So after Sadha's village, we went back to Dar and chilled out there for a week, going to a Bagamoyo school trip where everybody thought we were social work students, eating icecream, eating chipsi mayai (chips omlette) and shopping, until we headed back up through the Kenyan border, to Mombassa. Mombassa was not a great place, not much to do and we were harrassed everywhere we went - one of the first places I haven't really liked on this trip. Luckily we only spent a day there before we caught a 9 hour bus to Lamu island, off the north coast. [View Full Entry]

---

---

After a few days in Nairobi staying with my old host family, Sadha and I met up with some friends and headed down to Dar, Tanzania, which ended up taking 2 days, many many daladalas (minibus), taxi and bus rides and looking like lunatics as we arrived in Dar and sprinted to the ferry to Zanzibar which we only just made by minutes. Zanzibar was beautiful - white sand beaches, a mix of arabic and swahili culture and so much good seafood! We spent a few days in stonetown getting lost in the twisty little maze of alleyways and finding random [View Full Entry]

---

---

So Sadha and I are off on our traveling stint and loving it! We started off on a 4 days Masai Mara safari, doing game drives in the morning and afternoon in our huge truck, aka The Tank, and camping just outside the park at night. We had a large group including 5 other Aussies (sooo weird to hear an aussie accent), an awesome cook (best food we've had in a long time), and a guide - who didn't say much so one of the other aussies ended up telling us about the animals and finding them for us. At the [View Full Entry]

---

---

First off, thanks to everyone who helped get my entries back, you've helped me so much! I can't even remember the last time I wrote here so I'm just gonig to sum up everything that's been happening in the past month or so. I left Saikeri at the beginning of August and had a very stressful last few days as the library only just got finished in time. The chairs and desks and cupboards all arrived, so I spent my last day moving all the books, newspapers, magazines and past exam papers into them and organising some sort of a system. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Thank-you to everyone who donated money towards the school - they really appreciate it. The cupboards, tables and chairs and currently being built, but should be ready before I leave. A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my room when I felt the whole chair shake for about 2 minutes. Thinking it was just the boys in the next room jumping off the walls or something, I ignored it. Then it happened again when I was in bed later that night. My whole bed was shaking for a few minutes - geez, i thought, those rats are getting really big! [View Full Entry]

---

---

So I left Tanzania a few weeks ago - was very sad to say goodbye to Sadha again but we're meeting up in a few months anyway. see sadha's blog to see more pictures from tanz - www.travelblog.org/bloggers/sadha When i got back to saikeri i decided to stop teaching (as the teachers had taken back their classes and i didn't want to disrupt the lessons) and focus on little projects for the school and just help out wherever I'm needed. I've spent the past 2-3 weeks cleaning out the entire staffroom - which looks like it hasnt been cleaned out for [View Full Entry]

---

---

Last week was Paul's 7th birthday party which was very cute! After waiting around for 8 hours for my host dad to pick me up from the town ("I'll be in there in 20 minutes!" yeh sure...), i arrived after dark and found that they had waited for me. All the kids rushed into our house and we sat around handing out this sort of breadish-cake, popcorn, and cordial. All the kids were so excited to get the food even though it wasn't alot since there were so many kids. Paul was given a few birthday presents (a tennis ball [View Full Entry]

---

---

hey everyone! sorry I haven't written for a while (again), just been settling into my new placement which is turning out to be quite challenging. I've been teaching Standard 4 English and Science and Standard 5 Science for the past few weeks and it has been very difficult as i had no idea what level all the kids were at. There are about 40 kids in each class so its hard to slow down and help the kids that aren't getting it because the quicker kids are telling me that they've finished - if i set them more work, the [View Full Entry]

---

---

So after having a few weeks to spare for travelling I have now started my new placement. While I was still in Nairobi I helped out one morning on some home visits that some of the volunteers here have organised. They go around Kibera to bed-ridden AIDS patients and bring them food that they were able to buy with donations - rice, beans, sugar, flour etc - as they can't work due to their illness. It was a really interesting morning as we went to about 5 patients, some of them doing better, some not so. There was one lady [View Full Entry]

---

---

On the 15-hour train ride (with our own beds!) back to Nairobi (we weren't too keen to get back on that bus) we decided to go and climb Mt Meru, the fourth highest mountain in Africa! Spending as less time as we could in Nairobi, we caught a bus the next day and headed down to Tanzania. Tanzania is really nice (nicer than Kenya), the people are so friendly, their Swahili is alot better and everything is so cheap! Even the daladalas (minibuses) were alot nicer than our matatus. We spent 3 days in a really cute town called Moshi, [View Full Entry]

---

---