COUNTRY: Tanzania
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Building, renovation & conservation
WRITTEN BY: Kaitlyn Hickey
An update for you all on our volunteer trip to Kenya! We drove to Muhaka where we had a good first night out with some of the Kenya group and were thoroughly impressed by the size and contents of the supermarket there, you could buy lawn mowers and cheap alcohol! After a day by the beach where Hugh and Steven rode a camel, we headed off in the safari truck to Tsavo. Our first activity was making paper out of elephant dung, which we learnt helps protect elephants because money can be made off the paper, as opposed to poaching. We then excitedly went on our first of many game drives.
The group quickly got stuck into volunteer work alongside the locals, digging holes and transporting manure for planting many, many trees. The work was very hard and we were laughed at quite a lot, but we think our efforts were appreciated in the end! The volunteers also spent some time working in two different primary schools, building a new kitchen in one and painting classrooms in the other. It was good fun being surrounded by all the kids and the head teachers of both schools gave us informative tours of their respective schools and it was nice to see how proud they were. The weather in Kenya was very hot and very dry, but everyone worked very hard.
Lauren was in the wars while we were volunteering in Kenya but managed to get through quite a few injuries, illnesses and even an attack by a swarm of bees still with a smile on her face! Some of the group enjoyed a very long hike up Mt Kasigau and the rest of the group climbed the mountain, but wouldn't go so far to say they enjoyed it! We visited a Maasai village where we took part in a welcoming dance and got shown around the houses and taught to create fire the Maasai way. We went on a bush adventure where we inspected various animal poo for reasons we're still not 100% sure of, even stopping the truck for a good look at some dik dik poo (fun fact, dik diks poo in the same place their entire lives!).
We had a competition building bush shelters and we started to get the idea that Hugh was actually planning to live in his team's, which was the superior shelter mainly due to the brilliant trap kaitlyn built for any attacking lions. We tried our hand at archery at which Lizzie found she was quite the pro at!
The next day, the volunteers headed out on safari and although we didn't get to see any of the infamous Tsavo lions, we saw plenty more elephants, zebras, giraffes, antelope and warthogs as well as some animals we hadn't seen yet such as waterbuck and ostriches. We did a bit of volunteer work with some maintenance of the nursery containing the trees that were going to be planted in the holes we assisted in digging. For our final activity we watched the sun set from sunset rock which was beautiful (and which you would hope was beautiful given the name) followed by a night drive.
While we were sad to say goodbye to our new friends in Kenya, we were excited to get back to our home in Tanga. This took quite a few hours longer than expected due to trouble at the border but we managed to get through eventually and didn't end up in a Kenyan jail! Back in Tanga we have some new international volunteers in the team and have said goodbye to some others with a fancy dress party on Halloween.
Project volunteer work has involved digging a hole for toilets in the village, helping the fundi (builders) create a roof for the nursery as well as seaweed farming, cow milking and herding, chopping fire wood, cooking and the running of the new computer classes. With only two weeks left in Tanzania, we are trying to fit in as much as we can before we have to say goodbye!
No comments:
Post a Comment