Karibu Kenya na Tanzania

We are writing this in the Visitors kitchen of St Judes. We are dusty and tired from our first full day of being in the school but have been so well cared for by Gemma and her many staff.

We have had a action packed couple of days since arriving in Africa. We had our first encounter with the organised chaos of the African traffic as we were in a traffic jam from the airport to our hotel where trucks were driving on the footpaths and almost tipping over in giant potholes.

We had a close encounter with the not so friendly Kenyan police on the road from Nairobi to Arusha where one of our new friends who has come to St Judes for the Mt Kili Challenge to climb Mt Kilimanjaro was threatened with an “adventure” to the police station for not wearing her seatbelt. Luckily as the bus did not actually have seatbelts she was able to get out of this situation with some help from others on the bus.

The trip from Nairobi to Arusha took around 7 hours, the bus was full of very interesting people and although the road was loud and bone shaking at points, we were able to make the most of it with a little help from the musical stylings of Ross. The basic housing we saw in the small villages along the way makes us truly appreciate how lucky we really are in NZ. Along the road we were lucky enough to see a few Zebra from afar and had a couple of Kudu (gazelle) run across the road in front of us. Shelley’s first marriage proposal was made within minutes of our getting off the bus in Arusha, unfortunately Brian thought the price was too low so she will stay single for a little while longer…

Today we spent a couple of hours playing games such as skipping and soccer with some of the younger students, made a start on our first project which is a mosaic on a new footpath, ate lunch with the students, went on a long walking tour of Moshono village and visited a local government school. The difference between the facilities and general atmosphere of the local school compared with St Judes is striking. Regardless of this the students seemed happy to see us and very friendly.