And, the next week we went to Masai Mara which was a fantastic few days. We alternated between all-you-can-eat buffets at our lodge and long game drives. We timed our trip perfectly, right in the middle of the wildebeest migration, so there were hundreds of thousands of animals, as far as you could see. We saw elephants, lions, cheetahs, wildebeest, zebras, impalas, gazelles, topis, dik diks (yes, they are really called that - they’re like tiny little impalas), giraffes, hippos, crocodiles, pumbas (also known as warthogs), jackals, baboons, vultures, etc. We went to Masai River one d [View Full Entry]

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UPENDO NEWS: There has been lots of excitement at Upendo in the last few weeks, but the kids are on school holidays at the moment - although they still come in for lunch and dinner and to play everyday - so things are a bit quieter now. We’ve had numerous welcomings for visitors from overseas who help fund the orphanage, which is what most of the pictures are from. Also, we bought the kids a stereo recently, so there has a lot of dancing to the Wiggles and other such great music lately. I’ve picked up some great dance moves from [View Full Entry]

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Last weekend was another very tough weekend (large amount of sarcasm there)! We headed off on our postponed trip to the very idyllic Lamu island. The weekend involved much relaxing, eating, swimming and other such laziness, which I shall summarise for you: On Thursday morning we jumped on a matatu heading up to Malindi airport - from which we had a 25 minute flight to Manda Island (just next to Lamu) and then quick boat ride across to Lamu. An encounter at Malindi airport deserves mentioning, however, and serves as the title for my blog this week. While we were [View Full Entry]

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Hello Punda Milias, Sup in da hood? Speaking of punda milia (Kiswahili for zebra - literally, donkey with stripes), our Kiswahili teacher told us an amusing story yesterday. One of his students was trying to talk about a zebra, but instead of saying punda milia, he accidentally said punda malaya. Malaya means prostitute. Needless to say, Katherine and I have been calling each other donkey prostitutes ever since. Not very complimentary! Well, I will divide the time since I last wrote a blog into week one and week two. Or ‘week shitehouse’ and ‘week super-dooper’. [View Full Entry]

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After promising for so long, I have finally come through with the goods. Here are some pictures of my kiddies. We ran into a few of them on Saturday a week or so ago (not all of them come to the orphanage on Saturday, a lot of them stay home with their guardians, so I’ll get some pictures of them another time) - they had been taken to the ice cream shop as a treat. As you can see, they are massive posers! Nelly is my clear favourite. She is the cutest kid in the world. And, she also said [View Full Entry]

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Yo homies, BEFORE I START, please be aware that I have added so many photos this time, that this blog goes over two pages. I think you have to click on page 2, to see all the photos. Well, it’s been another week and another 168 hours of bucketing rain (Although for some strange reason it hasn’t rained today.) The road to Mombasa flooded a few days ago and the road had to be closed: people were stuck in the cars for 20 hours. I’m actually starting to get a bit sick of it now, as it restricts our movement [View Full Entry]

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Sorry, Conor has been telling me for ages that i should put a link to Katherine's blog, in case anyone is interested. so here is is: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Katherine-Howell/ [View Full Entry]

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Jambo tena (Hello again), Well I couldn’t decide between blog titles today, so I have gone with both of them. The first refers to a song we heard while we were out to dinner the other day. It was a terrible pop song which simply repeated over and over again: “What’s the matter with men today? There’s beautiful roses and nobody to plant them.” Tragic, but hilarious! The second is that we’ve learnt how to say the vital phrase, “Your mum’s a…” in Kiswahili. Examples of its usage: “Mama yako ni baisikeli.” (Your mum&rsq [View Full Entry]

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Mambo! That, for your information, is the cool way of saying Jambo (hello). It is the equivalent of saying “wassup?” The common answer to this greeting is “Poa,” but we prefer “Freshi!” Clearly these Kiswahili lessons are paying off if I can understand homie talk! Actually, my Swahili is pretty terrible: last night at dinner I asked for wealth instead of rice. For some reason they weren’t prepared to give it to me. Well, this week has been quite busy. We have had two trips to Mombasa. The first was to get bikes. We got a couple of decent ones [View Full Entry]

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Yo homies, Sup in Oz? I heard it rained the other day. It’s either super hot or bucketing down over here. I wish I could send some of the rain your way. I have attached a couple of pictures so you can see how much there is. I had to wade through some enormous puddles to get to the orphanage yesterday because the whole street was flooded. Well I have been hanging out at the orphanage this week (if anyone is interested, I think the website is www.upendo.co.uk or something along those lines. There are plenty of pictures on this [View Full Entry]

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