Maasai Mara

Anyone who has ever watched a David Attenborough documentary or taken even a passing interest in the natural world must have heard of the Maasai Mara and the Great Migration - the largest migration of land mammals anywhere in the world, where almost two million wildebeest move from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara in Kenya, and back again.

Eddie and I have just returned from a three day trip to see just that, and despite all the hype I can honestly say it was incredible and completely lived up to its reputation. On our first evening we saw two lionesses with three cubs, and that was just the first of several lion sightings:

On our second day we also saw a cheetah, idling nonchalantly by the wildebeest as if it just happened to have stumbled on them by chance. Don't be fooled Wildebeest! We know his game!

We caught a glimpse of a leopard tucking into a dik-dik (a very small and very cute antelope). Leopards are incredibly difficult to spot, partly because they are the only African big cat that climbs trees:

And of course, where there are well-fed big cats the vultures are never far behind. For some reason I imagine this vulture is saying: "Where there's muck there's brass lad."

We were incredibly lucky and got to see a wildebeest river crossing. We stopped on top of a hill for lunch and a friend spotted the wildebeest massing on the opposite side of the Mara river. Our guide rushed us back into the van and tore down the hill at break-neck speed to get us there just in time. He told us later that people normally wait days to see a crossing.

As suddenly as the crossing started it came to a halt and when the river cleared we could see why - a huge crocodile surfaced and a little later we could see it had a wildebeest.

After all that bloodthirsty action it was lovely to hang out with the elephants for a while:

On our final morning we got up early to be in the park at first light and it was completely worth it. We came across two fresh lion kills covered in vultures, then watched this hyena muscle in on the action (after a lot of looking over his shoulder to check the lions really had left).

Then a little further on we saw a lion with it's own kill. When you see lions and their cubs they seem playful and kind of cuddly, like overgrown domestic cats. When you see the look in this lion's eyes though you know they are predators first and foremost.

For most of our trip the weather was our only real disappointment, as it was cold and damp, which made it hard to photograph the beauty of the landscape. On our final morning, though, Eddie managed to get this shot:

Beautiful, but I'm still not quite sure it manages to convey the vastness of the Mara. It's a cliche, but it felt good to see that there is still this huge, untamed place out there. We couldn't help wondering how long it will continue to feel like that though. The picture below shows the lions surrounded by mini-vans and tourists. Our guides insisted that the animals aren't bothered by all the attention but we remained unconvinced. This kind of mass-tourism must ultimately impact on how the animals behave.

What's more, you only have to step outside the park gates and into the small Maasai towns and suddenly you're surrounded by plastic bags and litter - the 'real' Kenya. And while you still see plenty of Maasai guys herding cattle and living in traditional manyatta (huts), you also see Maasai people flogging bead work to the tourists and asking for money for photographs. Change is creeping in, but for better or worse the lesser-spotted wazungu will continue to be a regular sight at the Mara for some time to come:

If anyone is considering a trip to the Mara we used Moriah Safaris. Their rates are extremely good value, especially for groups, and they can be contacted on info@moriahafricantour.com/ +254 (0)20 3578473/ +254 (0)722 755825. We stayed at Sidai Camp.

Waiting for Kenyans

One of the qualities you are selected on as a VSO volunteer is flexibility, and Allys and I can both attest that ours has been sorely tested by our volunteering experience.

If we're honest, we haven't helped ourselves by persisting in our Northern European addiction to promptness and punctuality, wherever possible. These are not qualities that are valued in Kenya. Arrangements, social and business, begin at the whim of the tardiest attendee, much to the chagrin of the wazungu and the attendant bemusement of the Kenyans. There is a Groundhog Day quality to Kenya testing our patience, the script feels so well worn by now. The ritual goes like this...

At a pre-arranged time and place, the stage is set and I make the first fateful call:

"Where are you?" I ask tentatively.

