This week I’ve had 2 trips down across the railway to Kibera valley.  The first to visit my parents’ sponsored child’s family , and the second was to visit my sponsored child’s mum at home.  Eluid, my boy, walked me through Kibera yesterday, through the places I’m not allowed to go on my own, to the place where his family live.  Walked down the railway, actually on the rails! I felt a bit naughty!  Also felt like I was in the film The Constant Gardener!  It was quite surreal! 

Kibera is rather an assault on the senses, the kids shouting “How are you, how are you”, the people shouting from their stalls trying to sell their stuff,  reggae and rap music blaring out from little wooden huts, the smell of mandazi and chapatti mixed with unwashed people, human waste and rotting food, the dust and flies that seem to get everywhere!  I wouldn’t wanna be anywhere else!!  Both the houses I went to visit where tiny dark little rooms separated into 2 by a sheet.  Walls made out of mud and sticks with a concrete floor.  Both Pamela (Emmaculate’s mum) and Matilda (Eliud’s mum) were soooo hospitable.  I felt a little bad as both of them struggle to feed their families and were so welcoming to me, offering me a drink and a snack.  Couldn’t really refuse.  They both do a fantastic job with their children in extremely difficult circumstances.  This week they are my heros.

Only 2 weeks to go until I’m home. Here’s a few things I will miss:

Feeling like I’m on a fairground ride when in a vehicle as the roads have so many potholes! (Alan if you came here you would never complain about Rochdale again!)

My lovely children at school

Being late and nobody minding because they’ve turned up later than I have!

Kenyan concept of time- as long as you get there it doesn’t matter when!

Learning Kiswahili songs

Chasing baby class around the playground

Having a shower and seeing the water turn red!

I’m sure I can come up with a more comprehensive list for next time!! 

Oh and I’m very excited about the health scheme!!!!

Since I my last blog I’ve been ill a bit with my selfish disease (ME). You’ll be pleased to know that I’m feeling a lot better now and have cut down my hours a little so I can use my time effectively rather than feeling ill all the time!

At school all the kids, including the 3 year olds have had mid term exams this week! I don’t know what they test the younguns on but I find that quite bizarre!  So we’ve not been teaching this week.

Time has been spent trying to get proposals for the health scheme we want to set up (which has the potential to cause some problems!).  The rest of the time I’ve been taking kids to clinic and preparing for the dunking of 70 kids next week!  Had a trip to IBS (no, not irritable bowel syndrome, but the International Bible Society) and managed to buy 70 bibles for about 3 quid each (bargain!) so all the kids can have one.

Was my birthday this week (and yes I do expect extra celebrations in UK when I return!).  Marie made me a cake, which required 3 attempts! It was very exciting as it was a chocolate cake I can eat! YEY!! I’ve not eaten chocolate cake that doesn’t make me ill for 2 years!  My new friends at the clinic wanted to celebrate my birthday so they organised a little party. It was amazing!  Susan, the pharmacist spent the morning cooking food for it.  My newly appointed Kenyan mum (Dr Mbogo) did a little speech. There was singing and candles! It was AMAZING!

Oh, a few things going on in Nairobi…..I can blog about them now that I told my mum!!

A man tried to blow up a city hopper (a bus) this week with a grenade in the town centre.  No-one died apart from the bomber but about 30 people were seriously injured. I’m hoping they can all afford their treatment cos you have to pay for it here!

Also, with the elections coming up in November they’ve been some slaughters in a nearby slum (not Kibera).  They are supposedly being carried out by a sect that follows a particular man whose name I can’t remember!!  They’ve been letters in Kibera claiming they want 200 heads of the people there. At school some precautions have been put in place so the kids don’t stay late but Marie and I are fine.  No need to worry, apparently this happens all the time! 

I've taken over the first aid and looking after the sick kids so I spend a lot of time either at the clinic or with rubber gloves on cleaning cuts etc

We had a lodger this week for a few days- one of the girls from school.  Her dad has been very very sick for the last few months.  We went to visit him at their house in the depths of Kibera.  Was very eye opening.  I just don't understand how people live like they do in a place like that.  The dad had had diarrhoea for 2 months and had such bad oral thrush that he hadn't eaten for pretty much the same amount of time.  He looked like a skeleton.  We took him to clinic where he tested positive for HIV.  He stayed at clinic for 2 days and today went to work apparently!! The staff at the clinic were amazing.  They knew Marie and I were paying for his treatment and that we pay for the kids so they waived the cost of some of the drugs they gave him.

