some last photos from Kenya's coast.

Enjoying the coast on Diani Beach

A view of Gedi Ruins from a community treehouse. (People pay a small fee to view the ruins from a tall treehouse and the money goes back into community sponsored projects.)

In the mirhab wall of the ruins.

Kyle with a hawkbill seaturtle! at the Turtle Watch rehabilitation centre.

boys playing soccer in the surf at Malindi's main beach.

salt and pepper at supper in Malindi served in clam shells.

This is the view as you drive up to Lamu - The island of no cars, just donkeys, beach, and beautiful ocean

Kyle enjoying our rooftop lounge at the Hotel in Lamu. Lamu was our favorite place.

Fresh juices in Lamu - Kyle had Passion fruit with Pineapple.

Kate had coconut

A fancy dinner on a rooftop restaurant.

Kyle had crab!

The narrow streets of Lamu

Kyle sitting at the Lamu Fort

Our new beachfront property. i wish.

i built a sandcastle - Shela beach near Lamu

Shela Beach - There was only about 8 people on this 14km long beach.

Playing a bao game at our hotel in Lamu

So many cats in Lamu!

A last dhow says goodbye to us as we leave for Nairobi and fly out of Kenya.

a final effort to help..

Please, if you have time visit this link: 

http://www.co-operative.coop/join-the-revolution/gioto-garbage-slum-project?

A fellow volunteer, Hannah started this up. There is a contest for funding a volunteer project, and Gioto garbage slum is currently in 1st place! The winner will receive 5000 euro of funding for their project.  Please help keep us in first place. It takes about 2 minutes to sign up, and you can vote every day. It will mean so much to children and families who have so little if we are able to win this for them.

Thank you for your help and support.

Kyle and I fly to Europe tomorrow morning. It is a bit sad to be saying goodbye to Kenya. We have had such an amazing time here. I will try and do a better job describing it when I got home, but I hope this blog has served it's purpose. I hope everyone has been able to see a little bit of the situation at the two volunteer projects we were at, but also got to see the joy in the childrens faces, the beauty of this country's land and people.

Kwa Heri Kenya.

Goodbye Kenya.

-Kyle and Kate

more coastal adventures.

Hello All,

Since leaving Mombasa, we have been to Watamu, Gede, Malindi, and Lamu. We are still in Lamu, enjoying our last few days in Kenya on a quiet Swahili/Arabic island where Donkeys and Dhows are the main forms of transportation. We can't upload any photos here due to slow internet... but we will add some to this post when we get the chance.

Perhaps I should start with Watamu - we arrived by matatu and got to our hostel via motorbike. It was a nice town, full of Italian influence - as most places on the coast seem to be. Our plans for Watamu were to see the sea turtles and visit the Gede ruins. The sea turtle rehabilitation centre was closed in the morning, so we went to Gede first. It was amazing. We walked into the ruins of a 14th century village. Nobody really knows why the village was abandoned - not even our Gede tour guide "Mr.T". They suspect that maybe the water table dropped and their wells were no longer useful, or perhaps they were invaded... It was a peaceful and enchanting way to spend the morning, walking through crumbling walls of a home left centuries ago.

Then, we saw the sea turtles! The Watamu Turtle Watch and Rehabilitation centre is doing a great job to save these amazing animals. We got to visit two sea turtles (one green and one hawksbill) who were in the rehab programme - one for a broken shell, and the other had been there for five years because she has a curvature of the spine, and needed to learn to adapt to her condition and get strong enough to swim in the ocean. They are hoping to release her sometime this month!

Next, We caught a matatu to Malindi. We went to a restaurant there serving amazing italian food and spend the evening walking along the boardwalk, piers, and the beach.

Bright and early we caught a bus to Lamu, where we are now. The bus dropped us off at a ferry, and we  arrived to Lamu island by boat - The best way to arrive at any destination. The town is made of narrow walkways, three-storey stone buildings, and has a relaxed atmosphere. The guest house where we are staying is a restored coral castle. We had breakfast in its central courtyard this morning, and played board games on the rooftop lounge area last night. Lamu is great. Fresh juices that cost about a dollar Canadian for a pint, and lots of seafood. Kyle even ate a king crab last night! We had to break into it and everything! haha

We will be here for one more day, and then return to Nairobi to catch our flight to Europe. We will arrive back in Canada on April 5th.