The respondent usually returns with surprise, "Oh, you are there? Already?"

(Like somehow it’s your fault because you turned up; that is, if he or she has even remembered the meeting).

"Yes, yes, I am at the pre-arranged place at the appointed time, which we both confirmed in writing and verbally."

At this point the excuses are either not-forthcoming or kept as vague as possible because really, at this stage of the game, you should know the lines by now. Here I make my second mistake, and what surprises me is that I can’t stop myself saying it:

"How long will you be?"

It must be that I am a willing slave to time and acknowledge its hold and power over me. Not so, for the mighty Kenyan! He or she laughs in the face of chronological and geographic inconvenience as we will see in the following:

"30 minutes."

It is the answer I have learned to expect and for which I have grown a deep, passionate hatred. The world is a small place, and I understand that we all live in a global village but based on the conversations I have had, it sometimes seems that Kenyans believe no two points on this planet are more than 30 minutes apart. Clearly, they don't believe this: they just know that 30 minutes is the maximum amount of lateness a person can withstand without them getting angry.

The allotted 30 minutes pass and, succumbing to my role in the comedy of errors, I call again. Usually I don't get an answer or if I do it is the noise of a matatu which makes conversation unintelligible. It is at this point that I begin to suspect that I have inadvertently been taking part in a production of Waiting for Godot. My thoughts turn to the existential: If a mzungu is not waiting, can a Kenyan travel? I may have become Schrodinger's cat stuck in a Koan.

If, by some fluke of matatu-nature, I can manage to sustain a conversation of sorts with my tardy compadre, it will probably go something like this:

"Sema." (Means "speak").

"Hi. You said you would be here in thirty minutes, but you are not here."

"What?"

"Where are you? Uko wapi? Thirty minutes has passed."

"I am coming, but the jam is very bad." (Kenyan hangs up - Kenyan phone etiquette has no place for the goodbyes we spend so much time on).

What was that? The traffic is bad? In Nairobi? I lived here a matter of weeks before realising that the traffic is always bad in Nairobi (except possibly on Sunday mornings when everyone is in Church). Yet still it is OK to blame the traffic here and sound surprised that there are traffic jams, as if they are some wanton and incomprehensible act of god, rather than the same crazy standstills that happen every day.

After a certain point, I begin to realise that it does not matter how long I am kept waiting, only that I continue to do so. A psychiatrist might say I'm addicted to waiting. Well, my British passport may suggest a propensity for queuing but queuing implies order and progress. A queue of one is not a queue, I say to myself. I have begun talking to myself; no good will come of this.

And now the suggestion becomes that I must break the cycle to stop this Sisyphean nightmare. But if I stop waiting now, I am only acknowledging the prolonged nature of my wait; I will still be waiting even if I am doing other things.

But, you tell me, you must develop coping strategies to minimise the waiting period. Schedule the meeting for an hour earlier than you expect it to start, make sure you have things to do, carry a book, meet somewhere you can have a sit down and a coffee. My dear reader, I sit here writing this in a coffee shop, have finished my book and my second cup of coffee and I cannot remember a time when I was not waiting.

It becomes clear that no matter what I do, the waiting is always waiting for me. It is my shadow, it stalks around every event, it knows my diary, it doesn’t even need me to slip up because it knows someone else will. And soon, I begin to think that I am always waiting.

“This must be what purgatory is like, the great waiting room in the sky”... ...I'm not sure if I said that out loud; anxious I look around, “I must try to look normal,” says the only white guy in the coffee shop.

Ultimately, I am vindicated as all meetings eventually begin, and all I have lost is some small portion of my sanity and some hours of my life. However, I find that, at the end, we have scheduled in another meeting. It will be different this time, I tell myself: I have to believe.

