Final Week Kenya -yet to write

Week 8 -STILL ALIVE

I tried to look at my last blog to avoid repetition but the computor won't let me! So I shall just start with Zanzibar.

We left Nairobi at a ridiculous time in the morning on Wednesday we had a short aeroplane journey to Mombasa. In Mombasa we had 3 hours to kill so we went to Nyali beach were we went on our previous visit to Mombasa. We managed to persuade a taxi driver to take us to the beach (30 min journey) and wait to take us back quite cheaply. The beach was lovely -the whole of Mombasa was dissapointingly grey and rainy and we were worrying that we were on our way to a beach. BUT amazingly Nyali beach was lovely and sunny.

Our connecting flight from Mombasa to Zanzibar was on a very little plane with one too many passengers (there were lots of Germans on the flight) so the driver asked me to sit in the co-pilot seat!!! This was very cool as I felt like I was helping fly the plane, he even gave me one of his sweets. I kept forgetting I was sitting on a real plane as it felt like a flight simulator/computer game! Unfortunately I was not allowed to TOUCH ANYTHING which probably contributed to our safe journey.

Upon arrival in Zanzibar we were met by a nice 4-wheel drive which Andrew had hired for the duration of our stay. This has meant we have been able to go for gorgeous evening drives and visit other parts of Zanzibar. It took us over an hour to drive to Sensation Divers, Nungwi, where we are staying. Upon arrival we were given HOMEWORK! We were a little miffed by this as we were exhausted and wanted to relax on the beach. Instead we had to read a chapter of a book and then answer some questions. We did not finish the homework that night! oops.

Jemima, Andrew and I have shared a 3 person room. We all have double beds :) and we have a nice ensuite warm shower!

On thurdsay morning we met our instructor at 8.45 (ugh) we had a complimentary breakfast (egg, bread, fruit) and started our training.... Our instructor is a very nice South African man with long blond hair -he looks very much like a Scuba diving instructor. We watched 3 sections of the diving video and it turned out to be ok that we hadn't done our homework!

In the afternoon we started to Scuba dive!!! We did various skills and I was beginning to get the hang of it... although I have problems with equalising pressure in my left ear... this was a little distressing! Afterwards our instructor made us do a 200m swim... which I just about survived... I'm awful at swimming in the sea!

H/W Read chapters 1,2,4 and answer questions -didn't finish very well (fell asleep)

To make the most of the car we went for an evening drive. Zanzibar is beautiful... lots of white sand and palm trees... and lots of sea! We looked at an old ruins -followed by lots of local villagers and went for a walk along a beach. Gorgeous!

Came back for dinner and I went to bed early (10pm) to finish my homework... but fell asleep.

Friday! Day two of scuba diving.... managed to roughly fish homework and we watched the rest of the video... Homework was to read and answer questions on the rest of the text book (it's a pretty big book for 3 days reading!). Luckily we managed to get through it this time. Oh... we also had to revise for our FINAL EXAM!?!

In the afternoon we went for our second dive..... and I was pretty awful.... my Bouoyancy control jacket was too loose so my oxygen tank kept slipping round and making me roll sideways and then completely lose balance in the water. Unfortunately one of my legs seems surprisingly light and kept floating.... this did not help the balance problem (apparently a lot of women have this problem). I was also still having problems with my ears! GRRR.

So all in all I was feeling pretty disheartened after day 2 of diving. I was very annoyed because the others had mastered everything so well! I was not looking forward to diving again.

In the eveing while trying to revisie we went to Stone Town and went to a lovely restaurant called Monsoon which was looovely. We had to sit on cushions on the floor and we had a 4 course meal.... food was great and the atmosphere was wonderful.

Finally came home again exhausted and due to increasing anxiet about diving I woke at 6.30 and then worried till I had to get up at 7.30. We were going diving ALL DAY leaving at 8.30.

Today we were diving off a boat near an island.... and I was pretty good!!! Our instructor was VERY impressed with my imporvement and I felt very chuffed and relieved that I am not completely inept at all physical activity.... and I really enjoyed it!! Scuba diving is amazing we went along a reef a saw lots of cool fish and turtles!! We had a break in the day for some food and then came back and I was very relaxed and pleased..

Then we had to sit an exam which we all passed easily... so now I am a qualified PADI open water diver!!! YAY!

Tomorrow we leave and to Uganda we go!

Week 8

This is very likely to be the last blog until I return to England. Tomorrow we leave Kenya for Zanzibar, then Entebbe. We have a very busy 10 days so I doubt email access will be possible.

