My 5 Months of African Life

Time of Return

2010-06-29T19:36:00.000+01:00

Greetings to all faithful followers of my travels, and the adventures I have had,

This is the final blog for this particular adventure, and people have been waiting long enough for it, so let it begin.

We began our final week, with time working at Tuleeni Orphanage again, the same as the last month (April) building a trench around the perimeter of the school, to stop water from seeping under, and eroding the foundations of the orphanage itself. Our other job, apart from to play around with the children, was to repair the kitchen, which was just a couple of corrugated iron sheets outside for a roof, and the 'gikos' we had made the previous month. So half of us set about digging our trench, whilst the other half dug some new holes for the supports for the roof to go into, and remade the roof for the kitchen. This took the whole 2 days that were left to us at the orphanage. During these 2 days of final work in Africa (Monday and Tuesday) James and Marc the other 2 lads took a young boy, with conjuctivitus, to hospital, as the Mama in charge, could not afford the fees, and nor could the boys' tiny family, so the lads took him into hospital, and paid for the transport and the hospital fees, which were tiny, and should be available to everyone, but the corruption in this sector of the economy was massive, with people bribing doctors to be seen first, and leaving others queuing for days to be seen.

Us lads also spent a lot of time with the Mama in charge of the orphanage, Mama Ouji (meaning Mama Porridge, as that was the staple meal that she made for the orphans) helping her cook, the lunch that day, which was beef, or chicken, and potatoes, carrots, rice, yet the only reason that the children were having this variety of food was because we, the volunteers, were there so our cook, and the company supplied the new food that we used, otherwise the kids would just have porridge again, the same as every day.

We also played around with the kids, making sand castles in the sand we used for building, and helping them in class, with many games, and puzzles, helping them with English, Maths, and Geography, which they seemed to enjoy, and we had great fun getting involved as well.

These last few days of work, were very sad in terms of people knowing that this was the end of our time in Africa, and that it would probably be the last time we were all together, although a lot of us didn't want to admit that. That Monday night was Tess' birthday, so we all went out to Ali Barbour's Cave Restaurant again, and had great fun issuing awards that everyone had allocated to eachother, such as Best Paedephile Look-a-Like, and others : ) It was a very fun night out with all of us together, probably for the last time.

On the Tuesday, me, James and Jess all got taken to Mama Ouji's house, which was about a 30 minute walk from the actual orphanage, and the walk itself was not an easy one, walking through thick woods, through small, not rivers, but channels of water, and for a woman who has malaria, its even more difficult than it is for a couple of healthy teenagers. The house itself, was miniscule, just one room, with bed, chair, one chest of draws, TV, and a mosquito net. That was all Mama Ouji's personal belongings. We then got treated to a glass of filtered tropical juice of some fruit (we wern't sure which one) and then to a Swahili soap on TV, which the ladies were translating for us.

We were then taken to Mama Oujis, landlady's property, and her farmland, where we gathered up oranges, mangoes, and pineapple, to bring back to the orphanage. We then began the long walk back to work, and to then eventually say goodbye to Liv, the first person to leave this last, final group of this trip. We got into the truck, with all the children from the orphanage who wanted to say goodbye, sitting all over us, and started (very strangely, but so heartwarming) to sing 'We wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year' as we drove back to our camp. It was an amazing goodbye to the end of our work, and the end of the trip, in 2 countries that have a total hold on me, for their friendliness, openess, relaxed but survival outlook on life, and how the people just....whatever the situation is, their ability to get on with their lives, no matter what.

We arrived back at camp to say goodbye to Liv, but also for us to ceremonially handover, the tailored pair of shorts, that we had made for Rama whilst we were in Muhaka. We caught him, and carried him back to his aunts where he lives, and brought Kazim with us to translate, and then gave him the shorts. His face lit up, and it was the nicest feeling watching him wearing them, and he did not stop smiling for the rest of the day we saw him. Immediately after this, it was time to say goodbye to Liv, and it was very sad as we knew that this was the beginning of the end of the trip, and a trip in which I had always been the one to say goodbye to the people I had met because they were leaving, never me. Soon, it would finally be me that was going to be the one who was leaving not, returning home, but knowing, for definite, that I was going to return to Africa.

The next day, we then said goodbye to Tess, Lin, and Jess, leaving just the boys, and Jen for one last day, and then it would be me and Jen once again to return home. We spent that day sitting around, until I got so bored I declared a game of football, for the last time, and we played against the local team again, DotCom, and destroyed them 5-2, and I actually played the best football I had played, since Konyagi FC, all those months ago, on Kilimanjaro.

On the Wednesday we then said goodbye to James and Marc, leaving me and Jen, but not before agreeing that we would meet up during the World Cup for an England game. Then there were just 2 of us. I was pretty depressed at the fact that everyone had left at different times to us, and that I was the last to leave, but I guess we then had the longest time in Africa, than anyone else, on the plus side. That night, we had a great visit, that totally made the last part of my trip. Anderson, and Elifas both turned up, for the big Camps International meeting taking place in Muhaka on Thursday and Friday, but it was so, SO good to see them so close to the end of the trip when they had been there right at the start of the trip, looking after me when I wanted to go home on the first night, and now they were back into the trip again, to check up on us, and eventually say goodbye to us. We went out that night to the Meat Palace, where we reminisced, about Tanzania, and had lots of ugali, chips and chicken, in an incredibly local restaurant which was great fun!

The next day, as I had nothing else better to do, and as Jenny had to attend the Camps meeting as she had taken up a job with them in the summer, so I would be left by myself all day, so I took part in a all-day First Aid course, where we looked at dehydration, snake bites, broken bones, and various other injuries, which was quite boring but good fun with all the other Africans, from all over, coming to work for Camps, and with all the new camps appearing all over the world, people from everywhere were here to discuss methods, and help eachother out, and get briefed for the summer. That night we had a small pool tournament, with Elifas, Anderson, Ali, and Jonas. I ended up losing to a, surprisingly good, Anderson first round, but redeemed myself against Jonas.

The Friday I spent, desperately trying to fit everything into my bag for the last time, and deciding what I was going to leave behind for the villagers, and the others, and at the same time topping up my tan for the last time, with some desperately needed colour (which has still stayed thank you very much, 3 weeks later :D ) It was a very quite day for our last full day in Africa, and we spent our last night under the African stars, listening to Brian the Bushbaby, and Steve the Bat, who had botht appeared it seemed to say goodbye to us. I could only get to sleep with a couple of sleeping pills that night, as I was quite down, thinking about the entirety of the trip, and all that I had done, and that it was now coming to an end.

The next morning we went to the African head office with everyone from Camp, and from there went to Forty's one last time, and then said goodbye to everyone, Anderson, Elifas, Rose, Ali, Tommy, Dipesh, Jonas, Kazim, Kinya-Jui, and everyone for the last time. We had been there so long they felt like family, as did everyone we had met along the way, and was heartbreaking to finally say goodbye to them after so long.

So off we went to Mombassa airport, which was my first time there, and across the infamous crossing to the actual city, and so we had our last taste of the crazy African driving, until we reached the airport complex, which suddenly became, un-African, with order, freshly cut, and watered grass, and clean buildings, which felt, a bit anti-climatical, as it felt as if our final goodbye to Africa had been stolen, and taken from us early. However, this was made up for later, with a totally spectacular African sunset, one of the best we had yet seen whilst sitting in the departure lounge in Mombassa, which made the 5 hours of waiting for our plane all worthwhile.

We finally boarded our first flight, and landed in Nairobi within the hour, at about 10 pm, with another hour to kill in Nairobi, so we set about talking to shopkeepers, and other travellers to kill time. We met a Austrian lady, who was working for an international company, that makes mosquito nets, and medical treatment for the disease, malaria, and she was explaining how much she was in love with Africa, having only arrived 4 days ago. We met lots of other gappers like us, who had been in Uganda, South Africa, Malawi, everywhere, who had been helping out, and made us feel part of a massive, extensive family, trying to make a tiny difference, in a continent of problems, with people who make you feel at home the moment you land.

Very quickly, it is time to board the plane, that would take us back to normality, and sadly, to reality as well. As we went through to the gate, and then the plane, I had to spend about 20 minutes convincing the lady at Passport Control, that the person in the passport photo, was actually me, as I looked so much different from my photo: I had huge hair, with a beard, and in the picture, I have short hair, with a clean shaven face. It was a good goodbye to Africa, with their laidback, and friendly attitude. We boarded the plane, and for me, it brought back, all the memories of boarding the plane back in Heathrow in the snow, and ice, saying farewell to people at the gate, and that opened the door to the memories of the entire trip flooding back to me, right there on the plane:

I had: flown away by myself for the first time, been incredibly homesick the first night, and dealt with it, got ridiculously sunburnt wearing factor 50 (more than once), built a dining hall, learnt how to make, and use cement, and plaster, learnt how to make a roof, headutted an African child, seen someone throw a mango at a nun, found a scorpion, got sunburnt again, came face to face with an elephant not 5 feet away from me, had a hyena outside my tent, seen Mnt Kilimanjaro, learnt how to barter, punched a Masai in the face, been chased by hundreds of kids, been flattened by hundreds of kids during a tug o'war, never enjoyed rain so much as we did at work in Tanzania, terrified some school children, made bricks, built a kiln, learnt how to cook ugali, ran the Kilimanjaro Half Marathon, played football against an entire village and lost, built a human pyramid in a swimming pool, almost been in a music video, seen a car been stopped, and driven home by the drunk friends as the actual taxi driver is even more drunk, been in an African hospital, learnt to drink (a little bit more), been the most drunk I have ever been, broken 3 tables, dressed up as Jesus, had my towel stolen, learnt how to shout the word 'PAAAUULLooo!!' brilliantly, learnt a small bit of Swahili, helped a lot of people, learnt to scuba dive, seen lions/elephants/cheetah/rhinos/buffalo/wildebeest/zebra/giraffe in the wild, been charged by a bull elephant, met the Masai, jumped with the Masai, climbed a mango tree, seen an African sunset and sunrise, been to, and felt the rythms of the Serengeti, and the Ngorongoro, been in a car chase with the police, been in the taxi that fit 9 people into it, had the largest chocolate slab (chocolate slag) EVER, managed to restrain myself from eating chocolate, and biscuits for a month, managed to get slightly brown in the sun, been for a moonlit walk on the beach in Zanzibar, never seen somebody so scared of crabs (aka Sarah Cowan), seen the coolest bar ever in Teddys Bar, Zanzibar, seen baboons, found a skeleton of a zebra, walked near wild elephants, had an African sports day, been in a Dala-Dala and Matatu, swam in a waterfall, been into some Chaga tunnels, bought and set free a chameleon, had a go at being a blacksmith, and a firestarter, been offered some 'Bob Marley Cigarettes', been in a bus from Dar Es Salaam to Mombassa, been skinny dipping, made Elephatn Dung Paper, made a bracelet, won in a casino, ended up liking chapatis, and most of all, most importantly, I have met some people on this trip, who have changed my life, totally for the better as, I cannot dispute that going to Africa was the most fantastic experience of my life so far, and that now it holds such a special in my heart, that I am definetly going to return there, but that it would not have been anywhere near as good as it has been, if not for the people, I have met along the way, and just made it an utterly spectacular trip, and I hope they know that I feel like the luckiest person alive, to have had such a group of people to have travelled with. Thank you.

Although after having returned, and meeting people again has been amazing, I cannot say that it has been exciting for longer than the first day of being back. After that, I felt very bored, nothing was very interesting, and almost lost. However, going to see some of the fantastic people I met away, totally brought everything back, and the fact that we were all home now, together, in England, with ability to see eachother again, made it so much better.

Now I know though that travelling has totally changed my life, and that I know the people I have met, I will never forget, and that now, it is only a matter of time before the next adventure reveals itself. Thank you for such an amazing trip everybody.

Much love for the last time on this blog

Josh

Safari, and Brickwork, and the Last Night Out

2010-05-23T12:28:00.000+01:00

The penultimate blog of this trip is about to be written. It feels very strange to be writing that :$

This week, we have gone on safari again, which was FANTASTIC!!
The 5 hour journey did not feel like 5 hours. We arrived and had an amazing sunset drive, with a truly spectacular African sky over-awing us. We heard hyenas again, for what was probably the last time on this trip, which was awesome, as I think that they are one of my favourite animals I've seen on this trip. Yet so scary :)

The next day, an early rise at 6, and we were off for safari, seeing more zebra, gazelle, elephants, and a HUGE lion!! He stood up (we hadn't realised he was lying down) and then he was absolutely colossal!