As a further example, last Saturday (yes, Saturday!), Allys held a workshop in a small town called Kiambu. Knowing everyone would be late she told her colleague three or four times that it would be very important for everyone to arrive at 9am so that they could finish by 3pm. Having really emphasised the importance of timeliness she arrived at 9.30am, thinking people might arrive around 10am so she would have time to set up. At 10.30am only five of 12 people had arrived and three of them disappeared to run errands. At 11am the meeting started.

All you can do at that point is shrug with resignation and re-schedule your afternoon's plans. Except, wait for the punchline, come 3pm everyone begins fidgeting and looking annoyed. At 3.30pm one lady pipes up: "Will we be much longer only, you see, the time." So it is OK to be kept waiting for two hours, but not to over-run. All the feedback Allys received said she should have allowed more time for the training as it over-ran. No mention of the two hour wait to get started! Lesson learned: the training will last from 9am-5.30pm. Or some hours within that time frame.

But why the wait at all? Is it an organizationally poor culture? As Mediterraneans are perhaps quick to anger and Anglo-Saxons quick to drink?

Firstly, it is important to recognise that with a poor transport infrastructure, and we've mentioned matatus, it can take people a long time to travel, particularly from rural locations. At Allys' meeting on Saturday she was waiting for a group of women, most of whom will have had to do the washing (by hand of course), organise childcare, feed the goats, get breakfast for the kids and palm off a grumpy husband before being able to even board a matatu on a Saturday morning. Sometimes they skip the matatu and just walk to save money. Many people work two jobs and women bear the full weight of household chores, which are far more time-consuming than at home - not only without dishwashers, microwaves and washing machines, but often without running water and with only sporadic electricity.

That said, things do seem to just happen here: no plan, no briefing. Often we are told 'just come, just come' as if the locals are speaking to small children who don't understand the implicit nature of Kenyan society (and let's face it, they're right about that). Prayers will start proceedings, everybody will speak, no-one's word will be questioned, tea will be taken and definitive action will be vague. As Kenyan's go about their days, they cannot pass anybody they know without stopping to greet them and enquire about their well-being and the well-being of their family, and their cattle, and their work, and their home. It is no wonder punctuality is not on anyone's radar.

To follow, culturally it is very difficult to tell people no or to communicate anything which may disappoint them (hence the recurrent "I'll be there in 30 minutes" nightmare). To somebody used to being communicated with in a very direct and unemotional manner this can take some getting used to. Our culture says "deliver bad news swiftly and apologise - do not bullshit"; Kenyan culture says "let us all gloss over this small inconvenience, particularly if it has been caused by someone important, and move on". Most volunteers will at some point during their stay be silently screaming for somebody to say what they mean or tell them a direct "no". We will all be waiting a long time.

Things I could have done while Kenya kept me waiting:

• Read War and Peace about five times
• Watched all of Das Boat
• Mastered chess
• Become a ninja
• Visited the moon
• Climbed Everest
• Tamed an Orca
• Swum to Cuba with and without a shark cage

Radio Radio

We've talked a little bit about music in Kenya but there's plenty to be said about radio stations too. BBC World Service broadcasts across Kenya in FM; the Swahili sections sound like someone speaking Italian and we aren't sure if that is supposed to be the received pronounciation of Swahili. Then there are your gospel stations and your reggae stations and your smooth luuurve stations, but if you get on a matatu chances are you get a bit of Classic FM.

Classic FM may not be the most listened to station in Kenya but I can guarantee it is the most talked about. As we've mentioned before it is not the Classic FM of the UK; by Classic it means 90s pop and R&B. Songs are on high rotation and the playlist only changes when the CD gets broke. It makes you yearn for the return of the cassette tape.

But where Classic FM really comes into its own is its programming, featuring Maina Kageni n King'ang'i in the morning. Maina Kageni's show is a mixture of advertorial and relationship advice, and it's in the advice area where the shows takes off. Maina will usually start the topic with a 'so, I was talking to some guys and they said (insert something completely objectionable by liberal western standards) is ok, what do you guys think?