The beginning of week 8 was spent in the Maasai Mara (see last entry) and today we went White Water Rafting.

We were met in Nairobi by the man who took us rafting. He drove us for 1 1/2 hrs out of Nairobi (on the road to Maua!) until we reached a rather nice water sports centre. I had to sign a very scary contract which basically said I wouldn't sue if I died. I hadn't not really taken into account what WWR would involved and I began to be pretty scared. Even more so after the safety talk!!!

I told Jemima to pass my love onto you all if I got squished against a rock.

We then drove for twenty minutes to the start of our journey. As the raft was pulled of the trailer our instucter instantly burst the floor of the raft. Great! This did not fill me with confidence. However apparently this did not matter.

Equipped with helmets, life jackets and oars Jemima, Andrew (Jemima's boyfriend) got into the raft on the river Tana, with the instructer of course. We started off with a teaching section of the river where we learnt various commands Right stroke forward, left stroke back, All stroke hard forward, jump right, Get into the front, Hold on, get down.... 45 mins into the journey our instructer decided that actually the puncture did matter!!! This was beacuase the water was low and the base of the raft was just scraping along rocks and we kept getting stuck.

So then we had to do a rescue operation. We had to get the raft out of the water. This was quite tricky. I found it most tricky because I had to do a little bit of climbing and was suddenly relying on strength and balance that I really don't have.... HOWEVER the boys looked after me and my balance was fine!! :) I surprised myself and we got the boat and equipment to shore.

A replacement boat was sent and we continued our journey. We walked any bits deemed too unsafe and our instructer was brilliant. We went down lots of rapids but there were quiet bits in between. The river was beautiful. There was one bit were were rowed to sit on the edge of a waterful and we got very wet.... and we got to one pool where Jemima and Andrew jumped from a very high rock...... I refused because I thought I might jump into the cliff. It looked fun though and they both survived!

All in all it was excellent. I did not hate any of it depsite a little initial anxiety. Our instructer was very good and clear (he had a brummy accent which was amusing to hear in Africa!). We got very wet and were given a barbeque lunch!

Tomorrow we fly at 7.30 so I must go to bed now!

Week 6 part 2

I am now writing this at the beginning of week 8 so I apologise for briefer entries. I have had a avery busy two weeks!

At the end of week 6 I revisitted maternity as there is a lovely Danish doctor who is working there now who was on holiday when I was there previously. I had a brilliant three days! I did lots of examination and conducted ward bits of ward rounds. The highlight of my week was helping in a caesarian section. I have done this before in England but I was helping much more and Dr Else let me suture the skin!! This was pretty scary as all the theatre staff were watching me!! I was ready to hand the needle back to Dr Else after two stitches but she got me to continue and I practically did it all! We looked at the wound on Friday and it looked BEAUTIFUL! I was very very proud!

On Friday we were rather spontaneous and went to the Nanyuke River Camel Camp. Although this was on the cards we were not sure if we could go and on Friday we booked it then 1/2hr later jumped on a matatu to Nanyuke.

The Camel Camp has been set up by a man called Chris Field who has done a lot of research into nomads and has now married a Somalian. He has lots of lines of business but one of them is camel farming. He has quite recently set up them camel camp where there is a village of 8 traditional Somalian huts; the kind you can take down and put on a camel back. So for 2 nights we stayed in these huts. They were amazing!!! We were very comfortable as they had beds better than our hostel and they retained heat well. Each night the lit a bonfire and gave us gas lanterns. The food was delicious. We had pancakes, honey and camel meat for breakfast and the evenig meals were the best I have had so far in Kenya. We were the only guests (a couple appeared on our second night but stayed in a tent and didn’t eat) which was really nice and we felt special! On the Saturday we went for a half day camel ride! This was quite fun….. Jemima rode on a very fast Camel called Songa I rose Camel 1047 which I decided to name Humpy. Songa was very naughty and kept misbehaving and ate lots. Songa was very affectionate; mostly towards Jemima as she could reach me to sniff at. Camels are lovely animals, quite easy to ride (although we were mostly led) although a little uncomfortable. It was hysterical when they sat down or stood up and we had very sore bottom till 3 days later.

After the camels we went to the equator, where we payed 50 Ksh for someone to demonstrate the Coriolois effect with water going into a funnel. This was very cool to see. Chris the camel man was rather sceptical though as he said there was a dispute about where the equator was and there were two signs 50m apart from each other and the Coriolis effect could be demonstated at both!! Following taking some photos at the equator we were then forced into TWENTY NINE curio (souvenir) shops.

We went back to Maua on Sunday afternoon.
Hallam phoned. Hooray!