We saw a vast herd of buffalo, that was truly awesome. It went from as far as you can see to the right across the plains, and then all the way to the left, and there were just so many of them. It was fantastic. However, a few people had caught an illness, and were not feeling great. We did still stop off at the Masai village where we were treated to more dancing, jumping, and bracelets, but we wanted to look after our friends, and so we left the village, got a cold Coke, and settled down at camp. The next day we were supposed to go on another drive, but as people were so ill, we decided to head straight back to the doctors for them.
It was great getting back to camp to have some clean clothes, that had been washed before I left, and not smelling of damp, and dirt.
The next 2 days, were spent firing up bricks to be made into 'gikos' or stoves, which took 2 days, and we burnt about 200 bricks, along with finding a large array of insects, such as centipedes that can kill a baby, spiders, and on the Friday, an African Rock Python that was 3 metres long!!!haha!!just wondering past the camp, being curious. We were in awe of it, it is so different seeing a python that can kill you behind glass, its another seeing it wild just outside your room : D

Our last night out, was last night, and we got very merry, and had a fantastic night. We met Sarah who had came to stay with us for 2 nights, and decided to come out with us, and it was fantastic! I ended up falling asleep though, as I got very tired due to alcohol, although this was at 3 o'clock in the morning :D

This is my last week in Africa now. I will write to you about it, next Saturday before the flight home : ) The excitement builds, and builds.....................

Much loveage

Josh

Elephants, Trees, and Shak Attak

2010-05-16T15:01:00.002+01:00

Greetings to all readers :)

Apologies for the lack of blog last week, the computer seemed to have ignored what I wrote and published it's own agenda, but we are now back on track for blogs as I'm going to re-write it :) Enjoy

Well, the week before last was spent predominantly in Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary, where we were to be making MORE elephant dung paper, maintaining roads, and planting trees (and not to forget de-worming goats) We arrived from pouring in Muhaka, to glorious sunshine in Mwaluganje which was to last all week :D

Our first job was to plant more trees for the buffer zone around the village of N'gozini, to stop the elephants from rampaging and gobbling up their crops, so we spent a morning planting about 70 trees, and it was absolutely ROASTING! The afternoon was spent, in the tree nursery sifting through the good and bad plants, and re-planting ones that had been removed accidently. It was a long day, as it was not very demanding work, and time did not choose to go quickly. By the end of the day we had had enough and went back to camp, and collapsed, as doing nothing seems to make much more sleepy, than when your actually doing something (if that makes sense :D )

Our second day was spent, planting more trees, and de-worming more goats. The tree planting took no time at all, and we finished early and went back to camp to prepare for goat de-worming, and a sports day that was too take place afterwards. Goat de-worming, proved to be easier than last time, as the goats were all tied up to a tree, or a bush, ready to be de-wormed, and the girls seemed to have a knack of grabbing the small, speedy ones, whereas we seemed to be at a loss with the goats. It was soon all done and dusted, and we were off to compete in the sports day events. The lads took part in the 100 metre sprint, which was a very close race, with everyone basically crossing the line at the same time. The girlsdid shot put, and seemed to do pretty good, meanwhile we had moved on to take part in high jump. The bar started very low at about 1 foot in height, which was easy to clear. The jump was on to sand so as the bar rose higher, we had to resort, not the 'Frosby Flop', but to diving straight over the bar headfirst. However, the schoolboys just cleared it in a jump, legs tucked and over they went. They did this to a height of about 4-5 feet. It was absolutely incredible to watch!

All in all I think we held our own in the sports, although we were tired and ready to sleep when we got back to camp, so sleep we did. Thursday. We did some more tree planting, and helped shift rocks to be used for road maintenance, which was a very strenuous job, with all of us having massive biceps by the end of shifting, massive rocks : D In the afternoon we had another game of netball, which was not as close as the first game. It was a total anhilation, for the school against predominantly the girls, who were netball experts. However, in good spirits we all got involved in a song after the game, which was great, and I ended up terrifying some small children, which was also very fun.

The day of leaving came round very quickly. The night before, we had chosen to sleep outside, as our tent had a hole in it, which meant the tent flooded when it rained on the last night, so we slept outside, not caring about hyenas, or elephants, or creepy crawlies. It was great to wake up to the sunrise, over the hills, although it started to rain again pretty soon after dawn.

What we had'nt realised was that, all the rain had obviously made the road, turn from dirt, to mud. Our small wheeled bus machine, was not designed to ride over gnarly mud roads, as we were soon to find out. We encountered an 'urban' jeep (a jeep that isn't really a jeep) stuck deep in the mud, not far from our camp, so we spent about an hour getting them out of the mud, and as it started to rain again it was very difficult. The flip-flops were off, mud was everywhere. This was Africa. We eventually got them out, and then our 2nd bus arrived beyond the patch of treacherous mud, which meant we could carry our bags over the mud and get back to camp. It all turned out ok in the end, and we arrived back in camp, and had a lovely cold shower (I can't wait to have a hot shower, and a bath!!) haha!

We spent the weekend at the beach again, and in the evening went out to Forty Thieves again, where me and Tess had to match drinks the whole night. Lin, got quite drunk and by the time we left Forty's and went to Shak Attack, had a boogie with the locals, and about to leave, she was paralytic on the floor. We had to carry her, to the taxi, and then from the taxi to her bed. She remembered nothing in the morning.

The next blog is about to be written in about 20 minutes so see you all in a bit.

Upendo

Josh

A Week Of Doing Nothing And Recuperating Really

2010-05-08T14:27:00.000+01:00

Greetings to all you cyber readers, and welcome to the newest blog. I hope you like it.

This week has been an eventful week really, and then it has sort of slowed down a lot now, until next week when the pace quickens again. On Sunday we had a very chillaxed day, when we played a game of football against the local team DotCom, who we had played before and lost, so the stage was set for revenge, which was justly served as we beat them 3-1 with a goal from me, Marc and Beca, who works for Camp Kenya.

It was this night which I started to feel the oncomings of illness. It was just a cold, and a sore throat so I thought nothing of it. However, the next day after work it proceeded to get worse, to a headache and lethargy, and having missed my malaria tablet a couple of weeks ago for a day, I had the inklings of malaria, for the first time which had me worried. It then proceeded to get even worse on the Tuesday night, so that I awoke with my bed just literally completely soaked in sweat, and I found it hard to move in terms of lethargy, and so it was at this point that Rosie, our camp leader, decided to call the ambulance for me. I thought this was a bit far, as I was feverish but it was just the flu I thought, but she thought it might have been malaria, so I was rushed off to hospital, fearing run down, SAW style hospitals, similar to Tanzania, with unmotivated doctors and nurses and massive queues to be seen.

I was suprised when I pulled up to find that it was a very well looked after hospital, with great people looking after you. I was first asked to tell the nurse what was wrong with me, have my blood pressure checked and then temperature also. I then waited to be seen by the doctor for about 15 minutes, and then I saw the doctor who was very nice, although he did tell me that he wanted me to take a blood test and check for malaria. I had been worried about this since I arrived fearing that one, I might have malaria, and two for unclean needles and the fear of HIV, but I should not have been worried. It was more efficient than any English hospital I had been too, so I was quickly seen too and had a blood test and returned to the doctor who said that it wasn't malaria, but a serious case of severe tonsilitis. Having always heard that anyone who had tonsilitis had their tonsils removed I was pleased, but anxious for him to say that I didn't need them removed, which he did, and then said that I would have to stay a couple of days to be given liquid anti biotics, until I was able to swallow tablets, so off I went to a private room where I got changed into some hospital clothes, and then I was given a drip.

Having never had a drip before, and only ever having a butterfly in my hand using a cream that numbs the pain, I did not look forward to this part of my stay, but it turned out ok, just a slight sting in the hand, and then a cold feeling as they gave the drugs, but nothing as serious as I had imagined. I then got into the plus sides of staying here, such as, a room to myself (kind of with all the nurses coming in and out) , a TV, DVD's, and a bathroom. However it was very weird walking around with a drip. I felt like I should be a seriously ill, older person, staying in hospital for the long term, not myself with tonsilitis. On the up side I got served amazing meals, got to watch 300 on DVD, and then got to watch the football with the lads, (Man City v Tottenham) and saw Marc get kicked out when he celebrated the Spurs goal, as we was too loud. : )

The next day however, was quite, not boring, but inactive. I wanted to be up, having already had the feeling of feeling much better than I had the day before, and did not want to be stuck in the same room for another 24 hours, (which I was), although my day was brigtened when I learnt that Jenny was in hospital with me, having been ill the day before, (after I checked she was ok) and then I watched the film Blood Diamond, which I thought was a real African movie. T.I.A.

I was then allowed out the next day, where I went straight back into teaching English, and then crashed out in bed. Today we have just been at the beach playing football, and tomorrow, we are going snorkelling, playing in a football tournament, and then having a beach BBQ, and then next week off to see the elephants again : D

Only 3 weeks until home now. I'm not wishing the trip away, but at the point now where I'm ready to be home.

Much love to you all

Josh

Another Goodbye, Another Hello, and the Last Month

2010-05-02T12:06:00.000+01:00

Jambo Jambo readers : ) Very glad you could spare some time to read my blog so thank you :)

This week another goodbye has been said to a wonderful group, and another hello to a new group who I feel will make this last month fly by, but I'm not going to complain about that.

The start of this week has been spent at Amadeous Childrens Home, where we were to begin work on a number of different projects, such as making 'gikos' (I'm not sure of the spelling) which are basically stoves, to replace the traditional 3 stone cooking method that is used in all of Africa, putting up a roof, and of course playing with the kids. We were greeted by the children singing to us, and we immediately got roped into to playing some African childrens games, pretty similar to things like 'Duck, Duck, Goose!' and others. We then taught them the 'Okey Kokey' which was great until you had 3 African children hanging off you swinging, when you ran into the middle :D

This was our first day, which was glorious sunshine. However, the next day the weather changed for the worse and hasn't changed back yet. Therefore we had to stop our painting of the roof beams, (just like we did in Tanzania to repel termites) and me and Tommy, went to town on the 'gikos'. We made one each, and I have to say, as 'gikos' go they look magnificent! We then went inside because of the rain, and played more games with kids, and they had great fun with our cameras! Taking pictures of absolutely nothing, seemed to be enough to totally entertain them :)

Our final day at the orphanage, as the rest of the group left on the Thursday, was spent with me and Tommy, straddling a 11 foot high wall, trying to lift the A-frames for the roof, up and into position without falling off and killing ourselves (we found out later that we wern't supposed to be doing this, but T.I.A) It took a lot of effort to put them up, but by the end of the day we had the entire roof up and ready to reinforce. It was a great sense of achievement, similar to the one in Tanzania when we finished our roofing there :D

The last night together in Kenya, was spent playing MORE drinking games, and staying up until the early hours and then crashing out on the bed. Many dares were played including, one such as steal Rufus' clothes, steal the fire extinguishers, and flashing 'Tree Man'.

The day of the departure of the rest of the group was not good. As everyone was packing and getting ready, the next group arrived, which meant that our group must leave. In all honesty, I had not thought that I would be aywhere near as sad as I was after leaving Tanzania, because this was only 1 month etc, however I felt very sad as I said goodbye to Lexi, Tommy, Phoebe, Seena, Emily, and Ruth, and even more sad as they all drove away. However, it was straight back into meeting new people, and the new group are just as easy to get along with, as everybody else, which is FANTASTIC!!

Friday was spent going around on the new guys orientation of the village, Muhaka, the school, and the general area. We then shifted a tonne of bricks to help make the 'gikos', whilst shouting 'Jambo, Mrembo!' to every girl we saw (it means Hello, Beautiful) We got a mixed reaction, but the overall reception of yells was positive. In the afternoon, we then went to help out and cement the foundations, of a new camp thats being made in the sacred kaya in Muhaka Forest, which took very little time at all.

The Saturday, unfortunately, was spent undercover at the beach, as the rain has not stopped for the last 4 days. It has rained solidly for 4 days! My little colour is vanishing!! Also, because of the rain, we were told there are more criminals out, as everybody is inside, and so there are less people to witness their crimes, and so beacuse of this we had to have an armed guard force, at the club of 40 Thieves last night, where we stayed until 5 o'clock, after running into the sea, and busting some moves on the dance floor, and taking many disgusting shots, that the girls gave me, but it was AWESOME!

Tomorrow, we are beginning work at Muhaka School again, and then it's going to fly by after that I think. It's so weird thinking I only have a month left, considering how fast 4 months has flown by. I have the beginning of mixed emotions about the end of this trip.

Until next week readers,

Much loveage

Josh

Time in Tents, and Chilling with Goats

2010-04-25T13:59:00.000+01:00

Aye up readers!