Previous topics have included:

• If your man leaves you, if he comes back do you let him? Here, so many women called to say that their men disappeared for months if not years at a time, and they let them come back into their lives.
• If your man has an affair should you take him back? Again men will call saying it is the way of men to have affairs and women will call saying God wants her and her man to be together.
• A particularly objectionable topic recently was, is it really completely unforgivable for a man to hit a woman, or can you both get over it?

Usually Maina will openly call callers crazy, and King'ang'i will usually support the topic (through jokes in Swahili I don't quite get). King'ang'i is the side-kick on the show and portrays the traditional Kenyan man, and we are never sure whether he is sending up the traditional Kenyan man or just playing for laughs, which makes it difficult to say whether or not the show is challenging or supporting current sexual politics in Kenya.

The advertorial section of Classic FM in the morning is also pretty special. We are all used to the radio adverts and they sound familiar here. In fact, they all sound like they have been recorded in the UK by minor celebs, so we feel right at home. But it's when Maina is hawking for the man that things get good.

At this point in the proceedings, I imagine Maina leaning into the mike when he says, 'Listen, guys, today I am going to tell you about the best bank in the world, Standard Chartered. I mean these guys really know how to do banking, you are a fool if you bank with anyone else'. Effusive does not begin to describe his remonstrations: he clearly has a love for this particular bank that goes beyond the normal fiduciary relationship. As he continues his love note to the corporate world, he usually throws in an anecdote: 'I went into Standard Chartered the other day and, man, I opened an account in less than 5 minutes and I got an account that is paying 8%! I mean 8%, can you believe it? At this time and with this inflation? I was like, wow! I mean wow! These guys at Standard Chartered are really doing something for the ordinary wananchi, you know? So guys, I am giving the first caller 5000 bob to open an account with Standard Chartered'.

Knocked over by this account, I would be surprised if even the most laid-back listener would not want to open account with Standard Chartered. But hold still, my pecuniary chum, a word in your ear; Maina was saying exactly the same about Barclays bank the week before! And week after week, Maina finds a new company to love and forgets the last, while we rack up bank accounts, mobile phones and hotel bills (and our "loveable" Maina racks up enormous pay offs, of course).

The other show that is the subject of conversation across the country is Busted, a radio version of the American show Cheaters. Cheaters is a show where cheating partners are caught with their paramours on camera and confronted by the cuckolded, all for your viewing delight. Bask in the misery of your fellow man! Cheer as a cheater is punched in the face! It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the pinnacle of human achievement.

In the Kenyan radio version, a listener will call in with suspicions that their husband/ wife/ partner is cheating on them, and into the action flies Busted presenter Ciku to try and use a cunning telephone call to catch out the potential toe-rag (in fact, a while back Ciku caught out her own boyfriend live on air). To do this she almost invariably puts on her affected British accent because every single Kenyan seems to be fooled by an affected British accent. At least I've figured out how Kenya remained a colony for so long.

Anyway, I digress, so Ciku (and her preposterous British accent) calls the suspect with a prize of a weekend away or a dinner/party invitation, which for some reason nobody ever suspects might be a bit fishy, even though the show has been running for years. The suspect is then asked if they have anybody they would like to bring to this Macguffin, at which point our suspect passes or fails his or her test and the call is forwarded directly to his/ her partner who will give apologies for doubting their relationship, or verbal tirades and abuse for the infidelity.

It is this section that provides the mirth and merriment for the listenership, as well as finding out the different strategies that people take. First and most straightforward strategy is the 'begging for mercy'; second strategy is the 'it wasn't me' strategy, its all a complete misunderstanding; third strategy is, yes, but I love you more, it all ends now. It all plays out like Blind Date in reverse.