Our time on the coast has been fun, relaxing, and has given us time to reflect on our volunteer experience. We are looking forward to sharing some more stories, photos, and videos with you once we return home.

In Peace,
Kate and Kyle


p.s. miss you moms and dads, brother and sisters.

saying "kwa heri" to Nakuru, arriving on the coast.

Wednesday was our last day in Nakuru.

We went back to stock up the food supply of the feeding program at the slum, give Pastor Antony another donation for water trucks to give the people at the slum clean drinking water, and say our final goodbyes to the friends we have made in Nakuru and to the family that hosted us.

We got to see Kennedy (one of the young adults we sent to driving school before we left for Kisegi) and he is doing very well. He has passed his driving test and has gotten a job driving a lorry for delivering goods. He thanked us for sponsoring him and believing in him, and he says he can't wait to start getting paid so he can plan to get his family out of the slum. People can change if you give them a chance.

It was sad to be leaving, and we didn't have enough time to see everyone that we would have liked to say goodbye to but hopefully that means that we will see them again, sometime in our lives.

We are happy with how the volunteering went, during our stay we were able to establish a feeding program, get about 60 young children from the slum into a pre-school/kindergarten, saw another 16 children going to a private boarding school, 3 young adults into driving school, and were able to get almost all of our older students into accredited secondary schools! There is a popular thought in Kenya that says - Education is the key to our future. We hope the children will make the most of the opportunity.

After a final meal at Guava (the local volunteer hangout place - excellent cafe) we were off to Nairobi. The drive usually takes about 2 hours, but as a final show of Kenyan corruption, our matatu took backroads and were able to avoid all the police checkstops (the matatu was not exactly in "working condition" for driving on highways with passengers). We literally would drive up to a checkstop, do a U-turn and find the next backroad.... the drive took a good five hours. Luckily, we got there with enough time to catch a night bus that evening to Mombasa for a coastal adventure.

We had planned our week on the coast like this - Tour of Mombasa's Old Town, A few nights at Diani Beach, Visiting Sea Turtles in Watamu, viewing the Gedi Ruins, Eating Pizza in Malindi, and finishing off the the Swahili island village of Lamu. (and then approx 16 hours on a bus back to Nairobi.. ugh)

We are currently on our way to Watamu - just stopped in Mombasa again to use the internet.
So, since we are done the Mombasa and Diani part of our trip, here are some photos. Get ready for jealousy...


Kyle and I on Diani Beach

In Mombasa, we arrived on the bus quite early, headed for Uhuru park to see the tusks (I won't post the stereotypical tusks picture that everyone who visits Mombasa probably has) and then went to old town where we saw Fort Jesus, and some pretty cool old Swahili buildings. People are still working to restore a lot of them with the carved wood exteriors. It's quite beautiful.

Some grafitti in Old Town Mombasa

In Diani we got to go snorkeling (I held a bright red starfish!), spear fishing (the boys caught an octopus!), and spent most of our time just relaxing on the beach. We met up with some friends (other volunteers we knew from Nakuru) and had supper at the cottage they rented with them one evening. By making our own meals most of the time we were able to save some money. We got bread, peanut butter, and bananas for our breakfasts. We stayed at a place called stilts in treehouse kind of villas, where we got to eat breakfast with monkeys! Or should I say - the monkeys stone some of our breakfast, haha. They seemed to like the peanut butter and banana sandwiches as much as we did. I even saw some dik-diks from my shower one morning. Everything was very open and beautiful and full of wild nature.


On the boat - going snorkeling and spear fishing



Our treehouse at Stilts



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Sharing bananas with a monkey



We are on our way to Watamu today, and hopefully next time we check in we will have some more pictures and stories to share.

-Kyle and Kate



getting back to civilization.

Hello All!

Us infront of our hut.

It feels as though we haven't made a blog post in forever!