Another blog ready to be written, so don't stop reading whatever you do : )

This week has been very cool. On Monday we departed from Camp Muhaka, for Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary, which I had been looking forward to ENORMOUSLY for the vast majority of the trip. The trip there itself was quite good, as we got to see another enormous bull elephant although this fella was a bit more chilled out than his counter part with anger problems. The road was good until we hit Shimba Hills National Park which has a very, very, very bumpy road to the Elephant Sanctuary, but we arrived in due course and set about exploring our surroundings. We had 2 man tents, identical to the Hotel Vangos we had slept in, in Ndarakwai in Tanzania, however we ignored this rule I brought in another mattress for the guys tent as it would be unfair to let somebody sleep by themselves in a tent the otherside of camp. Unlike Ndarakwai though, we had big, thick, mattresses, which we then took 2 of and piled on top of eachother for extra comfort.
After dumping our things, we set off for a game drive around the sanctuary, with our camp guide Steve, and our driver S-Dawg. We saw lots of elephants, including our first bachelor herd, full of fully grown adult males, and (for the first time in the open) lots of warthogs. We also saw alot of eagles, especially the Marshal Eagle which has a 2 meter wing span!!

That night, we settled down to sleep, and heard many animals that night including hyenas, as they come into the sanctuary at night. We were also told that the elusive, and extremely aggressive and fearless Honey Badger liked to come and visit camp, which we wern't to chuffed about as they are supposed to (according to Jeremy Clarkson) rip off your testicles. As we were about to drop off to sleep, screaming erupted from the girls tent next door. Still in that blissful, state of half-sleep/half-awake, I listened and learnt that apparently, there was a snake underneath the girls tent. They then had the aid of Seena, who proceeded to stamp through the tent in the hope squashing whatever it was that was under the tent, but to no avail. They then woke up Steve, to see what he could do. This was about 2 o'clock at night, so you can imagine that Steve was not very pleased at being awoken. Steve was not happy at been woken up, as he concluded that the thing underneath the tent was a large milipede, however the girls did not believe this, but eventually got back in to the tent and went to sleep.

The next day, we set off to retrieve some tress seedlings, to plant in the sanctuary, so that the elephants would eat those, and not the crops of the local farmers, as in Mwaluganje, there was alot of conflict between the local farmers and the elephants. We ended up planting 70 trees that day, accompanied by plenty of blisters. That afternoon, after our daily game of UNO, we went to make some elephant dung paper. Being the expert, veteran paper maker, along with Jenny and Phoebe, having done it in Tanzania, we sat back and let the others have their fair share of pounding poo, although we did end up taking part. In the evening, there was an awesome sun set that we could watch, as our camp was located on the top of hill. It was incredibly beautiful, with a pinky, orangy sky, with the sun a visible blazing ball, beneath the clouds.

After another roasting hot night in our Vangos, we set off too do some more tree planting again, and managed to plant another 200 trees. This took a while and people began to get peeved, as we kept on being told that these trees were the last 20, except that once we had dug holes for 20 trees, there appeared, suddenly, to be another 70 trees, but we got them all done eventually. In the afternoon, we went to do an Elephant Questionairre, to the local villagers (while this was going on Lexi was being attacked by ALOT of chickens who were fearless) It appeared that out of the 2 we did, one allowed the elephants in the sanctuary because it brought tourists, and people like us to them, which then brought money, but the other lady we asked, who had lived there 60 years, hated the elephants and wanted them out, and moved somewhere else. She was very passionate about her point. Elephants are very destructive whilst feeding, and a herd can eat and entire field of maize in a day when feeding, and destroy fences, and livelihoods, which was the centre point of this lady's argument. It was quite an eye opener to see the local peoples point of view, as we see elephants, in all fairness, as amazing creatures, that are great too look at but not really part of our lives, whereas these people have to find a way to co-exist with them otherwise there will, forever be conflict between the two.

After this we went to play an INTENSE game of netball with the local school. This turned out to be not really netball, but a twist on netball with many new rules introduced, such as rolling the ball, running sometimes, then not allowed sometimes, and running everywhere was allowed. It was a rough game, with me playing goalkeeper, as I was about 2 foot bigger than every other person on the pitch. Camp Kenya ended up winning 6-5 against the school, and we were shattered.

The next day, we finished off our elephant dung paper, making books, and bookmarks from the paper, which was quite interesting, and we tried to offer tips to maybe decorate the books with something as they were just sticking the paper together, and then leaving it, and as you may find out when I bring some paper home, Elephant Dung Paper, as paper goes, is not the best looking form of paper.
That afternoon we set off to do some goat de-worming. This involved, running into a makeshift pen full of goats, grabbing one by the legs, pulling it over to the entrance, opening its mouth and giving it a medicine with a large pipette/syringe. All good in theory, but in practice it was a little more difficult, as obviously the goats did not want to take their medicine, and they would not come quietly. It was great fun diving around grabbing goats, although the noise they made in protsest was horrible, yet strangely comical, as it reminded us all of the noise a human child makes when they don't want their medicine. There were also quite a few billy goat gruffs in the batch we de-wormed, who were quite strong, and had very large horns, which were quite painful, when jabbed into your leg, or hip, or hand, or arm, or foot, or everywhere really. After this strenuous activity we STANK of goat. We could not get the smell of them off us, even after about 10 washes!
In all fairness, it was in Mwaluganje, where I had never felt so dirty in all my life. By now my clothes, no matter how hard, and thoroughly I wash them they remain dirty, and having to wear the same clothes for these 4 days (as the rest of my clothes were drying back in Muhaka) was the dirtiest I had ever felt, but this is Africa, so we knuckled down and continued as usual.

The next day we departed from Mwaluganje, but not before whilst I was brushing my teeth, elephants emerged from below us, off the hill. It was a truly African spectacle, I will not forget, as where else are you going to be greeted by elephants when brushing you teeth : D That night we had another themed party, this time dressing up as Pirates, which turned out to be great fun. We played many games including Ring Of Fire, and Never Have I Ever, which caused many people to get quite drunk. It was a very funny night, but I had to go to bed early as the next morning, I had my first dive as a qualified PADI diver!

We left at about 7 for Aqualand, which was our point of departure. We were diving with the director, and camp manager and friends, which turned out to be really good fun. It was very differnt diving to Zanzibar as the water was much choppier, and it was a much slower dive. Never the less, I ended up using up more air in my tank than, I had in Zanzibar. The lowest amount of air I had in Zanzibar was about 70. 50 is supposed to be the minimum amount of air you have on a dive before coming up. I came up with 20. We did see alot of cool fish whilst diving, such as Scorpion Fish, Stonefish, Clown Fish, and Sun Fish. We also had a Whale Shark swim right over our group. However, we failed to see this as we were looking at the ocean floor, and around us on our level, and we wern't looking up so all the other groups saw the Whale Shark, except us as it was above us. I was very frustrated, and peeved at this knowledge, but we are going snorkelling again in a couple of weeks so hopefully we shall see one then.

Until next time folks

Mucho Loveo

Josh

Getting the Ball Rolling...Again

2010-04-17T14:51:00.000+01:00

Hello everybody who is reading this, and thank you for reading my blog : )

The first 2 weeks (already) of being in Kenya have flown by! Its crazy how quickly its gone! Only 6 weeks till the return to England which is a very scary thought, after being out here for 14 weeks. Anyways, too what we have been up to these last 2 weeks.

After arriving 2 weeks ago today, it was very difficult settling in. I was missing the lot from Tanzania so much, and I did not want to have to meet and get to know everybody all over again. Why couldn't I have stayed with the others? So that first week was very tough, the toughest so far, since the very first week in Africa. However, I have began to settle a bit more now, so its getting much better although I still miss Tanzaaaaania crew alot, and the gang from home as well.

Our first week was spent building a foundation ditch, around the sides of the local school to stop water from seeping into the actual foundations of the school and undermining it. This took longer than expected and was a little hard as pushing wheelbarrows full of cement over sand with weedy arms is not my strong point, but we eventually got it done, and moved on to smashing up the classroom floor to re-cement it after it had all cracked in the heat, and we also had to paint the VERY high points of the school on a VERY high ladder, which was slightly wobbly, but it turned out ok, as I'm here writing the blog : )

On the Thursday we went on a cultural tour to see the bush doctor of the village, which felt slightly set up, but was good anyway. We then went to climb the palm trees that I mentioned last week, to get some coconut wine which is incredibly strong and not very tasty, but it was fun climbing trees. I mentioned we went into Mombasa on Saturday, which was very cool, so on to this week.

We continued smashing and painting the classroom this week, until Wednesday when we went to Tsavo East National Park for SAFARI!!It was very differnt to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, as it was much bushier, and not flat plains, so it was much harder to see any animals, however we did end up seeing and being charged at by a fully grown bull elephant which was AWESOME! The camp was very different to what we were used to in Tanzania, as we had actually huts, and beds for our safari in Kenya whereas we had tents in Tanzania. However, it was a very cool safari, and then on our return we had our African night, where we all dressed up as Africans, and had some traditional dancers over, and we (tried) to join in with them. Me and Tommy, one of the other guys, had a go on the drums, which was pretty dam cool.

Today we have just chilled on the beach, been on some camels, and got slightly burnt on the shoulder, but its been a good day, after speaking to people back home, which always makes me feel better : ) Thanks guys

Until next week again, Hakuna Matata

Josh

The Brilliance, The Tears, The End, The Next Beginning

2010-04-11T15:29:00.000+01:00

Greetings Peeps

Finally managed to find a decent interent connection, to be able to write my next blog. Apologies for the lateness, and this is going to be a big one as there's 3 whole weeks to catch up on and fill you in on :) Enjoy!

We finished the last blog just before we all headed off to Zanzibar. The last few days of camp life was hectic and quite sad, altho we had a last night out in La Liga which was pretty epic, as the infamous Sarah Cowan broke her drinking ban in 3 months, and got wasted which led to many occurences, but it was a good night in the end as we saw live performances from Tanzaaaaaaaaaaania's biggest stars, which was pretty cool, and a Michael Jackson dancer :D

The last night in camp was a very sad occassion. We all gathered round the fire to say goodbye to Anderson and Elifas who had looked after us from the first day, so fantastically. We all recieved certificates of our time in Tanzania, and the night was made even more sad, but lovely when some of the guys, made some really touching speeches about their time in Tanzania with everyone, which set most of the girls off crying, and some of the guys to. We then had a chilled last night in camp around the fire, and then half of us went off to bed as we had to be up at 6 the next day to catch the bus down to Dar Es Salaam. This meant I had to finish packing before bed, which was pretty tough as, although I left some stuff behind, I ended up having more stuff in my bag than when I arrived, but I finally managed to get everything into my bag with my shoes, sleeping, bag, and waterproof jacket hanging off my backpack.

So we awoke early on Tuesday morning, very sad about leaving the place that had been our home for the last 3 months, and had been the location of some epic adventures. After saying a very sad goodbye to the other half of the group (who would be joining us in 2 days) as it was still very hard to leave them even for a short time such as 2 days, we went through the gate for the final time, and had a final look at the place that had been our home in Africa. We then trekked down to the end of the road, with all our suitcases, and then said an emotional final farewell to Anderson and Elifas. We also gave them some money from each of us to say thank you for looking after us so well. After this we finally got onto the bus that would take us to Dar, and waved goodbye to Moshi. As we drove away, an awesome sight awaited us. Kilimanjaro, in all her glory, standing bold as brass above us, with not a cloud to block our view of her. It really felt as if she had come to say goodbye to us.

We then journeyed down to Dar with a couple of stops, and a switch to a bus that wouldn't break down, we made it to Dar within about 8 hours. Then we had to find our contact that would take us to our B & B for the night from the bus station, which was quite a challenge whilst having an argument with porters about who had the right to carry our own bags, but eventually we made it to our hotel, and had an awesome shower (still cold but by now your used to it, and it was lovely after being on a sweltering bus for 8 hours). Then we decided to find a place to eat, and it was Hannah who, looking through the Tanzanian version of the Yellow Pages, found somewhere that was perfect to start our trip to Zanzibar, and congratulate ourselves on 3 months of hard work, and a job well done. The place was called the East African Hotel, and it was a 5 star hotel. It was the most luxury we had seen in 3 months. Me, Ellie, Hannah and Emily, pulled up in a battered old taxi, amongst all these swanky cars, and then walked up to the bar, in our cotton trousers, and flip flops, surrounded by businessmen, and didn't care at all. We then went to the casino, where I won 30 000 Tsh without even touching a machine, as a veteran gambler pressed max bet for me and I won, so dinner was free that night for me. The restaurant itself was a Thai restaurant, overlooking the harbour of Dar, and looking out to sea. It was only us in the restaurant, and felt like we were treated like royalty. It was perfect. I had never even had Thai food before and was quite anxious about what it would taste like, however it turned out to be one of the nicest meals I've ever had in a restaurant. It was the perfect end to our time in mainland Tanzania. We then wondered back to our hotel, excited about our arrival in Zanzibar the next day.