Here are some episodes of Busted for your listening pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPLICO8BN6c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmXAhNv-q0M&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAqdqrNr73Q&feature=related

And Busted has even spawned an industry of people trying to catch cheating spouses:
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000040732&cid=4&

The Working Week

Back in Nairobi, back in our little flat in South B, Allys and I are now commuting in to work together and working in the same office. It should be sitcom gold or a recipe for a domestic disaster, but so far so good.

KAIH is an advocacy organisation at heart not a microfinance organisation, but their members are amongst the most poor and dispossessed in Kenyan society precisely because they are the parent or guardian of a person with an intellectual disability. Families disown them, mothers or fathers or sometimes both run away, many communities reject them because they believe God has cursed the child and its family. Many schools don't have the capacity or willingness to teach children with any form of disability, forcing children and parents and guardians to remain at home getting by on the most basic subsistence lifestyle.

So in this situation, whilst KAIH performs excellently in the field of advocacy, its members have challenged KAIH to help them in the area of economic empowerment. KAIH is a small organisation with not many resources but has received a small amount of funding to start a microfinance project from the National Council for Persons with Disability (NCPWD). The project is called KAIH Family, because each group works together like a family - and I don’t mean a sitcom-style-bickering and overblown-feuds type family, but people working together and looking out for each other’s best interests, which is enough to put a smile on this cynical, jaded British banker. Most of these groups want to work together on income generating activities that persons with an intellectually disability can take part in: farming projects such as pig, goat and rabbit rearing are all popular.

Pig rearing project, Ndmberi, Kiambu

KAIH Family will be launching across 5 of KAIH’s branches, Nyeri, Migori, Siaya, Kiambu, and Nairobi, which is great from a personal perspective as I will get to visit all these areas quite a bit. Right now, each of those regions has a branch co-ordinator and a regional officer who are excellent at spreading the word of KAIH as an advocacy group, and helping parents organise themselves into support groups. Soon, we will be turning them into microfinance professionals. They will have to deliver a financial literacy and business skills training program to people who have never had a bank account, never saved and never taken a loan. They will have to administer loans, carry out financial assessments and collect debt. There is plenty of enthusiasm from the regions for all this but quite a skills gap which we will bridge together in the coming months.

Goat rearing project, Nyeri

At the national office, we are working to make sure that as an organisation we lend responsibly and effectively, as the sustainability of this project is at its core. Luckily, help is on the way: we are getting advice on our management information system from Ricky, a volunteer based in Kisumu, and the NCPWD are helping us by training some of our regional officers to become financial literacy trainers, both of which represented huge tasks themselves and each could have been a stand-alone volunteer placement.

Unusually for a volunteering placement, there are a whole range of concrete deliverables that need to be in place before I go, which is a huge plus. However, I have to temper my excitement as there are so many challenges and constraints. KAIH is an enthusiasm-rich but resource-poor organisation: every shilling needs to go to loans for the parent support groups, people are very short on time so training and processes are going to be difficult to implement. With all that in the mix, my working week is, as a good friend mine once said: 10% work, 10% hope, 80% frustration.

Goodbyes & Hellos

In the last couple of weeks we have been saying goodbye to a few volunteers who have come to the end of their placements. And while our (and in particular, my) adventure has just restarted we have definitely been reminded that the adventure will come to an end. New volunteers have also arrived starting their adventure, with the same fears, excitement and nerves that we had when we arrived, and that has reminded us of the beginning.

When you arrive as a volunteer, you are thrust into a volunteer community full of people who know the country, the language and each other. You are the person arriving late to the party with your four-pack of lager: the music stops and everyone turns to look at you; they’ve all been introduced and you need to make your way around the room, forgetting names and stepping on toes. As you settle in, all that is forgotten and you are just in the party, glad to have other people in the same situation who can buy you a beer , you can turn to for advice, whose hospitality you can abuse, share skills and experience you can take advantage of .

The volunteer network is the go-to place for tips on good bars, restaurants and tour operators, and in our experience it has been invaluable. Beyond that, the volunteers around you become your friends because they have made the same choices as you, and they are the only people who can share the frustration of the culture clash and the despair of development work, all over the aforementioned beer.