(Ben, I saw someone wearing a Norwich City shirt in Nanyuke!!!)

Week 7

Our final week in Maua! This was a very busy week.

On Monday we went with Thimna the DCC volunteer to her school. This was an interestin experience. It was rather chaotic, we were told this was because it was the first day back. I hope so as mostly there seemed to be no teachers in the classrooms. We cause utter chaos at breaktime as practically the whole school gathered round Jemima and I as we walked round the school. Mostly just to look at us but some asked us our names “my name?” and others poked us!! Due to the disruption we seemed to be causing we left at lunchtime but before this we went into the Form 8 class and we had to teach them about English population!! This was a rather interesting experience.

On Monday Evening I went to inquire about the history of the hospital. It was really interesting. I am being sent back to England to find as much information as I can about the hospital. Especially names and dates. They have a lot of disconnected information. I have 3 photo’s of Grandad (which I MUST scan and return as soon as I am in the UK) and I also read that he “installed a water system which reduced much disease”. I was proud!

For the rest of the week I was on paediatrics. I began to feel a little disheartened as I did not feel I was doing enough on the wards and that I wasn’t intersted enough. I realised that this was largely because the Doctor currently on paeds did the ward rounds in Kiswahili and I was rarely involved –so for my final week I threw myself into it and really enjoyed it. I went back to maternirty and did another C-section and had avery full week.

Other than medicine this week has been hectic.

On Tuesday we had our hair braided (this would have been wonderfully if the hairdresser hadn’t refused to put elastic bands in so that my braids could have looked much better.) We went to dinner at two people’s houses to say goodbye. Went on call again. But by far the highlight of the week was killing a chicken!!! Jemima and I had decided that as part of our Kenya experience we should kill a chicken (inspired by dad’s memories of the gradener killing chickens). So on our penultimate evening Jemima with the help of a Kenyan went to choose a good chicken! While food buying was occuring I was intructed to boil lots of water. So I did. Jemima returned with a very handsome chicken that walked around the kitchen for a while (well flapped a bit because it had it’s legs tied). I felt quite attached to the poor thing.

Finally slaughtering time came. With it’s neck on a bench, a T-towel over its head (to give Jemima something to hold and hide it’s face with) and Markus firmly holding the chicken’s body we were ready for action. Jemima had borrowed a panga from the nursing students kitchen but began to feel hesitant. She finally attempted to the chop the head off…. But the first blow had definitely not killed the chicken…. We think the second blow did (or at least it stopped moving quite so much) but after around 20 we managed to decapitate the chicken…. It was a mildly unpleasant experence but we were hungry. Thus we dunked the chicken in the water I had boiled a surprisingly easily plucked the chicken.

The chicken was soon naked and we were able to carry out a very interesting dissection! We even found lots of semi formed eggs in the abdomen which we were amazed by. I set to work preparing the food and we ended up having a rather chewy but delicsious chicken stew with roast potatoes!

On Friday morning we said goodbye to Maua. We got a 7.15 bus to Nairobi. Our journey was much improved when we found out that rather amusingly a man from Maua was following us to Nairobi. He had made some wooden animals for us but in our last week we had been unable to purchase them as he had dissappeared from Maua. 2 hours before the end of our journey we founf him by the roadside where he was waiting for us to pass! The driver drove off leaving him stranded and we later found out that he had jumped on a Matatu Nairobi and met us there. He had travelled 6 hours to sell us some wooden animals. Now that’s dedication. You will be releived to hear we did actually purachase something!

On Friday night and tonight we are staying with Jemima’s relitaves and being looked after wonderfully. I have just had a delightful meal including 2 glasses of wine and a G&T. Feeling stuffed and very content.

This weekend we went to the Maasai Mara! I have been told this is where the Lion King was set but I don’t know how reliable this info is. It’s a large game park in the Rift Valley and I think is the same as the Serengeti (but the Kenyan bit is called the Maasai Mara). We went on four game drives and saw many wildebeast and we have now seen the “big five”; lion, buffalo, elephant, leopard, rhino! We stayed in a lovely but possibly rather expensive hotel (we got a cheaper deal) called the Mara Serena Lodge. We were staying in rooms based on Maasai villages, it had gorgeous surroundings, a pool and the food was delicious. We travelled there and back to Nairobi on small aeroplanes which was great as the pilot actually spoke to you and passed round the sweets for take-off!

There is probably much more to say but I am exhausted and tomorrow we are up early to go white water rafting (ooh er) and then the next day off to Zanzibar to go Scuba diving! Such a hard life!

Lots of love