We awoke at about 9, and I went on a quick hunt for flip flops, as mine our falling apart, but I think they might last until I get home now : ) We then went to the port, to catch our ferry, and got served free pizzas, and drinks, and then lugged our baggage down a wooden ramp to the boat, where our belongings were launched over the side, much to our horror, but we were assured that the bags were safe. We then settled down on the boat, which looked a little like something from Indiana Jones, with everyone yelling, and shouting, and bustling, but it all quietened down soon, and we were on our way across the wet to Zanzibar. On the way we were treated to an Arnold Schwarzenagger movie, and then Ellie and Hannah started quoting Madagascar quotes, God help us all : D It wasn't a choppy journey,although it did rain on the way, which upset us as we wanted a sunny welcome to Zanzibar, but we didn't mind as soon we saw Stone Town, slide into view. We then retrieved our bags, and then proceeded to immigration, and filled in alot of VISA forms, as we had been told we needed them. However, it turned out we didn't as we already had a Class C Visa, which was quite lucky, as a bird had taken spectacular aim, and crapped on my form. After this, we managed to find our transport quite easily, and began our journey across Zanzibar (Unguja, in Swahili) towards our destination: Paje.

Paje, turned out to be a tiny fishing village, and from the road as you enter looks nothing spectacular. However, once your into the village and nearer the sea, it reveals itself to you as a tropical paradise. Our accomodation in Arabian Nights, was amazing as well. We had the entire place to ourselves, all pools, and the beach itself was all ours as well. It was perfect. To show how happy we were, the first thing we all did upon arrival was dump our bags, and then sprint to the sea, and threw ourselves into the water. It was like a bath, it was so warm, and clear, and calm. We all already knew that this would be the perfect end to our trip to Tanzania. We spent the evening relaxing, and unpacking and then went to find somewhere to eat. We found a small, shack along the beach, they seemed to be perfect, however upon ordering our seafood e.g. calamari, crab, octopus etc we were told they didn't have any seafood at all! But it turned out ok, as they managed to grab some food from somewhere else for us.

The next day we had to get up really early to go on our Dolphin Tour. We drove about 20 minutes down the road to the Dive Centre, and there had the best, first, and only breakfast I have had whilst I've been away. Then we chose our, snorkles, flippers and masks and set off on our boat to find some dolphins. Soon enough, we found them leaping out of the water, and showing off. Our captain yelled 'GO, GO, GO!!' and we threw ourselves into the water. Unfortunately, us guys were on the wrong side of the boat than the dolphins, and we had forgotten that they can swim better than us under water, so we never actually got the chance to see any in the water, unlike the girls who got to swim with them really close. Jealousy was big that day. On the other hand, me and Hannah, swam into shore, fell over about a million rocks, then commandeered a boat, which we consequently almost capsized, to take us back to our main boat out at sea. After this, I went and got my first bit of henna from the Mamas on the beach, on my hand, and whilst this was happening, the rest of the group turned up and, exactly as we had done, sprinted into the sea. It was fantastic being together again with everyone : )

That night, me, Sarah, Ailsa, Ella, Tim, Fiona, Lena, and Alex, went to the place we had eaten last night as this time they had food. We had great fun teasing Sarah with fish, and squid and things with tentacles that she hated, because we're lovely people. We also used my ancient film, rewind camera A LOT so I'm very excited to see what horrendous pictures will be developed upon my return. After this, we all went for our first stroll along the beach. It was absolute bliss. Paradise. Although, we aka Tim did end up breaking a random hotel's hammock, which meant we then all had to run for it : )

The next day, our PADI Scuba Diver course began. Me, Ailsa, Ella, Alex, Johnny, and Jenny were doing the PADI course, whilst Sarah, Tom, Alex, Fiona, and Sam did the fun dive, but we had to watch some of the videos together, and then when the Fun Divers went off to get into the pool, we had to watch another 2 videos! But it was all ok because we got to laugh at the others in the pool, having their first scuba lesson. After that we chilled on the beach all day, and got even more henna tattoos, adn then the drinking games began that night. Ring of Fire, and Touch the Cup going on at the same time, was awesome! It was a great night out, after having a pool party all too ourselves as well : ) More beach strolls ensued, and it was brilliant.

Sunday, the PADI divers had our first confined dive (in a pool) which was awesome! We first learnt how to, put all our scuba gear together, and then we took our first descent being able to breathe underwater. Its the coolest thing I've ever done! It was great fun, doing all the exercises underwater with your mates, trying to take off your mask, and put it back on, use someones else's regulator, whilst having all the fun divers, divebombing us in the pool, and swimming with us, and trying to steal our regulators!! It was great fun! We then got even MORE henna tattoos, one which the girls (Sarah, Ailsa, and Ellie) said made me look slightly more feminine, however I disagreed, and thought it made me look much more manly, and macho. We spent the evening across the road, in a place called Paje By Night, where we were able to watch the Top Gear Vietnam Special, which ended up being a great night in, as it was raining (or storming that night).

Monday, ( I think I may have put things down as happening on the wrong day, but they all happened) we went on a Spice Tour, where tried many of the spices that made Zanzibar so famous. We got told all about the spices, and how they are grown, and got treated with lots of hats, and necklaces made of leaves, which was cool, and then a man ( who was clearly crazy) climbed a 60 foot palm tree, and started hurling coconuts down for us too eat, which actually tasted really nice, as they were slightly different to the coconuts you eat in England. After this, some people went back to Paje, and some of us agreed to go on the tour organised for us. It started off well, being shown the location of the old Slave Market in Zanzibar, which was the last slave market to be closed down in the world. After that it went a little downhill, as we were shown the only traffic lights cross-roads in Ston Town, and alos the bus station where there are 2 different kinds of bus: Long distance, and short distance. However, after that, we went down lots of little alleyways, where we bought a few rings, and bracelets, and then we went to the House of Wonders at the port, which had an awesome view of the harbour. After this we then went back to our hotel and spent another awesome night at the beach, watching a massive storm out at sea slowly coming towards us, before we had to scarper back to our hotel in thunderous conditions.

Tuesday, all the lads went out for our deep sea fishing trip. It was the only time in my life so far, where I've been scared for my life at sea. In this tiny boat, we went out 2 miles off shore, going over some massive waves. It got better when we actually started fishing, and we ended being the boat that caught the fish. We caught a Wa-Hu (I think thats how you spell it) or actually Alex caught the fish, we just celebrated. After being out on the water from 7 till 10, we started heading back, but got caught in a massive storm, and consequently got soaked as our boat had no roof, and we had to trek the last 1000 metres back to shore as the tide was out. Although it sounds a bit rotten, it turned out to be great fun. After fishing we had our first of 2 dives in the sea to become PADI scuba divers. It was awesome! We threw ourselves off the back off the boat backwards, and my legs were too long so I consequently booted the roof of the boat. We then swam along the reef, seeing seting rays, trigger fish, and parrot fish, before settling on the bottom to continue with our exercises, which stang alot as you got salt water in your eyes but obviously couldn't rub them because of our masks. But it was still really cool, watching eachother underwater, and mucking around with eachother and the dive instructors, Polar, and Abdallah. Then we went back to the Dive Centre and watched some more videos for the PADI course. That night we found the most random bar, and most brilliant bar in Zanzibar. Hidden off the beach on a small path, after walking for about 2 minutes you found a ladder going up over a wall. After climbing this, you went down the otherside, and found Teddy's Bar, where they barbequed our dinner for us, which tasted amazing.

Wednesday was our last day all together in Tanzania/Zanzibar before we all departed off to our seperate destinations. It was a great day as we all passed our PADI course, (so I am now a qualified scuba diver WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO) got to do 2 more dives, with the fun divers which was quality, as we had great fun in the sea with everyone, got into the O.C with Sarah and Ailsa, after they convinced me to watch it, got even more henna, convinced a Masai I was gay, had to wait 2 hours for a meal that was cold, had a pool party, hung out on the beach with some awesome mates, and then crashed to bed, 2 hours before the others had to be up to leave.

That morning was horrible. We had to say goodbye to people we had been with everyday for the last 3 months, and who had become very close. We said our goodbyes and watched them drive away, knowing we would see them again, but still aching inside for them to stay. The rest of the morning was very sad, as everyone started to miss the others already even after they had been gone just 2 hours. The rest of the day was spent packing, and lazing around in the pool, or on the beach. That night we ate over at Paje By Night, together, and Sarah had learnt to sit far away from me and Ailsa when we had a sea food platter in front of us. Then we went to bed ready to be up early the next morning, to depart and eventually say goodbye to each other, if only for a while.

Friday morning, was hard. We got onto the coach to take us to the port at Stone Town, and then had to wait another hour for the next ferry as there wasnt enough space on our original one. The trip itself was rough. Hardcore rain, lashed in through the open doors, and being nearest to them I got soaked closing them. It was actually the roughest sea journey I had been on, the boat getting some serious air on our travels, and Ailsa not feeling too good, along with along with a lovely Indian chap, who chundered right next to where we were all sitting. After arriving at Dar Es Salaam, we knew that this was going to be the hardest part of the trip. Saying goodbye to nearly everyone, except Sarah, Ella, and Ailsa. It was truly horrible saying goodbye to the lads: Dunk, Tim, Sean, Stef, Alex, and Tom, who had been brilliant the entire trip, and then saying goodbye to the girls: Katy, Jo, Fiona, and Lena. People who had really made the trip happen for me. After promising to meet up again in England, they drove off in the rain to the airport, whilst me, Sarah, Ailsa, and Ella went to the Econolodge to dump our things. We spent the day wondering around Dar, until we had to get ready to go out for a meal. We decided to go and eat in the East African Hotel again, which did not fail to dissapoint at all, and to top it off, Sarah tried some squid, and I tried some ice cream, and I also had an argument with the 3 of them about Yorkshire puddings, and toad in the hole, which was probably a bad move as they're from the north, thus knowing more on the topic of Yorkshire puddings, and what not.
That night, me and Sarah, had a mission to get my bed down from my room, to the girls room without being caught, which turned out to be fine, although it tricky getting the mattress into the tiny lift. After that we all dozed off listening to Ross Noble, and, too soon, I had to be up at 5 to catch the bus to Kenya. I had to say goodbye to the final 3 people from Tanzania, who had been brilliant throughout the trip. It was fine whilst I was saying goodbye, but once on that bus to Kenya, and my thoughts could wonder, I already began to miss people. It was very difficult. To add to my blues, I got left behind at the border crossing, as I had to buy a new VISA after the Kenyan Embassy cocked up, issuing my original VISA, and then had to catch another bus, to catch up with my original bus with all my stuff on it! Was not a good day. I then got dropped off at Ukunda, and was picked up by the Camps International coach with the new people who I would be spending the next month with. We then journeyed to my new camp, which is MASSIVE compared to Tanzania, and feels empty without 35 people in it. That night, and the rest of the week was tough. I did not want to meet, and get to know new people. I wanted the Tanzania crowd back. I missed them so much, more than I missed home, as I had become used to not hearing from home, whereas I had been with these wonderful, amazing people for 3 months. They had become my family, and I know I have friends for life amongst them.

This week we have begun work on another school called Muhaka, where we are building some foundations. Its hard work, pushing wheelbarrows full of water, cement, or bricks over sand, in the baking, more humid heat of Kenya. We went to see the bush-doctor the other day as part of a cultural tour, and tried my hand at climbing a palm tree. I got half way and then stopped as there was a 75 year old man up the tree with me, who said you've done good go back down, but I realised that going down is much harder than going back up, but eventually I made my way down. Yesterday, we also went to Mombasa, which is a very cool city, with lots to do, and see, such as a Hindu Temple (the first I've ever been too) a nature walk with giraffe, buffalo, hippo, and antelope, and we also started feeding the masses from our bus with our packed lunch, which then got us told off by the police : D We had a great night out at 40 Thieves last night, and we are going on safari again in 2 days, so things have begun looking up again.