Soon there is the next batch of volunteers who are in the same situation, and you think to yourself ‘but they are here so soon, I don’t know anything yet, I have no knowledge to share,’ but you have already forgotten the reassurance of seeing volunteers without the nervousness and fear of having coming straight off the plane.

And then people start leaving: the people who bought you a beer , helped you, organised the trips, and shared their temporary home. They leave back to the four corners of the earth and you realise your world has become bigger again, filled with places you hadn’t heard of before and you need to start working on your air miles. It's sad watching friends start to drift back to their "old" (never-to-be-the-same-again) lives and leaving you behind.

It also makes you realise that somehow you have become an "old hand", despite feeling like you probably have fewer certainties than when you started, and that you have only just begun to glimpse how much more there is to know, understand and try to fix. As the "Big Kids" head home an odd kind of responsibility for the VSO team sets in.


There is still much more of the adventure, many more frustrations and beer to be had but the carousel of volunteers keeps turning, people get on and people get off, one day it’ll be your turn to get off. It is dawning on us that we may need a plan.

A letter to Bristol

Last week Ed and I traveled to the small town of Mukurwe-ini, Nyeri County, in Kenya's Central Highlands, to deliver training to KAIH parent support groups in the area. Sandwiched between the Aberdares and the foothills of Mount Kenya, the area is all lush green hillsides, rich red soil and cool, damp mist: Kenya's highlands are the polar opposite of the haunting images all over the news from drought-stricken Northern Kenya.

I arrived a day earlier than Ed as I had planned a whole day's workshop introducing communications to representatives from the parent support groups. Because this branch of KAIH is called KAIH Nyeri I (not unnaturally) assumed I would be going to Nyeri, and only found out after I had left town on the Nyeri bus that I was going the wrong way. I kicked myself for a while because this mistake falls into the rookie category of "failing to ask the right question" - I should never have asked my colleagues, "how do I get to Nyeri?", I should have asked, "where am I going?". Just when you think you have Kenya all sorted out... Anyway, with some manouvreing the regional coordinator (a lovely man by the name of Erastus) helped me get back on track and (after a scramble up a hill) we arrived.

Of course I had told Erastus that I would arrive at 11am, so the programme he circulated started from 8.30am. And of course I had requested a small group of no more than 12 people who should all be interested in communications and have reasonable English, so when I arrived there were 25 people, many of whom thought I was there to talk about how to communicate with children with severe intellectual disabilities, and some of whom spoke only limited English.

Still I gave it a shot, and at least I managed to get some laughs during the role play exercises when I pretended to be a village chief. I may even have got one or two converts and one lady, a teacher, said to me at the end of the day, "now I know how to speak to journalists!". The English part of my brain is still not sure whether to be pleased or terrified by that. The photo shows the group standing outside the Greek Orthodox Church where we held the training. This was the first time I had delivered the workshop and I felt there was a lot of room for improvement on my side, but at least I've made a start (after nine months).

Meanwhile Eddie had arranged to leave Nairobi with our colleague, Evans, at 2pm, so of course they didn't set off until gone 5pm and arrived after dark. Work trips in the UK for me mean Travel Lodges, mediocre food and (if you're very lucky) a small glass of house merlot. In contrast, Erastus had arranged for us to stay in a bird sanctuary. While the accommodation was fairly basic, there were hot showers and the lovely environment was a real bonus.

The following morning we began our visits to the parent groups, where I would be introducing grassroots communications (essentially encouraging the groups to seek out and co-opt key stakeholders at the local level). Ed would be introducing the micro-finance project, KAIH Family, to be followed up by his colleague Evans explaining in detail in the local language, Kikuyu.

