Second last week in Nakuru

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My second last week in Nakuru and at Ronaken has disappeared in no time at all!


The weekend was spent with Laura exploring the three big lakes, Lake Nakuru and Lake Bogoria and Baringo. Saturday morning, Jumah, a volunteer with the local Red Cross, showed us the area around the outside of Lake Nakuru National Park, and the suburb (which is just next to Langa Langa where I work) where he was born and grew up. He also managed to sweet talk the lady at the gate to let us in for a quick look, saving us the 4000ksh entry fee! Lake Bogoria is where the famous flocks of flamingos are living at the moment so it was pretty spectacular, the photos do it no justice! Our amazing driver Zac got the price for entry to Bogoria down from 4500 to 1000 and entry to Baringo as well as an hour boat tour also for just a thousand! His little red car rattling over the roads was a pretty worrying at times though, four guys from a proper safari 4wd had to get out and push us through one section! Haha.

On Monday i went a bit crazy at the wholesale markets with Jane getting food for the children to have for lunch for the next two weeks. I bought 50kg of rice, 20kg of dry maize (for ugali flour), 20kg of green grams (a type of lentil/pea used in rice dishes, 8kg of beans, 2kg of salt and 5l of oil, it filled the tuk tuk completely I'm surprised the engine didn't die! Hahah. For the nine days that I am getting lunch for all the children we are going to have five days of rice with green grams and vegetables, two days of Githeri (a traditional dish from the Kikuyu tribe of maize and beans with potato and onion, really yummy!) one day of ugali and vegetables and on my last day as a special treat to the kids I'm going to get the cook to make a meat stew to have with ugali as most of their families can rarely afford meat. I also got another parcel from home of wooden puzzles for the kids which was a lot of fun. On Wednesday the teacher of class two apparently went home in the morning to change her clothes but never came back and still hasn't! So me and Selma have been taking that class all by ourselves! I tried to teach them some tongue twisters on Thursday as a bit of a fun way to practise pronounciation but they didn't really understand the point of it, it was pretty funny watching them try to say Swiss wrist watch though hahah. I'm actually quite proud of our teaching, I had no idea where to start when I arrived by myself on Thursday morning and was told the teacher hadn't come again but I think we did actually manage to get a few key things across. Some of the other teachers have also started coming to me and asking to borrow some of the art resources like textas etc which I'm really happy about as I was worried they just wouldn't use them when I wasn't there taking the classes. The kids could definitely do with a bit more creativity and fun in their education, I think it's really important to stimulate their minds and help them develop, the education here is very formal. A lot of copying and repeating after the teacher which although on paper they look good they often have little comprehension of what they're saying/writing and really struggle if you ask them to come up with something themselves. Like I started with class two asking them to write a sentence telling me their name and something about them and it took about three explanations to get some of them to stop copying down 'My name is Mollie and I come from Australia'!

On Tuesday afternoon I went with a few other volunteers to Kardesh (I think!) orphanage, another placement for projects abroad volunteers which nearby to where I live. We bought some toys with us and Laura baked a cake. There are some incredibly sad stories about some of the kids there, there is 9 kids in total from ages one to about 3/4, some with quite severe disabilities. But it's beautiful to see the work they are doing there, the love that these kids are receiving is doing them wonders, and it was a lovely afternoon playing with them and getting to know them. One girl, Precious, just turned the 'terrible two' and now refuses to smile, cutest little frown though! It's hilarious though you can just see how determined she is when she's pouting and sulking in a very deliberate way to get what she wants haha. I want to go back next week and give them some of the things I brought with me from home that I can't use at my school, like a box set of nursery rhyme CDs, we have no electricity at Ronaken so I can't play them.

And the last exciting thing I've done this week was the social on Wednesday with the other volunteers playing seated volleyball with disabled adults. They're amazing! It is hard enough to play standing up let alone sitting down, when I managed to actually hit the ball it just went absolutely crazy! Haha. They are all very strong, and move a lot more than I thought they would, shuffling around using their hands. The majority of them had issues with their legs, there were some amputees, some with paralysed legs, some with what appeared to be developmental issues with their back/legs, and even one guy with perfect legs but playing with only one arm! Again great to see the work the volunteers, both local and from projects abroad, are doing. Giving people who have probably never or rarely played any sports the opportunity to not only develop their strength and fitness but to be a part of a team and have that lovely sense of comradry and healthy competitive pride that comes from it.

I can't believe Laura leaves this weekend already and next weekend I leave to work at the Kigio Conservancy project! Time is going way to fast, I don't know how I'm going to return to normal work after this! Haha.

The blog is not letting me add photos so they are on Facebook 😊

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