I would just like to say thank you to my Mum, and Dad and Tom, and for everyone else for getting me through this week, by calling me, texting me, and this was all orchestrated by my Mum, so thank you Mum, I don't know what I would do without you. Also to the lot from Tanzania, thank you for an awesome, amazing, brilliantly fantasmagorical time, and I feel like the luckiest man alive, to have been with the group of people, and the people I have met on this trip. You don't know how important, and wonderful you all are. Thank you

The next blog will be up next Saturday, until then folks

Much love, Hakuna Matata

Josh

The Wildest Place On Earth

2010-03-20T12:06:00.000Z

Greetings readers : )

I have returned from safari and I am now going to fill you all in on the many adventures we had this week so I hope you enjoy it.

On Monday we departed from camp bright and early at 6 o'clock. We had 3 jeeps to travel the 5 hours to the Serengeti camp, 2 5-seaters, and 1 7-seater (I was in the 7 seater with Sarah, Alex, Chris, Jenny, Lena and Fiona) was a wicked jeep. So after packing all our luggage onto the jeep we set off for the Serengeti. It was a long trip, but we stopped off at a super market to pick up some snacks, and soon after we were entering Lake Manyara National Park which is on the way to the Ngorongoro, and then the Serengeti. In Manyara we got our first taste of safari, as giraffe and zebra appeared from nowhere to make eyes bulge as we saw so many giraffe! We then continued driving and had another jaw dropping view as we began to ascend the side of the Rift Valley, which is MASSIVE!! and towers above Lake Manyara that looks like the sea its so big! After this we soon arrived at the Ngorongoro National Park Gate, where we had to wait for about 20 minutes for permits to be signed for the drivers. Whilst we were here lazing around, about 20 jeeps pulled up, some with very well dressed people and others with army people in. We were curious to find out what was going on, so me and Dunc, and Sarah went to investigate and it was none other than the Prime Minister of Finland come for a safari whilst on an official visit. He was a very nice man, as was the Finnish ambassador, who was the one who told us what was going on.

Soon after this, and the Fins had moved on we could begin are safari as we went through the gate to the Ngorongoro. Immediately, baboons appeared and started fighting next to our car, which was pretty cool. We spent about an hour journeying up the side of the Crater, to begin our journey round the rim, and down the other side to get to the Serengeti. We eventually made it to the top after many close corners, and dirt tracks, and the view was amazing. The crater just lay there before you in all its glory, and it is HUGE! One of the most amazing views I have ever seen in my life. After standing there with our mouths hanging open for about 10 minutes, we continued our journey, and soon saw many animals, such as giraffe, zebra and wildebeest. We then began the long drive across the plains to the Serengeti Gate, and then to our camp for the night. We soon saw how many animals there were on the plains, and we weren't even in the Serengeti yet. Animals as far as your eye could see, everywhere you looked, and you could see all the way to the horizon. I cannot explain the scale of how many animals there were, or how vast the plains were. Truly colossal.

We arrived at the gate for another short toilet break, and we trekked it up to a view point on top of a kopje (a random piece of massive rock, scattered around the Serengeti left over from a vast mountain range from millions and millions of years ago) and surveyed our majestic surroundings, that stretched for miles, and miles, and miles all around us. We were in a sea of grass, and animals, and sky. That's all there was around us.

We then continued our journey to the camp, now standing up in the jeep looking through the roof hatches, and so consequently caught a lot of the sun, and we saw, even more zebra, wildebeest, Thompsons Gazelles, loads of birds of prey, hippopotamus, and a lone female lion just before we arrived in camp which was awesome. We arrived in camp, and set about setting up our tents. I was in a tent with Alex, and Duncan, and after thinking we had picked the best tent, as you could see out of it at night, but couldn't see in, so we could see the animals, we realised we had no porch to store our bags, and that our zip couldn't zip all the way down. We obviously didn't tell the rangers about this and slept in it anyway. The rangers told us that you could NOT go to the toilet once you zipped up your tents, due to lions, buffalo, and hyaena coming into camp, however all of us 'tough' (don't laugh) guys said we would go anyway. However, the moment we settled down to sleep, we heard the eerie whooping cry of hyaena's around the entire camp, so we changed our minds, especially after, the deep throbbing roar of lions, that you didn't only hear, but felt in your chest, was added the night. Then to top it off, lying in my sleeping bag on the right side of the tent and looking out of the see through canvas, I heard a sniffing, snuffling behind me. I then woke up Alex, and Duncan as quietly as I could, as down the side of the tent came a hyaena, sniffing about an inch away from, through a thin sheet of canvas. We did not move, speak, blink, or breathe for about a minute, as it journeyed on to the next tent. I lay awake the entire night desperate for the toilet, but also not wanting to get eaten by a curious hyaena.

So we woke up at 6, having had about 4 hours sleep, to begin our first ever game drive in the Serengeti. We quickly saw some antelope, and buffalo, and also a small family of elephant grazing, with a bigger herd of mature adults a way off. We then journeyed on to see more zebra, wildebeest, monkeys, and to top it off, a lion standing in a tree. Our driver, Jon, got the call over the radio and stepped on the gas, and we rocketed past about 4 jeeps to be the first to arrive and see the lion. There ended up about 6 jeeps looking at the lion, but she wasn't fussed, and casually fell asleep in the tree in front of us. We then got a call that a leopard was close by in another tree so we then bombed it off to see another big cat, however we were too slow, as the leopard had dissapeared in to the long grass by the time we arrived. However, all of these sightings were to be overshadowed that day by a meeting we had with an adult female elephant, and an adolescent. We had journeyed a way in front of the other 2 jeeps, and so drove closer to the female than the others, while they stayed about 20 feet back behind us. The female was about 12 feet away from us, looking at us, and then let out a low elephant rumble, and moved to then cake herself in mud, and was soon joined by her calf, although he wasn't so small anymore. After this the adolescent came to the back of the truck where me, Sarah, and Fiona were standing, and decided to cake us in mud, so he shook himself in front of us, totally covering us in mud. Satisfied with himself, he moved off. Now it was Mum's turn. She came very close to the back, and rumbled again. Her ears came out, and she seemed to get bigger, and Fiona and Sarah shrank back, but I stayed (not because I was brave, but because I couldn't move) and she towered over me, and looked me straight in the face, in easy touching distance of me, about 3 feet. She then rumbled again at me, and moved off. It was the most amazing, scariest, most exhilarating experience of my life so far. I was giddy with it all day afterwards. After this we went back to camp, to pack up the tents, and move on to our camp on the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater. This trip took about 2 hours, and we saw even more wildebeest, and zebra, and gazelle. There were even more than the day before when we drove through. We asked Jon how many wildebeest there were around us at the moment, and he told us that there were 3 million!!! and soon 1 million will move off to begin the migration south, and then back north to Kenya and the Masai Mara.

We arrived at Simba camp late in the evening, and had a great dinner of chicken and chips (at least we were told it was chicken, not sure it was though) and then we settled down for the night. Again animals were to intrude on our camp. Soon after going to bed me, and Duncan were looking outside when we saw what we thought was a person standing next to our tent, as all we could see were 2 legs silhouetted against the tent. Then we realised it was a buffalo right outside our tent, and it was MASSIVE!! It's like a cow thats been on steroids. It is so BIG. Even more so when your lying on the ground next to it, and there wasn't just 1. There were 4 around camp. To add to this an elephant arrived, and a wild pig, that chewed a hole in to Ellie, Jo, and Jenny's tent, and proceeded to have a tug of war with Jo for possession of her bag, as it liked the sun cream in it. To top this night off we were visited by the King of the Jungle himself, a lion. The first we knew of it was a heavy panting outside our tent. Then the most terrifying thing was the shadow that moved past our tent, of a massive lioness. Then she moved off back to the crater. It was the briefest encounter, but it was amazing to experience.

We awoke to the most beautiful view of the sun rising over the Crater rim, which was like a scene from Lion King, had a breakfast of pancakes, jam, and toast, and began our descent of the 658m in to the Crater. Firstly, we stopped at a view point where a Masai tried to persuade each of us to swap our i-pods for his bush knife. We said no. We then continued to go down the side of the Crater, and the first animal we saw after reaching the bottom, after literally 10 minutes driving, was a massive, fully grown, glorious, male lion, not 20 feet from our jeep. He was prowling around, until some Masai appeared up the hill, so he turned walked between our jeep and another, and disappeared in to the long grass. It was amazing how magnificent he looked, and how big. We the saw in quick succession, hyaena, zebra, buffalo, wildebeest, flamingo in the soda lake in the middle of the lake, some eland, which are the worlds biggest antelope about the size of a cow, and then a small family of lions. 5 lionesses, and 2 cubs. Jon thought the male we saw was the pride male of this pride. It was lovely to watch them not 10 feet away next to the road, rolling around, with the females sleeping, rolling over just like domestic cats do. However, one female was on the alert, as not 20 metres away were 4 hyaena, who were taking a lot of interest in the cubs, so the female gave a bit of a growl, and there was a slight stand off until, the lioness just went back to sleep, and so did the hyaenas.

We left the small family, and saw one of the rarest animals in Africa, with only 15 in the Ngorongoro Crater, and none in the Serengeti. A Black Rhino. It was to prove to be our day for rhino's in the crater, as Jon told us that most tourists only see 1 when they come to the crater. We ended up seeing 9 of the 15 in one day. Was brilliant! We then saw way off (after an amazing spot by Alex) a cheetah walking through the long grass. You couldn't see her very well, but you could see her. We then began our ascent out of the crater, after about 6 hours driving, at 12, and began our drive to our final camp site, Twiga, next to Lake Manyara. It was not in the National Park, and was right next to a huge craft place, full of fly catchers. We went for a walk to see, and got absolutely bombarded. However, a man took a liking to my clothes and offered to swap a painting for my t-shirt. I asked which one, and he said take your pick, so I chose the biggest one. He then said give me money, so I said no. He then said do you have anything else to trade, and so I got a pair of trousers, and said trousers for the painting. He said ok, plus 5000 Tsh, so I said ok, thus I swapped my trousers for a painting. I was quite proud of myself. We then got treated to some acrobatics in the camp site, and some traditional dancing, and go eaten alive by MOSQUITOS!! 32 bites on one foot!! Bug spray did nothing, to deter them, so I got out of our tent that wouldn't zip up at 5, and read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by the pool in the hotel next door. Later we journeyed back to camp in Moshi, and after thanking Jon for his amazing guide services, our safari experience was over.

On Tuesday, I go off to Zanzibar for a week, and then up the coast to Kenya. It feels so weird that after so long, with all of these wonderful people, and experiences, I'm leaving them in 2 weeks, and have to start all over again, which is awesome, but very sad, as I've definitely made some friends for life on this trip. It's sad, exciting, and tough, as everyone else is talking about going home, whereas I have another 2 months to go. It will be ok though, as I'm very excited about Zanzibar, and scuba diving, and all the stuff I'm going to do in Kenya, but I can wait just a little bit longer, so I can stay with the amazing people I've met here.

Much Love

Josh

Into The Wild

2010-03-14T08:09:00.000Z

Hello again people :)

This week has been incredible!!! Our first view of African wildlife came this week!! Firstly though I will just answer the question set by Auntie and Uncle about the marathon as for some reason I thought I had written about it last week on the blog, but I clearly hadn't, so my apologies for that :)

The marathon itself was very hard. I was soooooooooooooo tired by the end of it hahaha!! We ended up only doing the half marathon anyway on the day because we did not want to pay $60 to run the full marathon. So we set off at 10 to 7 to be there for 7, and we had to run about 3km to get to the start as they had blocked the roads. So we ended up being right at the front with the true marathon runners! There were runners from Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Europe, America, and Japan! It was a great mix! There was a lot of elbowing and argy bargy at the start with each other as people were jostling for position. Me, Tim, Alex, and Elefas had said we would run together, but within the first 10 minutes, we had all been split up and were on our own. So we had to run 11km down the same road up towards Kili, and met many people on the way running for one reason or another. It was quite funny to realise how unfit I was when a lady who looked about 70 sped past me, up the hill, but I continued at my own pace, and soon I saw the first runners returning down the same road past me (we ran up the same road and then turned round and ran back down the same road so you could see who was in front of you) and I saw Tim and Elefas speed past me on the other side of the road shouting 'JAMBO!!' to each other in greeting. After no time at all I to, had turned and was on my way back. The pain and blisters kicked in at about 17km as it was down hill and the shoes (that were NOT meant for running at all) were beginning to seriously rub. However, the stadium which was the finish point was soon in sight and I staggered over the line to be greeted by the rest of the guys from camp, and receive my medal and t-shirt as we were in the first 1000 runners!! The size of the blisters on my feet when we got to camp were ENORMOUS!!! But I was very glad to have done it, because it was a fantastic experience :)

Now onto Camp Ndarakwai. We had to drive 2 hours out onto the middle of these flat African plains, which was an incredibly rough ride, but we didn't care. We were going to see our first bit of true African wildlife in 2 months! We were so excited!! However we saw no wildlife as we drove in, although we saw hundreds and hundreds of eagles circling way off in the distance, which was quite a cool, but eerie event to see.
We arrived in our small camp, which we were to stay in for 3 days and nights. The camp itself was located in the middle of Ndarakwai national park, which is 12000 sq km, and is connected to another 3 national parks (2 in Tanzania, 1 in Kenya) as is a major migration route for many animals in the North of Tanzania, coming in and out of Kenya. We were sleeping in 3 man tents, with a small fence around our camp that is electrified after 6 o'clock. However fences do not stop monkeys from getting into our camp. On our first day in camp about 10 monkeys came and entertained us, by trying to raid our kitchen whilst our cook, William, was in there. William eventually drove them off, but only to the top of the trees where they waited for their next chance to attack.