As you can see, it's a very different environment from the kind of places where we're used to delivering presentations; it's certainly the first time my ramblings about stakeholder engagement have been interrupted by a cockerel, at any rate. While the people here are in much better circumstances than communities further North (the farmland is good and they've had some rain this year, so they have food to eat), poverty is still a serious issue and many parents struggle to balance caring for a seriously disabled child with the need to farm their land or go to work. The KAIH Family project will include training on business skills to help this community make the most of their resources.

The area is remote so public transport has its own quirks too. On some routes even matatus take too long to fill (they won't leave the stage until every seat is taken, and then some) so instead you see battered-old five seater estate cars acting as a halfway house between a bus and a taxi. Most have cracked windscreens, limited suspension and dented bodywork, and they cram and wedge passengers in a way that makes matatus seem conservative. It wasn't uncommon to see three people in the boot, four across the rear seats, two sharing the front passenger seat and two sharing the driver's seat! Don't believe it? Check out the picture - the car wasn't even an automatic! And of course it's a very hilly area, so when your handbrake gives up the ghost it's fine just to use a stone wedged behind one back wheel.

We toured four parent groups in the two days, and what with the journey times and general lack of any kind of hurry they were long days, with us back after 7pm both nights. The groups made up for it though, mainly by singing to welcome us and to introduce an elaborate hand shaking ritual. They also have a whole new level of clapping, which I love. It would start with Erastus saying, "flowers for the visitors", and then everyone would hold their hands in the air and shake them before all giving one big clap. Women would get four rounds of this and men five (typical!).

As always, there was a lot of status conferred to us because we're white, which we both still find at best disconcerting, and at worst downright bizarre. Erastus told me at one point that one of his colleagues had said to him: "I did not know KAIH was having such important connections with the outside world." So at least we were bumping his status. On the other hand, during one long speech in Kikuyu our colleague Evans turned to us and whispered, "They are saying thank you to God for bringing the white people." We have been in Kenya long enough to just raise eyebrows at each other and carry on, but that kind of comment feels pretty uncomfortable.

The praying seems crazy to heathens like me and Eddie too. Despite being perpetually late by as much as two hours, we still prayed at the start and end of every meeting, for every meal, every cup of tea and every chappati, for everyone's safe travel, for the actions of the meeting to be blessed by God and for everyone's wellbeing. While I can't help but find this tedious at the time, the consideration for other people is touching in retrospect!

In fact, the people in general were nothing but kind, sincere and welcoming. At our final meeting I was even given "a letter for Bristol", which turned out to be a traditional African bag made by the group and filled with locally grown oranges and bananas. Of course there was a big presentation and I had to carry the bag with my head like a Kenyan lady, amid a lot of laughter and hilarity.

That's not to say everything was easy. The morning we were due to leave we arranged to be collected at 8.30am. When 11am rolled around and we were still sitting outside our accommodation because our colleagues were waiting for an arrowroot delivery we reverted to mzungu-type and promptly hopped on a matatu back to Nairobi and left them to it.

To readers from the UK this probably seems entirely sensible, but I have no doubt our colleagues thought us incredibly rude, as we violated two key Kenyan principles:

1) Everything must be done together, however inconvenient for all involved.

2) Time is not money - "just wait" is probably the most overused phrase in Kenya.

But after three days on pole-pole time (and with my Birthday weekend and a bottle of wine ahead of us) we couldn't hold out anymore and had to get European. It's hard work being a foreigner all the time.

Still, for all that I look forward to going back to Nyeri soon to continue the training, soak up the fresh air and green things, and probably eat my own body weight in bananas and chai. This final photo was taken at the request of the young girl (because she thought I looked "so smart" - the ultimate Kenyan compliment). She has learning difficulties, but with the help of KAIH and the teacher of her special needs unit she is now studying hairdressing at the local polytechnic. I can't think of a better reason to sit through eight hours of speeches in a language I don't understand, to be hours late for my own 30th Birthday celebrations and to put up with being "the white people."