A view of Kisegi from the water - Lake Victoria

For the past two and a half weeks we have been living in a small town called Kisegi, and working at the Kisegi Orphanage School. During our time there we were teaching - Math, Science (Kyle) and English, Computer (Kate) and working with the director and headteacher of the school to get some things for the school that they desperately needed. Firstly, Kyle and I bought 6 desks for the students in Pre-Unit (the desks hold about 4 students at a time) who were previously sitting on the dirt floor during their lessons. They love their new desks! and were very proud to show us which "spot" was theirs.

The classroom pre-desks, pupils would just sit on the dirt floor.

Classroom with new desks!

 We also were able to give a donation to the school to put towards getting a fence put up around the school and the playing area, to keep the local drunks (fishermen...) away from the kids. Apparently, the men who stay out all night long to catch omenna (the tiny fish, we know as minnows that they EAT.. ew) return home in the wee hours of the morning and drink in a building quite near to the school. Kyle and I had to deal with removing unwanted visitors more than once.

Some of the Standard 3 students at Kisegi Orphanage school.

Other things we did while visiting the Lake Victoria area: mostly visited with our family. Introduced them to things like ipods - which Mr.Zachary liked VERY much. He kept mine clipped to his shirt at all times, which was funny. He showed it off to all his friends and I let him keep it the whole time we were staying there. It made him so happy. His favorite bands were The Who, Kid Cudi, and Daft Punk. Good choices, Zachary. He was even able to wire up an ancient looking stereo and play it over the speakers. We also introduced them to binoculars, which were pretty amazing to them. Even the kids at school thought it was cool how it brought the lake right up next to them. Zachary liked to use it to spy on his brothers working in the shambas from our sitting place near the hut. He said he "liked to know their secrets" Hahaha. What a creeper... By the end of our trip we started calling Mr.Zachary "Daddy" Mostly because we went everywhere with him. We were his children, we couldn't even go to our house alone from the eating house. We also had security guards the entire time we were there, I felt famous.

Zachary and his daughter Vida, who was absolutely terrified of our whiteness

We also went to a football match, which was pretty fun even though I (Kate) have minimal interest in soccer. Whenever a team would get a goal, the whole fan section would rush the field and do flips, dance, and cheer along with the players. The celebrations only lasted a few minutes, until the referee blew the whistle... but then next goal, it would be the same thing. It was fun to watch.

We also went out on the lake in a wooden boat at a day trip one Saturday. The big islands on Lake Victoria are Mfangano and Rusinga. They were pretty far away, so we opted for the closer small island of Kiwa. It was super hot, and with the sun reflecting off the lake, we both got bad sunburns (Despite having sunscreen on) We had to explain to our family what sunburn is, and they thought we were kidding. Although being a bit crispy by the end of the day, it was very fun. The boat we were in had to constantly be bailed, due to three small holes letting water in, and we had no lifejackets (which only became apparent to me when we got into the deep, very wavy water). We also saw two hippos! I didn't get any pictures, mostly because we were speeding away from them. We were about 10 feet from the mother and baby - way to close to an angry mommy hippo.

Kyle pushing the boat out with some of the guys.

All in all, our second volunteer placement was very good. It was definitely much more relaxing than our time at the slum. The two projects have very different needs, and it was very nice to see another side of Kenyan life, where even those with little can be happy because they are with family. When we were leaving it was very hard to say goodbye. We were their first volunteers! Two of the eight wives of the husband (Eunice and Christine - the eldest mammas) even gave us gifts to give to our mothers, and told us to greet them for us. They want us to come back and visit with our families. I think my dad, Clancy would enjoy it a lot there - even the eating minnows part! I would like to hope that one day we will visit again. We will always remember our Luo family.

Eating Omenna and Ugali ... yum?

 Our next plans are to go say goodbye to everyone in Nakuru, have a quick meeting in Nairobi with our volunteer organization about our most recent placement (as we were the guinea pig volunteers for that project) and head onward to the coast to see Mombassa, the beaches, Watamu (sea turtles!), Malindi, and Lamu.We fly out of Kenya on the 19th, and are home in Canada on the 5th of April.

We will be sure to update whenever we can.

In Peace,
Kyle and Kate