We set off the same day with our ranger Muud (Mood), for our first bush walk. This was to prove an unforgettable experience, which I know I will NEVER forget :) We walked for about an hour without seeing anything, and then we saw up ahead, a small herd of elephant, and zebra too. They were not close, about a mile off, but we see them quite clearly as we were on top of a hill. We then continued and saw some waterbuck, and kudu quite close up, but they are 2 of the most wary animals on the plains (we were told by Muud) and they quickly vanished into the bush. However, we were then told to keep totally quiet, as were began walking towards where (we thought) the elephants were from earlier, and then we scaled a small hill, and they were right there. Right there!! About 30 metres away from wild African elephants, on foot!! It was INCREDIBLE!! Nobody said a word for at least 20 minutes, standing and watching one of the most fantastic things I've ever seen.

After this, we trekked back to camp, arriving at night and then having to remove the hundreds of ticks we had acquired in the long grass, which took a while. All of the guys were quite worried about ticks as Muud had told a story of him finding 3 hidden in his manhood. It was scary.

That night we enjoyed a colossal storm way off on the plains. It lasted for about an hour with bolt lightening at least every second, and it was just incredible to watch in the darkness. Natures power : D The nights themselves were ok, as we had been told y the fellows that had gone before us to Ndarakwai that the nights were quite cold. However, in our tent it was roasting and difficult to sleep although you did eventually drop off through sheer exhaustion desperately trying to get comfortable. I also learnt that I apparently roll over a lot in my sleep, so much so that I ended up on top of Stefan, every night we were there. Hahaha!

We then began some work very early in the morning, which was clearing a waterway to a man-made watering hole for many animals in the area. This was hot work as the Sun felt much stronger out on the plains, and it was a slog to clear all the mud and plants from the waterway. After this, we then went off to make elephant dung paper. It was to prove an eventful afternoon, with elephant crap flying everywhere and caking all of us, as we had to mash the poo into a paste and then mix with glue and pieces of fabric. We also had to go through the poo (yes, with our hands) and remove all the thorns from it. We then mixed it all together in a large container of glue and then took a frame for the paper, dunked it into the dung, glue, paper, water mix, brought it back out, let it drain and then we left it for a day to dry.

The next day, we were taken on a mad roller-coaster of a ride on an open top truck, through the bush, dodging thorns, trees, and various animals, as we were taken to work on a road in the national park. This turned out to be quite confusing as we were directed to make a small trench to drain a TINY amount of water on the road. What we ACTUALLY ended up doing was making a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge hole in the road rendering it totally un-drivable. On the way back from work, we persuaded our driver to take us on a small game drive, and ended up seeing some impala, zebra, wildebeest, and secretary birds, which are one of the coolest looking animals I have ever seen. We also saw the ugliest animal I've ever seen which is the Maribou stalk, which is massive, but looks diseased and half dead (it was NOT actually dying, and diseased apparently its just what it looks like ) On the way back Phoebe ( the new American gal from Boston) was too slow in getting out of the way of the thorns on the road, and so had a face full of acacia thorns, which made cuts that did not stop bleeding for about 30 minutes.

In the afternoon it was our meeting with the Maasai. The group was highly excited for this meeting, and I was no exception, having heard so much about the Maasai, I was incredibly excited. We walked for about an hour to get to the Maasai 'boma' or homestead, where were greeted by the 9 wives of the man whose homestead it was. Overall, he had over 50 (!!!!!!!!!) children, and when asked does he remember all there names, he replied that he tries. We then questioned, and were questioned by the Maasai women, about marriage, life, school, and ages, before me and Sarah, had our hands grabbed by the 9th wife, and led away into a tiny hut, with 4 tiny rooms, that was dark, but soon our eyes adjusted and we could how well made and set out it was with all shelves for storing wood, and a room for keeping the calves in at night. We then proceeded to (try) and make a necklace and a bracelet, which Sarah seemed to get the hang of more than me, as mine was taken from me quite quickly and finished by the Maasai. After this, pictures were allowed and the Maasai thought it was a great laugh to see themselves on camera. They then sang us many songs of themselves and we got to join in with the famous Maasai jumping. It was then our turn to sing some of our own songs to the Maasai, so we sang (of all songs) Yogi, Yogi Bear, and Brighton football chant that has become well known in camp.It was another experience that I will never forget on this trip. The whole 3 days was fantastic. Simple as.

On the way back we ended up leaving Alex in the supermarket where we stopped, thus leading to an almost colossal pile up in the middle of the road, with us in the middle. : D The next afternoon was one of chaos, but so much fun, for we had organised a sports day for Mbokomu Primary School, with events such as, 3 Legged Race, Cement Sack Race, Fling a Flip-Flop and Tug o' War. Me, Sarah and Alex were in charge of Tug o' War. Everything was under control until it was our time. It basically ended up with me, Tim, Ailsa, Sarah, and Jonny, randomly spaced along the rope, with the entire school on either end of the rope, pulling for all we were worth. I ended up face planting the floor, and being trampled into the dust by a stampede of kids, and receiving quite a few rope burns for my tumble as well, but the kids and, in all fairness, all of us enjoyed the afternoon as it was great fun.

It was then the last day of project for us. It was quite a scary moment to think that I had been working there for almost 8 weeks, and it had become a regular part of my life here. It's sad that we will see it only once more before we go. Me, Sarah, Lena, Fiona and Ella trekked up in the afternoon just to finish off what we had started in the morning, which ended up with me and Sarah, teaching all the kids, Yogi Bear, More Than A Feeling by Boston, and in return we were chased across the field with the kids shouting 'Josh and Sarah Jamba, Jamba, Jamba' which translates as 'Josh and Sarah Fart, Fart, Fart' I think its ok that my lasting legacy to an African school, that will be remembered is that of being the Jamba kid. : P

Last night, we also played 'Ring of Fire' at the bar, as it was the last weekend where it will just be the 3 monthers together. It was great fun, with Tim getting so drunk that he ended up trying to walk the wrong way out of our tent in the night, shouting at every person he saw, including when a young Asian lady fell over at the bar, he started singing 'I think I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese' and then 'She Fell Over!!'

At this very moment I am so excited, along with the rest of camp, as tomorrow we go on safari!!!!Serengeti and Ngorongo Crater!!! Hahahaha!! It so happens that my camera died yesterday, however after being chased by the police, with a mad taxi driver who refused to pull over for him when asked, I managed to find a film camera for safari. So the next blog will be full of stories about safari!!! Waited for this for so long, and I know its going to be AWESOME!!!!!

Much Love, Hakuna Matata

Josh

And So The Pace Begins To Quicken

2010-03-05T15:33:00.000Z

Hello People!!!

Welcome to another African blog, and I hope you enjoy it :)

This week has gone past quite slowly in some parts and very quickly in others. This will be our last full week of project now, we only have 4 more days of possible work at Mbokomu :O That fact, I still cant quite grasp, that this is the last month of our time in Tanzania, and soon I will be going on to Kenya, and a new country.

We had the new 1 monthers leave yesterday, which was very sad, because even though that had been in camp only a month they had made a big impression, and it was very sad to see them go. Kelsie, Georgie, Lissie and Matt, will be sorely missed. This did trigger the 3 monthers to say to each other if this is what we're like with people going after 1 month, how bad are we going to be when we have to say goodbye to eachother in under a month? It's quite a scary thought that soon I will be with another batch of people, with many of the friends I have made here going home, and I shall be remaining. It's difficult when people talk about going home as well, as I know that I have another 2 months ahead of me, after this trip, but its all part of the experience I guess.

On Sunday, we hop off to the wildlife camp, Ndarakwai, for 4 days. All the 3 monthers are INCREDIBLY excited about this trip as it means its the start of our journeys on safari and Zanzibar, and that we can see our first piece of African wildlife, having only seen chameleons, and galagos so far (which is still amazing, but I think elephants and rhinos are on a whole different level) Whilst in Ndarakwai, we shall be helping to create a man-made watering hole for the animals during the dry season, and also creating the infamous elephant dung paper, whilst also going on bush walks and visiting the Masaai, which I am very, very excited about : )

Not much has happened this week in terms of camp life, apart from some people getting horrendously drunk trying to complete the dreaded Uhuru challenge (10 bottles of Uhuru beer which is 17%. I managed 3.) and the chicken got confiscated by the Mamas.

Oh yeah, as well as this, a massive prank war has begun between the 2 coordinators in camp, and the guys tent. It started when we took every single cup in the kitchen a put it into Anderson's (the head of camp) bed. Him and the other coordinator, Elephas, then retailiated by moving all benches, chairs, bikes, and wheelbarrows into our tent, and decorating with toilet paper. We then retaliated by (thanks to stories that Dad told of his college days) reconstructed their entire room outside in the dining hall. I'm happy to say that we have been victorious in this prank war :D

Hope you liked it folks, much love, miss you all, until next time

Josh

Back To Work

2010-02-24T18:10:00.000Z

Jambo People!!

Another blog is about to be written from Africa, so please make yourself comfortable, and I will try my best to make this as interesting as possible :)

The week after our return from Kidia has flown by!Kidia already feels like an age ago!Very scary. We havn't actually done a lot in the last week that was very different from the first 5 weeks, although we have finished the roof on the dining hall and have almost completed plastering the outside. At the start we were told and, in all honesty, that where we are now would be the end of the trip, but the group has done brilliantly and we are well ahead of schedule :D

We did journey to an incredible market called Mimoria (My-moria) :D We were very excited as it sounds like Moria from Lord of the Rings : ) or that might have just been me, but it was great fun! We bartered and haggled for a whole day buying random stuff, and helping each other buy things for our fancy dress party that was last nite : ) The party itself had characters from a whole range of categories, such as Jimmy Saville, 2 Pimps, La Roux (is that how you spell it?), a Pineapple, Pirates, a Rasta Priest, and Cavemen and women. I myself went as Jesus. Our main fear was that out of all of the guys who was going to get beaten up first when we went out :D We first had to parade ourselves on a catwalk infront of 3 judges, and be daring, original, and brilliant. The daring was slightly over done when Matt, our resident pirate for the night got naked on the table! Hahaha! Was very funny! After this we journeyed to a local bar, where we met Sound Driver, a band from England, who had just returned from Kilimanjaro, after breaking the world record for playing at the highest altitude in the world. They played on top of Kili for 20 mins!! In the aid of a charity for children with cleft-lips, and they said that it was the fact that they had a reason to climb, that kept them going after the first 3 days. Well done to them. You can view the gig on www.chasingrainbowstour.com

Today started off a very somber occasion as the 2 monthers ,who we had arrived with, departed for Zanzibar and then home. It was very emotional thinking of how close we had all become in the last 2 months, and thinking about that final goodbye to people from Tanzania on the 2nd of April made it a very sad morning. They have left a huge hole in camp. Jordan, Suz, Liz, Maria and Rachel will be missed and seen again very soon in England.

News to come, me and 3 other guys from camp are running at 26 mile marathon on Sunday, called the Kilimanjaro Adventure Marathon. People think we are bonkers, but we are going to do our best even if we keel over, which in all fairness we probably will in the heat. Wish us luck.

Until next week, missing you all and much love

Josh

Up The Mountain and Back Down Again

2010-02-16T18:56:00.001Z

Hello, and welcome again to another blog from the great realm of Tanzania :)

Many adventures have happened since the last blog, which I finished literally seconds before going to Camp Kidia, a way up Mnt Kilimanjaro. What a place it was!

