Volunteer Project

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I met up with the group for my volunteer project on the 10th of August (Friday) in Mombassa, and we went to Diani beach for a couple of days for our orientation meetings. The group are all really nice - 13 girls and 2 boys, so quite unbalanced though. After being briefed on the local customs and culture, and being given some health and safety talks, we just relaxed on the beach for the rest of our time in Diani, and then on the sunday afternoon we headed to a small village called Shimoni, a bit further south along the coast from Mombassa.

We've been living in Shimoni village for 2 weeks now, in a local house that we have rented out for the time we are there. The house is pretty basic - 4 bedrooms between all 15 of us, and no running water inside - we have cold showers outside and toilets that (sometimes) flush. Our group leader who is a really nice Kenyan called Justus, lives in the house next door to us along with our cook - all our meals are prepared for us every day (pretty much always meat stew with rice or ugali).

Our daily routine has pretty much been getting up at 7 and having breakfast, then going to catch a boat across the Island where we are building the school (Wassini Island) at about 8am. We usually start building work about 8.30/9am and carry on until our morning break at 10.30, when we eat doughnut like snacks and rest until 11. At 11 we carry on working until 12.30 when we stop to go for lunch at one of the local villagers houses - we pretty much always seem to have cabbage and rice! We then go and paddle in the sea/wander round the island/sleep until 2pm at which point we work again until 3, and then we catch a boat back to the mainland. After that we mostly just hang around the house for the rest of the evening, and sometimes go to the local bar.

The project work that we have been doing is completing a classroom that was started off by another group. When we arrived there was just a set of walls to work with - we have plastered the walls, helped to put a roof on, and concreted the floor so far, as well as repainting some of the already built classrooms, and painting some artwork on the outside of some of the buildings (I helped to draw and paint a map of the districts of Kenya). Some of the work is very tiring, especially mixing the concrete for plastering and making the floor, but it's all good fun, and means that we've all been sleeping quite well!

Last weekend we went on a snorkelling trip on the Sunday - as soon as we got on the boat it started raining, and by the time we got to the place we were supposed to be snorkelling it was fairly stormy, and the sea was very rough, so we had to turn back. We went for the meal that was included with the trip though, which was on Wassini Island where we had been working, at a posh restaurant called Charlie Claws. All the food and drink was free, so despite having been a bit disappointed about the snorkelling, we still managed to enjoy ourselves! We have also been promised that they will take us snorkelling one afternoon after we have finished building for the day, so we should still get to do the whole trip.

This weekend we are back at Diani beach in some beach bungalows for a relaxing weekend before we head back to work on Monday morning. We finish the project work on Friday and then will head to the Tsavo and Amboseli national parks on safari for a few days, before a few of us head off to climb mount Kenya!

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