I had a good night's sleep and woke up way before my 8am wake up call. That's great and all, but the 2 things I wanted to do for the day don't open until much later, so I kind of lazed around. I spoke to our Nairobi travel agent and we (i.e. he) decided it would be best for me to have a driver for the day. That way I wouldn't have to try to find a reliable taxi back to the hotel, and I wouldn't be wasting that time as well. So Sylvester picked me up a little after 10 [View Full Entry]

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Today was only a semi-early morning. We had breakfast, had a ‘discussion’ with reception as I needed my room for one more night and our travel agent had misunderstood our various itineraries, Charles arrived at our hotel at 8:30 and then we were off to the Mercy Children’s Centre, Kawangware branch. Mercy Children’s Centre was started several years ago by Charles, Pius who we met in Kisumu, and an American couple. The original school is in the slum of Kawangware here in Nairobi. As it’s near impossible to buy land in the city, they’ve rented several re [View Full Entry]

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We headed out just after 6am for our final game drive. Again, it was just the three of us - Noreen went on a balloon ride to see the animals, and our married couple decided to sleep in again. On the agenda for the day were lions, the mother and baby rhino again, hippos and crocodiles. We started out with a lot of driving around, seeing the same usual animals. Looked for the rhinos for a few minutes before giving up. Came across a pile of vans, so we had to check it out - turns out it was two male [View Full Entry]

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A personal wake up call at 5:45 (the tents don’t have telephones) to start off the day, along with the sounds of birds chirping, etc. A quick cup of tea and the 3 of us were off for our morning game drive. Today we had Anthony. We thought William had been a good guide, knowing where the rhino was, saving the lion for last, but Anthony was much more talkative and told us more about the park and the animals. Right outside the lodge gate was a herd of elephants. Good morning. We saw a lot of the same animals - [View Full Entry]

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An early morning, quick breakfast and checkout and we were picked up by our driver Joseph to go to the Wilson airport for our flight to our safari lodge. Arrived with lots of time to spare. We boarded the plane, taxied out to the runway, did some ‘function tests’ and then went back to the terminal as one of the engines was acting a little funny. So we disembarked, waited, and then boarded again. This time we were able to take off. The flight was only about 40 minutes and we only went up to 12000 feet, but as soon as [View Full Entry]

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Heather said that the road between Kisumu and Bumala would be a great concept for a video game - see how fast you can make the trip while dodging huge sinkholes, speed bumps, police check stops, people walking and on bicycles, matatus, goats and cows, gasoline tanker trucks, etc etc etc. You definitely have to be on your toes to be a driver in this country. One of our students who I’ve mentioned before in the Grandmother day entry, Nicholas, works in the market as a porter on the weekends to support his family. Todd and Charles ran into him yesterday [View Full Entry]

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It was an early rise and arrival at the school so we could decorate and get everything ready. We were there just after 7, and most of the kids were already there!!! We had been told that people would be starting to arrive around 10-10:30 and the program was to start at 11. Okay, so we worked our butts off hanging balloons and streamers, sweeping out classrooms, the kids hauled chairs and tables from the neighboring secondary school, some men put up tarps to sit under, we had a sound system set up, etc. We were pretty much ready for 110:30, [View Full Entry]

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Charles met us at our hotel at 8 (well actually it was 8:15 - it’s African time you know) so we could take a matatu to the nearest town, Busia, for a few things. I was excited to ride in one of these wild minivans. They squish you in, usually drive with the side door open and people hanging out, but it’s super cheap and pretty quick to get things. We ended up negotiating a deal with a taxi driver. Okay, so we won’t be squished at least. We got our bus tickets back to Nairobi on Sunday, stopped at the [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone, I apologize once again for not being able to post my entries in a timely manner. I'm sure you'll all hear the little side stories about my issues with computers, but on the more important things that have happened........ So we thought we had a very busy day. Heather wanted to do art with more classes. AND, the big thing that excited me, we were expecting Dr. Opondo to come visit and examine our students. Who is Dr. Opondo??? He’s a highly respected and renowned doctor who worked in the Western world for awhile (not sure if it was [View Full Entry]

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**NOTE: I've posted several entries today, don't start with this one, start with "Another Travel Day" and work towards this one ** We got to spend a couple hours with the kids before we headed on our shopping expedition. We’re trying to set up an art program in the school (most don’t do any drawing, painting or sculpting after nursery classs), and a project that we can do as a fundraiser. So this was our pilot testing opportunity. Heather’s an artist as well, so she held the reins on this one. She decided that oil pastels on cloth would give the [View Full Entry]

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