Camp Kidia, is located about 1000 feet up Kilimanjaro. Its one of many small villages located on the mountain side. This has good and bad points. Good because the view is INCREDIBLE!! You can see for miles and miles across the African plains all the way to Lake Manyara over 90 miles away. It's an awesome sight that takes your breath away. However, one of the downsides is that after walking 10 minutes down the road to get to Funguvu Primary School, where our project work was taking place, and after a hard days work, we had to trek back up the mountain. The road was incredibly steep, and the first nearly killed us, but it got easier as the week went on, and soon we found that we could walk up it with no trouble at all (or not as much trouble as the first day : ) Our accommodation was a small house on the mountain, with an amazing view, and (As we've grown to expect now) freezing cold showers. All the guys slept upstairs, in a room that soon was a pig sty (as many mothers would say) and to make things worse, on the first day one of the guys broke the flusher to the toilet, which was a hilarious, but smelly problem by the end of the week. I'm sorry to say that no girls entered our room for the entire week.

Our main job whilst working in Funguvu School, was to create an anti-erosion wall (a flash name for just a normal wall really) to stop the kitchen from falling down the mountain, creating doors for the kitchen, helping out the Mamas in the afternoon with everyday African life activities, and also teaching. We managed to complete the wall after nearly everybody, including myself took a tumble down the 6 foot trench we created to fill in with massive breeze blocks. The doors were also completed and look great, and as well as this teaching was FANTASTIC!! Much more fun than down at Mbokomu as the teacher helped us out, and was much better at English than his flat-land counter part.

In the afternoon, we 'tried' to help the Mamas of the village to the best of our ability with everyday activities, such as, harvesting maize, harvesting beans and bananas, ploughing some fields, collecting avocados (by any means) and cooking local food, and feeding livestock. It was great fun, with everyone throwing everything into the activities. During this time, me and one of the guys, Matt, got cornered by the Mamas, who decided to corn-row (?) our hair. I ended up looking like a white Snoop-Dog, and Matt looked how Jesus would look if he ever decided to have corn-rows in his hair. This was to the great amusement of the Mamas, and the rest of the group, and the laughs continued to the next day, when we pulled out the corn-rows and both looked like mad professors.

On the first day we also decided to organise a football match against a local team, and so everyday after work we trekked out to a field to play a game against different locals in preparation for this momentous match. We won every game, suffered many injuries, and in these games there were no rules. If the ball went down the mountain it was a throw. That was it. We then trekked for an hour on Sunday down to the mountain to play the locals, in the much anticipated match. Again in this game, there was a ref, but very few rules. It was a very fun game though, and great to be playing because I hadn't played in a long, long time before the game. I also ended up scoring, in both goals unfortunately, but I helped out enough to make up for the own goal.

As well as this, on Saturday, we journeyed on an hour and a half trek, down the mountain to go to a well renowned waterfall. It was supposed to be one of the most beautiful sites around Moshi, so we were very excited, although, as we were descending lower and lower into a massive valley, we tried not to think about the huge slog back up the valley side. The walk down the valley turned out to be amazing! The view as we descended became more and more incredible, giving you a clear idea of how the image of Jurassic Park and King Kong came to be, because it really felt like another world. It was practically a jungle trek! :D On the walk we encountered the 2nd most dangerous snake in East Africa: a Green Mamba. It was lying on the side of the road, and we approached cautiously, and with great excitement. Unfortunately, it was dead, no doubt killed by a local, but it was incredible to see the vivid green of the snake, in the wild rather than in a reptile house, and the traits of the mamba precede it, so it was still quite incredible to see one in the flesh.

The waterfall itself was MASSIVE! Much bigger than the previous one we had visited, which was about half the size of this monster in the valley. It was not so deep though, as it was not the rainy season, however Elefas our guide, and camp monitor, told us that it swelled to 3 times it's normal size in the rainy season. I was very frustrated at this point, as I'd realized my camera was out of power. One of the most annoying things in the world, when you see the greatest view you've ever seen in your life! Haha! After about 45 minutes at the waterfall, we began the assault on the valley side. I started at the back taking my time,and, slowly but surely, overtook everyone in front, although of course it wasn't a competition. It was a knackering climb, but it was quicker going up than down, as the path was very treacherous, and you had to concentrate to stay on your feet as you slipped and slithered your way down the mountain, with a truly colossal fall down the mountain if you went over the edge, and eventually we arrived back at our little house.

On the Sunday morning, before our match we also went to a local church. (This was not to pray for help in the forthcoming game, but to experience the local culture : )
It was incredible! In all fairness, we couldn't understand half of the sermon, but the singing that was in the church, was amazing! Very different from English churches. The music was full of happiness, and a vibrant nature that English churches lack, which I think should change, as it gets even people who are not sure of their beliefs into listening to what the ones who believe in God, are talking about. It was the type of music you truly associate with Africa, with a drum, and accapella (?) singing. I was very glad that I went, and the visit obviously worked as we won our football match 10-6.

We were sad to leave Kidia, but also keen for flat terrain, and clean clothes as none of us washed our 3 changes of clothes whilst up the mountain so, basically, we smelt horrific. We had an amazing Valentines Night in Club La Liga, and the majority of us ended up dancing on stage with the major East African music acts of the present day, that had come to perform at La Liga (La Liga is the most well known club in the north of Tanzania, which is also the richest part of Tanzania, so is incredibly popular)

Since then, we have thrown ourselves back into work at Mbokomu Primary School. Whilst we have been away, the rest of the group have put up the roof joists, and we are now ready to put on the rest of the roofing, which are the metal sheets. We have also plastered half of the outside of the dining hall, and stuck in 3 windows. Its coming along very nicely :D

Before the character analysis of the 3 month gappers, I must answer a couple of questions I received by letter from the grandparents, and hopefully it will be of interest to the rest of you to : ) They were keen to know the number of girls and boys in camp. The girls vastly outnumber the guys, with there being 11 guys, and 24 girls, however I am not complaining.

In terms of my own thoughts of the trip, I feel that its going frighteningly fast. In under 3 weeks we are going onto the next camp, Ndarakwai, (which means Place of Tall Trees in Swahili) and then the week after to the Serengeti, Ngorogoro Crater, and then Zanzibar. I cannot wait for this part of the trip! I have a feeling that the next 3 weeks will zip by, in the blink of an eye. If this is how fast my time in Tanzania is going by, when I'm staying in one place the majority of the time, doing the same thing, how fast will Kenya go by when I'm in a different place, doing different things, every week? Its incredible really.
I have also caught the bug of travelling as hundreds of ideas are going through my head for the next trip, to wherever.

On the other hand, I do miss people back home incredibly. Its very difficult, thinking about how much you can talk to you all, being incredibly busy, and at the same time not wanting to make yourself homesick, whilst wanting to talk to everyone, and not make you all feel as if I'm forgetting about you all. The last part is impossible so don't worry, but its very hard getting the mix right. Never had to deal with this kind of stuff before, but I'm trying : )

Thats it for now guys, as I'm being moaned at for being too long on the interweb by the rest of the group, as the this blog is HUUUUUUUGE. Until next time people, much love

Josh

One Month Down

2010-02-08T10:08:00.001Z

Hello again!

Apologies for the lateness of this update, which is down to the lack of internet last night.

A whole month has now passed since we arrived and started work in the realm of Tanzania. A whole MONTH! It really doesn't feel like a month, it feels more like what we have done is just one big blur. It feels as if we have been here for ages, yet it has gone incredibly quickly.

Last week I said that I would give an entire character analysis so that I could refer to people by names, and I could give you a rough idea of the politics and dynamics of camp life. I shall have to stick to the gappers doing 3 months, and 2 months that have been here from the start, as last Friday we had a mass incoming of more gappers, and there are about 38 of us now, and I don't know the newbies half as much as I do the rest so I am sticking to the original group. However, this is going to have to be delayed due to the fact that I am about to leave for the second of our camps, Kidia, in a hour. Many apologies peeps, but it will be ready next Tuesday.

News from this week. The dining hall up at the school is coming along at a rapid pace, with us already finishing plastering one side of the hall outside, and putting up 5 of the10 joists being used for the roof. It's still very hard work in the heat of the day, but it flies by, and it's very fun all the same. We have almost started working quicker than our supervisor, Jimmy, who has done this job for the last 10 years, and so he now only, very rarely, comments on passing judgment on our masterpieces of walls, and joists.

As well as this, the dynamics of camp have now changed. A lot. With the influx of a large number of new people into camp, everyone seems to have slightly reverted back to their, first week of arrival awkward selves. The majority of the newbies are also making it difficult to befriend them, and get to know them, by being very, very quiet, and hardly talking. This is understandable due to shyness, but according to some of the girls, the blank the original group, and hardly acknowledge them. On the other hand there are some great new characters in camp, such as, Emily (a very hippy, chillaxed chick), and Sam ( incredibly shy, but great fun once she feels comfortable talking to you) \
One of the problems I think is that, the original group, or many of the girls of the original group, are trying to hard to be friends with the new arrivals. I can imagine all of us being quite intimidating after being experienced in camp routine, and with all our inside jokes after being here for a month. I think the newbies need their own space, which I think they will get once we all disappear off to Camp Kidia in a bit, and then in that week they can get used to camp life without the pressures and constant presence of us.

Other news from camp, which was quite dramatic, the other night, we all journeyed out to Club La Liga on Saturday, to show it to the new arrivals. It was a great night until, we arrived back at camp to find 2 of the original 3 month gappers, being horrendously ill. There was only me and one other guy who was sober from the club, and so under the directions of others, tried to help the 2 drunkards. However, after a while the other girls started to wonder if the girls drinks had been spiked at the club, due to their constant sickiness and the suddeness of the change of state from sober, to totally gazeboed, whilst in the club. We tried to contact our camp leader, but he was still at the club looking after others, and so me and Sean, the other guy, mad the call of getting a taxi to take them to hospital to be safe rather than sorry. The hospital itself, was a very grim place, and would not have been out of place in SAW. In the end, the girls had to pay 50 000 Tshillings each for basically nothing, as they were just drunk. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but at the time we thought it would be better to be safe rather than sorry.

Life in Tanzania goes on much the same as it has this last month, and the local town, Moshi, is a typical local/tourist town. It is totally full of what people here call fly-catchers, locals who will befriend you whilst walking down the street and try their utmost to persuade to buy their goods, or come to their shop. This was by far the biggest culture shock so far whilst on this trip, as they will not leave you no matter what you do, or where you go, they will wait for you if you go into a shop and continue, unless you know the right Swahili words to disperse them away from you. Many of the other guys in camp use the word 'toca' which is basically, piss off, in Swahili, and this occasionally backfires forcing us to make a rapid escape in to one of the nearest taxis, to avoid the wroth of the locals.
Driving here is also crazy. I've been lucky enough to travel a bit, and see some crazy driving elsewhere in the world, but this really tops it. No seat belt's, people overtake wherever they want, on speed bumps, on roundabouts. The drivers have no concept of the fact that they might crash, and they drive without fear. As well as this, there are huge numbers of people crammed in vehicles. The other night we had to fit 40 people into a 20 seater truck to go out, and so we had people sitting, people sitting on the sitting, people standing, and people hanging on the back of the truck itself. On the way back from the club, one of the guys actually had to drive their taxi home for us, as the actual taxi driver was too drunk to drive. No lights on the roads, or on some cars, and also a corrupt police force, makes the roads a very dangerous place to be in Tanzania.

We are about to embark on the trip to Camp Kidia, where we shall stay until next Monday. Whilst there we shall be doing a lot of the same things as we are here at Mbokomu School, as well as helping out with some forestry work, and helping prepare food for the school kids whilst there. Everybody is looking forward to the trip, as it is time away from camp, and I think everybody needs a slight break away from the enclosed space of camp, and the same work over and over, which, hopefully, Kidia will provide.

Sorry this hasn't been up to the usual standard, but we are literally just about to leave for Kidia so it has had to be rushed, so many apologies. Also, just like to say thank you for all birthday messages, however you gave them, it was a great day, and also, the comments on the blog are brilliant so please keep it up because I love reading them.

Until next time, and much love

Josh

The Fun, The Frolics, The Pain, The Sadness, and The Love

2010-01-31T18:14:00.000Z

Greetings!!

Sorry it's been a slightly longer gap between blogs this week. We have had very little spare time lately, until today which has been the most chilled day you can think of, so now I am going to continue filling you in on our adventures and accidents in Africa.

Last week I think I finished talking about Tuleeni Orphanage, finishing some work up at the school, and it was the eve of our trip to Marangu, and a Chagga tribe, but firstly due to a personal request from an anonymous persona, whom I must reassure about the safety of Porky the Porcupine, who has so far evaded the claws of Simba (Also now known as Billy Ricky) and is doing fine in camp.With that done we can fill you in on the rest of the news from Tanzania.

