Last Days on Project

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Tomorrow is our last day on project - hard to believe that 3 weeks have gone by already. Monday was a public holiday so I went with Boon in the morning to help out at his project and then went and had lunch with my ladies. They are so great - the lunch consisted of Ugali (maize stuff that looks like mashed potato kinda) plus fried whole fish, spinach and fruit... they also bought sodas for us all which I think was a bit of a treat from them. I got a couple of cool photos so I'll post those when I can.

As expected my morning project has now stopped completely so we spent Tues and Wed morning at a nursery school which was a fun change - the 'mama' who runs it was a little nutty and as corporal punishment is still a big thing here it was hard to watch little 4 & 5 year olds get whacked with a stick.
This morning we (well I) decided that I wanted to visit the orphanage where some of the volunteers from the house are working - it's pretty hard core.... reminded me a lot of the typical 'dollar a day' ads you see on t.v but the kids are happy and getting an okay education even if the surroundings are a little rough. My arms are very tired from being used as a jungle gym though.
Tomorrow morning we are going to help out one of the volunteers Shareen to run a painting/play dough/football party for her class which will be a lot of fun I think. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with my afternoon ladies - I set them some homework for today as I didn't expect to be back in time for class today. I asked them to write me a letter using all the tenses and some of the vocab I had taught them and at the end I asked them to tell me about their dreams and aspirations - I'm hoping that it will lead nicely into a goal setting session as I didn't get to teach them any business skills... we shall see if it works!

Sat we head out at about 11 for the airport to head back to Nairobi and start our tour - I can't wait! People in the house have been doing weekend safaris and have come back with amazing pictures.... It's time for us to see some animals dammit.

I will be sad to leave the house - it's been great fun most of the time and there are some very cool people there that I would have otherwise not have gotten to meet. Last night was a good example - Ciara and Wes decided to hold a pub quiz for all 40+ plus volunteers .. Boon and I were roped.. well not roped but bribed with the promise of seats on the balcony... into being judges. It was very fun even if I have to admit that the power went to my head a little at times and I refused a few close call points to people that were speaking out of turn... I guess it happens to the best of us.

So, tonight and tomorrow night are farewell dinners - tonight with people from the house, there are a few of us moving on to other places so we are going for some cocktails and food then tomorrow night we are taking the family that run Boon's project out for 'kitimoto' which is traditional pork barbeque. Kitimoto apparently translates to 'hot chair' as people used to cook their pork on an open fire and pulled their chairs too close to the fire so that it got too hot to sit on them... the story was much better in the telling from a local...

Well - hope all is well and hopefully next time I send an update I will have seen at least one lion, 2 giraffes and some buffalo.

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