Tsavo national park! Half of us jumped on this opportunity and went for the day. He was quite a character, and im not sure he has done a dive for a while... He sped around the place trying to find the best animals for us to see, darting around, startling the wildlife. At one point we narrowly avoided an angered mother elephant loyally guarding her herd and her babies. But boy did he diliever! We saw elephants by the dozen, zebra, impala, a dead antilope that a leopard had dragged up into a tree to eat later when all the noisy tourists had gone, we saw a mean looking bunch of buffalo, Baboons, some lazy lions amongst so many other things. We also took us up to Lugards falls which in the wet season shows a glorious river and falls, but in the dry season as we saw it, bone dry rocks and a measly little river that the animals had to try and live off. It was a harsh landscape, dry and sandy, but still looked stunning against the blue skys and mountainous scenery which goes all the way to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
Me and jen also had a little visit to a Masai group who danced sang and jumped for us, and we got a little bit involved laughing all the way, before they cornered us into their small shop area practically begging us to buy all their hand made items. Yikes!
All in all we had a fab day, complete when we saw our beloved STEVIE and his new group, who had also been on a day safari and were staying at Rukinga Ranch, where we would be moving on to next! What a little treat.
During our stay at Imani camp, we worked our buts off in the dry heat, building a base for a water tank, a chicken coop, a dove cage (which actually caged pigeons, and some of us werent too happy about this, so tried to free them... Imani means peace, so the women of the Imani group thought it would be a nice idea to keep Doves) and started a watch tower.
After the week had passed, the women danced for us and sang us songs, they thanked us and we thanked them, for they were an incredible group of strong independant women and we had loved being amongst them. We finished our farewells and thanked god we wouldnt have to get woken up every morning by the confused rooster, who would start his wake up calls at 3 am. We then once again loaded up in a truck, this time it was not our beloved Rusty Shelia however, it was its brother who we named Disco Rusty as it had speakers in the back! And off we went on our way to Rukinga ranch...
This was a completely different camp right in the heart of the African Plains! Here there were lots of cabins (bare in mind they are not called cabins here but a year has past and i cant remember for the life of me what they are actually called..) for all the campers to sleep in and a lovely big house for the another group of volunteers to sleep in, and where the owners of the camp stayed.
This again was a different camp to what we were used to. There were other campers there!! The Camps International group were all there who we had met at fourties on our nights out! Most of whom we got on really well with. The only major down side to this was that meal times became a battle for food, there was usually not enough food and there were always some people who hardly got any.
This camp was lush though, right in the middle of the bush with animals coming right into our camp. One night we could hear elephants and they sounded so close to us! and we had semi working showers and toilets. (which we couldnt use for a good 5 days when the elephants decided to burst the water pipes in a desperate attempt to find water, so smart! Bucket showers for us again!!)
We had long days of work here, digging out water holes for elephants. What a laugh, we were covered head to toe in orange dust, looking like something from a horror film. Bare in mind when we were doing this we were right out in the open so if any angry Ellys decided we were no good, they could have easily stampeded us. We were of course with a game ranger, but in kenya in the national parks it is against the law to use guns as a method of self defence on the animals.. Fair enough.. But instead he had a great big stick... Oh this makes sense im sure.
We spent most of our days working at a local school plastering the walls of a newly built class room which was really fun. But dead sad in many ways. This was probably one of the poorest, most underdeveloped places i had ever been to. It was so dry and harsh that the local peoples livestocks and farmlands had subsided into practically nothing. On our first day working at the school their chirpy Head of the school took us on a brief tour of the school. We werent sure whether he was telling us all their sobstories for money, or if he was just letting us know how hard it was there, but either way, the stories he told us was shocking. They had hardly any food or water there, due to how dry this part of Kenya was. The nearest markets were 2 hours away, and even there food isnt rich in supply. The food they do get for the school is practically all the children will get to eat for that whole day, and the whole week. He told us how one time, people came to the school and took all the food they had for the week. This meant that for that whole week, most children there would starve. He even told us things that in our daily lives are not even an issue, for example when the girls reach the age where they start having periods, they cant just continue with daily activities and use things like tampons. They dont even know what a tampon is. They would either have to reuse the same piece of material as a type of sanitary towel, or stay at home and wait for it to stop, and for them missing a week of school means so much more than it would for us.
I really loved being at this camp. I loved being icolated again, and in the middle of the bush, i felt so myself and so free. i loved being surrounded by wildlife. One day on the drive back from the school, we saw a cheetah and her two beautiful little cubs. it was just amazing being in this kind of surroundings, as harsh and bare as they were...
But after two weeks our time here had ended, and once again we packed up our stuff and went back to Mackongeni for our final and most emotional week.
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