The trip to Marangu, the waterfalls, the tunnels, the blacksmith and the Chagga was FANTASTIC!!! It was great to see all the climbers of Kilimanjaro embarking on the first part of their 9 day trek up the mountain. Many of us are so jealous that we are discussing climbing it in the future. However, it was a brief trip to Marangu, as we quickly moved on to the local Chagga village, with an additional blacksmith's. It was great to see how they coped with the lack of a forge, and their improvised bellows. I had a go at operating the bellows, but unfortunately I was terrible to the great amusement of the blacksmith. Many people bought magnificent hand-crafted spears, and jewelery from there. As well as this, we met a man who had caught a chameleon for us, which was great, as we had him on our hands, and he/she was fascinating to watch. However, because of the way the man treated him, and intented to keep him, and stuck him in a leather bag to take home, away from the chameleon's habitat, me and Stefan decided to buy him (Stefan did the actual buying) for 5000 Tshillings of the Tanzanian realm. The man was not happy, but we convinced him to give him to us, which he eventually did, and we then took him away and released him into the wild.

Next, we went down some tunnels where the Chagga people kept their entire livelihood's whilst at war with the Masai, for maybe weeks at a time. Now, many people ready this blog may have been on a school trip to the WWI trenches in Ypres with school. These tunnels were like the trenches on smaller, and much more extensive. Your view of the entrance to the tunnels was of a ladder extending down for about 7 feet, with a tiny entrance, roughly 2 feet high which you had to crawl through to continue into the tunnels with no lights. For the first time ever I felt slightly claustrophobic about these tunnels. However, once we had descended I was very glad that I had not backed out at the last. They are very extensive and cleverly built, to be undetectable to the attacking Masai, and it was very easy to imagine yourself as a Chagga living underground. It was warm, and it was basically a small village underground, but one of the downsides was that you could not stand. There were no lights, and one of our guides down there said that he could travel through the tunnels without lights, an idea which did scare me, with the idea of getting lost down there (however our guide had been down over 1000 times which gave him the slight advantage)

Lastly, we journeyed on to a waterfall, which was truly spectacular. Having never seen a waterfall, let alone swum in the pool beneath it, it was very surreal actually frolicking around under it. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The natural beauty and atmosphere of the place was only increased with our rendition of the video of Peter Andre's 'Mysterious Girl' which has been videoed in itself and I'm sure it will be on Facebook for all the ladies (and gents) to view at their pleasure.

Now, onto more serious and interesting topics. Work has continued up at Mbokomu Primary as usual, with great leaps towards finishing plastering the inside of the dining hall. It is just the finishing touches, along with the floor to be cemented, then we are able to move onto the outside of the hall. In addition to this, we have started building the joists to finish the roof off. It's been great work, sawing, hammering, and great for uniting the group itself. We have done 6 joists so far and must do another 4 to then lift up and fit into place for the completion of the roof. I have not taught this week, as other members in camp wanted the chance, but I am teaching a class tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to.

We visited Tuleeni Orphanage again yesterday, which I think went even better than the first trip. There were fewer children about, but it made it much more intimate with the children. However, it was also much sadder than the first time, due to a small 5 year old girl named Vie, who we had not met on our previous trip because she has been in hospital with malaria. She is undertaking ongoing treatment, but she broke our hearts at how fragile she was. It is not fair for her to have malaria when a mosquito net costs 90p to make in Tanzania.We fell in love with her so much that we donated money to provide some more mosquito nets for the kids, but it was a very difficult time, and every returned to camp quietly, each of us contemplating Vie's fate, and more respectful of our own mosquito nets. No matter how annoying they are at night wrapping round your legs, and sticking to your face, they save lives, which I think is a good enough reason for me to continue to use it.

A big news story on camp life this weeks is that relationships have been sprouting up all over the place. We have 3 couples, and another 2 potential couples that have appeared. This has, surprisingly, not caused any major problems (so far) although there was a slight tiff between girls over a certain lad, but that has been sorted now : ) On the other hand, tensions and arguments are running high between people mainly on the work side of things, with people who work hard all day long, feeling slightly peeved at the people who are not pulling their weight, or not working at all every day, or leave half an hour earlier than the rest of the group. This issue has been raised, and this week should hopefully see an improvement.

There are also tensions between characters in camp, with differing personalities, and opinions (which is obvious), but they shall have to wait until the next blog entry, which will have a full character analysis.

I'm loving every minute of this trip, it's awesome, showers are still cold, food is great, I am yet to have too many bites, although yesterday I did get seriously burnt all down my front in the midday sun (very painful) but it's already turning brown : ) hahaha!!!

Until next time peers

Josh

Life So Far

2010-01-21T14:17:00.000Z

Hello again!
Almost 2 weeks have passed now since I landed in Africa, and so more news on escapades and adventures of life in Africa must be made public to the wider world, and so here it goes.

I think last time on the blog I finished with stories on porcupines and ice cold showers (it's like being an ice cube, in a fridge, at the North Pole), and many more events have happened since my last blog. Porky the Porcupine is our resident camp pet, and he must avoid the daily prowling of the local cat aptly named Simba. So far Porky is uninjured, and fine but we shall have to see how the events unfold. The showers themselves have improved vastly since our first week. From having to lie on the floor under an ice cold tap in the morning, which is still cold no matter what people say, we have improved to standing under an ice cold shower, which is actually a shower not a tap :)

Now after that we can get into the events of the last week. The end of last week, passed very quickly, with the whole camp breaking their backs to get the inside of a classroom we are refurbishing finished. I am proud to say we have finished the classroom, and are now focusing the majority of our attention onto the cementing and plastering of the half-finished dining hall we are hoping to complete whilst here. We have succeeded in building a disabled entrance into the hall, as well as cementing all of the inside, and we have now moved onto the outside of the hall.

The biggest problem with this is that there is nothing under which to hide from the sun. It is HOT! I knew that Africa would be mildly baking, but every afternoon when we return to work after lunch, the temperature rockets to at least 35 degrees and its incredibly hard to keep up your work rate under that heat. I have burnt only twice so far, since I have been working. My neck, which is now nicely brown, and my hands which are also brown.

Although we knew the importance of drinking plenty of water whilst here, many people have had to return to camp due to dehydration, and sun stroke. The rest of us have doubled the amount of water we drink now, and so for now we are safe.

The weekend was the hardest part of the trip since the first night. With no work to do, and very little to occupy the mind, my imagination wandered back home, with thoughts of family, friends and how much I was missing them. This was Saturday, and so on Sunday I was determined to be active enough to take my mind off England, and back into Africa. Therefore, although Sunday was tough with half the camp going off to Camp Kidia, up Kilimanjaro for a week, we decided to visit a local orphanage called Tuleeni Orphanage Centre. It was a very emotional day for everyone left in camp. The children there range from 4 to 18 years old. There are 48 of them and 12 beds. Many of them have lost their parents to disease, however only one to AIDS, and the child herself was HIV negative which was brilliant, but very difficult.

The children there told us of Radio 1 who had apparently visited the camp whilst climbing Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief. It was a strange, out of the blue connection to home. The great news is though that the majority of the children are working hard at school, some even studying to go onto to university. I was persuaded by the kids to buy a traditional African style shirt handmade by the children, which I thought made me blend in like a local, but the children found hilariously funny.

This week things have picked up pace and emotions are in check, so much so that I am deeply into the African way of life now, and it is easier now to stop myself thinking of home. Work has continued on the dining hall, and another classroom. I have also managed to teach English to a class of 6 year olds everyday since I have arrived which, although it means waking at the crack of dawn, is extremely fun, satisfying, and also allows you to have a wicked view of Kilimanjaro as you walk up to the school :D

Yesterday we journeyed to a local market, where you could buy literally ANYTHING. Food, clothes, cars, hats, bracelets, animals, you name it, it had it. All of us decided to buy some custom made clothes for ourselves. I bought 2 pairs of shorts and 2 pairs of trousers which shall be ready on Saturday. Hopefully with them and my shirt I should become one of the locals :D

On Saturday, we are going to visit a tribal village of the Chagga people, go to Marangu Gate, the gateway to Kilimanjaro, and some waterfalls which sounds like a very relaxing day after a tough week at work, and so until next week :)

Josh

P.S. I have still left lots of stuff out unfortunately because I'm being nagged by the people outside to get off, so I apologize for the quality of the writing. Hakuna Matata.

Arrival and So On

2010-01-16T10:57:00.000Z

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

Arrival and So On

Jambo! First blog since arriving in Africa, have been pretty busy so I'm going to have to try and remember everything, which may be a problem :)

Well the first day and night I was really quite terrified, upset, and down. I felt miles from home, and I wanted to be with the people that I love back home, it would be so much easier to turn around then stay and push through the pain and churning emotions I felt. In the airport I had to call Mum and Dad for reassurance because I was genuinely terrified and already missing them even they left about 40 minutes ago. I was a stranger, amongst strangers and did not like it.

On the plane I read the many letters and cards which people had given me to sustain me through those tough periods of the trip, and the made cry. I cannot say how proud I am to have the people I love right now as my friends and it moves me so deeply to say that they are my best friends.

It was because of this, and the meeting with strangers that made me nearly break down in camp on the first night. I wanted to go home. It was terrible.

However, the next day everything changed. I spoke to the staff on camp, Elefas, Anderson, and Jackson, and they said that it was very common, and just keep busy to keep your mind off home. It helped but not enough.

We then journeyed into the local town of Moshi, and there we received the full initiation into Tanzanian culture. People haggling, trying to pickpocket you, making friends with you as you were walking along the street. It was all a big shock.

Whilst in town I bought a SIM card to talk to Mum and Dad, and the moment I did everything was fine, although I was choking on the phone, after the call the very fact that I knew I could speak to anyone, but especially Mum and Dad made me feel so much better, and I was perfectly fine, and still am in case your wondering :D

We started the school project yesterday at Mbokumo Primary school, and it was brilliant! I have never seen such friendly people! they shout 'Jambo Jambo!' and hold your hand, help you work, make you laugh. They are fantastic. Our first job was to shift 3 and a half tonnes of bricks from under shrubbery to the dining hall-to be. This turned out to be more eventful than expected, so whilst the girls were clearing shrubbery, and painting walls inside, the fellas journeyed outside to lift the bricks. Little did we know what lay beneath them, and awaited our arrival. After about 20 minutes the first insects began to appear: huge crickets, and a couple of spiders showed themselves, however it was to be the next arrivals that would shock us. A tarantula, two giant poisonous millipedes, three scorpions and a venomous snake emerged from the undergrowth. We were in no danger for we had been warned of this, so it was very interesting to see Elefas pick them up and show them to us.

The project itself is well underway. All bricks are removed, a classroom is plastered and painted, a wall is cemented and plastering is underway. Teaching has all begun, and is much harder than expected. The language barrier even with the teachers is a real problem, so we have had to knuckle down and learn as much Swahili as possible, as fast as possible. I teach again tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock (oh my god) on the past, present and future tenses, along with others doing the same with separate classes. Although, however hard it is, the kids really want to learn, and they have so far as we spent over an 2 hours defining the use and definition of the words 'For' and 'Since'.

The people I'm with in camp....how to describe them? I could not have been luckier with finding a nicer bunch of people. They are fantastic! It was one of my biggest fears on the trip, and was unfounded. They have made me feel much better about the whole trip, length of time (As thinking about how long your here for once your here is utterly terrifying), homesickness, and struggling through the 32 degree heat we work in. There are 8 boys, and 17 girls (we are vastly outnumbered) but we all get along great, maybe it wont always be like that I'm sure, but for now I'm very happy to be here in Tanzania.

I will have to save the stories about the ice cold showers, and vicious porcupines for another time, so see you later. :)

Hakuna Matata

Josh

The Day of Departure

2010-01-08T11:10:00.000Z

Well this is my first ever blog, and the day on which I finally leave for Africa after so many months of preparation. Bit of blend of emotions at the moment: last night was very sad, spent the evening with the parents, but I knew that the night would be the worst, when my emotions would really come out, which they did and I was very sad to be leaving the comfort, and security of my home.

I think that I really need to get going, as sitting around waiting to leave is killing me. It's always better to be doing, and after months of work to be waiting around now thinking about what lies ahead, it really is quite daunting.

However, I had the best send off Wednesday night, with the greatest friends anyone could ever ask for. The fact that I had the chance to see everyone before I left, was brilliant. These friends are my rock, and along with my mum and dad, have kept the dream of Africa ticking along, and so I thank them so much for that.

That's it for my first blog now, so I would just like to say thank you to all the people who made this possible, either with donations, creating opportunities for me, or just by sticking by me through thick and thin, e.g. walking 90 miles to Brighton with a one Tom Newman. Thank you all of you. You have made this happen.

Josh