Long flights, safe arrival and getting some lovin' from some sweet giraffes


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Africa » Kenya » Nairobi Province » Nairobi
August 4th 2008
Published: August 4th 2008
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Jambo everyone!
Habari gana?
Mzuri!(we are fine!)

We finally arrived safely in Nairobi, Kenya this morning after our two long flights from Toronto to London, a 9 hour stopover in Heathrow and then 8.5 hours of flying on Kenyan Airways. The Air Canada flight was adequate, but the Kenyan Airways flight was excellent. Very professional and kind staff, good food and lots of great leg room.

We are a group of 23 people here on this trip. 8 adults-teachers, parents and even Jessica our resident Police officer and 15 students from Toronto and Hamilton areas. We are an enthusiastic bunch who all except for 2 have never been to Africa before. We have been meeting monthly to prep for the trip, but the excitement we felt this morning landing on Kenyan soil after about 40 hours of travel was exciting! We had quite a long wait in the immigration line though as we had to fill our and process visa forms as well as regular immigration forms. Our 3 facilitators for our trip are Ali, Adam and Santai. Ali is from Toronto and flew with us from Toronto and Adam, born in Australia and Santai who is Kenyan met us with open arms at the airport. We then travelled for about 1 hour through the city to our home for the night at the Free the Children centre in Roslyn, Nairobi. The first part of our travels on the big green machine, a former British military vehicle, was past a national park right in the middle of the city. The traffic was quite heavy with the morning rush, but many people walked along the road or were in buses or matatus--many of the vehicles run with diesel, so the pollution is quite thick.

We finally arrived at Roslyn and had breakfast and met the rest of our family here in Kenya-mainly the cooks and some of the other facilitators here. They are all fantastic! They prepared a great meal of bread, eggs and fresh fruit-oranges, bananas, mangoes and pineapple! Yummy!

Once we settled in, we went to the Giraffe Centre where we met 5 Rothschild giraffes and 3 or 4 warthogs! These giraffes are bred in the centre because the Rothschild are on the verge of extinction/endangerment. The giraffes named Laura, Frank, Betty, and a few others are beautiful creatures with incredible patterns on both their long necks and torsos! We were given a briefing on them including some info about their big hearts that weigh almost 11lbs and the fact that when they have babies it takes 15 months for gestation.

The giraffes stole our hearts and we gave them kisses by feeding them with a piece of food from our mouths and with their long tongues they kissed us! We also got some nice hugs too! A warm welcome or karibu Kenya.

There is so much to take in, the sights, the sounds, the language, the people but I think this is going to be the experience of a lifetime we were hoping for.

So as I close, a wee line of swahili about our day... Leo tutameona twiga! Today we saw some giraffes!

Hope you are all well.

love Katy (and Lana too)

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