Friday 9 October 2009

Wild adventures in Kenya

Written by Emily Witenden - GapBreak 2009, Ghana
For the last 10 days we've been at Tsavo, which is about a 4hour drive from our normal camp. At Tsavo we went on safari, helped with erosion caused by elephants in the sanctuary (trying to get water), helped with construction at a remote primary school within the sanctuary, had a small group of students from the school join us at our camp and join us on a second safari (saw lion cubs!!!!!!!), help make elephant dung paper and work together for peace day.

It was challenging having the kids in our camp; with all the cultural differences etc. even petty things like manners weren't really the same so it was tricky, but interesting and rewarding all the same :)
Peace day was aimed at human and wildlife relationships, as there is a lot of conflict with, for example, elephants destroying crops. So there was dancing and speeches, it was a positive occasion, moving in the right direction and I believe for the kids that joined us at our camp, it was life changing (they were bewildered with the mirrors, taps, showers, pasta etc). We only had electricity from six till ten at night and a bit in the morning...that was interesting.

When driving one day, this fairly big twister of red dirt (the earth it so red around there, plus they're in a massive drought) went straight through our windowless truck. One night we went to one of the tanks to watch the elephants drink; it was so awesome as they were wild, they were so close, and there were the cutest babies!! There are these wild cat looking things called jannets that kept getting into our room and stealing food! I woke one night to the sound of crunching under my bed lets just say that coupled with the roars of elephants all night let you know you were smack bang in the wild!!!

We got back to Muhaka today...though Tsavo was an awesome experience; everyone was so excited to get back to camp! It’s like home almost...we've also got new people in our camp, which is pretty cool.
Though I’ve been away for 10 days, I’m off again for another 10 tomorrow! 5 of us are going to Zanzibar, an island off Tanzania :) very exciting!


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