It was a pleasure to have a young visitor around.  It made me a little sad that we had to show here how a shower worked, stop her washing her body with a pumice stone etc.  She had a good break from Kibera though and something to take her mind of her dad (who would probably be dead by now if we hadn't have helped him).

Got a little in trouble with the co-ordinator of the school who said that we shouldn't be helping parents, that the children are our priority so we should put all our efforts into them.  I'm just happy that the little girl still has her dad, who is the only family she has.  In the words of The Doors "I do not regret the things I have done; only the things I did not do".  Or something like that!

The last 2 days (Friday was a public holiday so no school), we've been painting 2 rooms of the clinic to say thank you for everything they do for our children and for the time they spent doing health checks.  Both rooms look amazing! I didn't know I could decorate!

Both me and Marie have been feeling ill this week and are shattered today so I also apologise if this post doesn't make a lot of sense!

It was definitely worth the travel sickness and the sunburn (I did have factor 25 on but apparently that wasn’t enough!).

Shimba Hills (where we went on safari) looks a lot like Wales with African animals randomly placed (so Katherine says- she is welsh!!)  It’s very green!!

It was slightly concerning when we got out for a 2km walk in the middle of the reserve with a ranger who had a big gun. This was just in case an elephant charged us!!  The gun had real bullets, and not tranquilisers, as they wouldn’t work quickly enough if an elephant attacks us!  We were all more worried about the elephants than for us!

The 2km walk from the bus and back consisting of Katherine jumping at insects, me getting bitten by every insect possible and Marie needing her asthma inhaler more than humanly possible was well worth the destination- a beautiful waterfall, in the shade (which I was loving!).

Than had a little trip to an elephant sanctuary run by the local community- I love all these little community projects!!  The locals use the dung of the elephants to make paper which is a novel way of recycling!  Maybe someone will invent dog poo paper and clean the streets of Manchester!!  An interesting fact about elephants- Male elephants have 7 noises for vocalisation and females have 22 and are therefore much better at communication, much like their human counterparts!

Another interesting animal fact- Male weaver birds spend a lot of time and a lot of effort building a nest, if a female weaver bird doesn’t like it she destroys it! That amused me!

The beach where we stayed was heaven, full of insects loving my blood, but definitely heaven.  The starfish were every colour imaginable!  Snorkled for the first time and after swimming too deep and choking on sea water the once I soon got the hang of it!  It was another world amongst the coral and the colourful fish.  Fell in love even more with the sea!! 

Back at school tomorrow but it’s nice know the whole of Kenya isn’t like Kibera (although out taxi driver did get bribed by the extremely corrupt police!)

We have had a very busy week.  One thing that was fun was going to the giraffe centre on Sunday afternoon (I would say.. “and yes I did go to church, but I didn’t because I slept in!!).  It was very exciting as I met my namesake….a giraffe called Kellie!!! I will include a picture so you can spot the difference between the two of us!!

At school we’ve been very busy this week doing health checks on all 11 classes!! We managed to persuade a nurse and a doctor from the local health clinic to come and help which was fantastic (the clinic is now practically home after numerous visits this week with a child with malaria and a child with typhoid!!). We’ve found infections of various kinds, ringworm and other fungal things, septic wounds, vision problems, hearing problems, umbilical hernias and dental problems among others!!  Finished today and now have the job of dishing all the medications out which is interesting.  Trying to find the child you want and explain to them what to do with the medicines is quite a feat when you only speak a couple of words of Swahili!!

Had my first cry today after having a chat with the girl my parents sponsor, Emmaculate.  Her mother has HIV and none of her friends know coz she is scared of the discrimination associated with it.  Sometimes her only meal is the one school provide and life is very hard for her.  Her father now lives with another woman and doesn’t speak to Emmaculate and her brothers as he says he doesn’t love them.  She still finds something, anything, to be thankful for and is an amazingly beautiful girl. 

This is the story of 450 other children that I see everyday.

I cried.

3 things I really need to get used to (and I'm sure the list will grow!!)

1.  Queuing.  No one knows how to do it here, or if they do they just can't be bothered!!  I like the order and fairness of a system.  This week I have got very cross when I've been pushed in front of, been in a queue for a long time then get to the front and they ask me to wait until they've dealt with the person behind me....Grrrrrrr.

2. Public transport.  Matatus are mini buses owned by random people that follow the bus routes,  except sometimes they just go where they feel like.   When it rains you get chucked off so it can fill up with people going the other way.

3. Crossing the road.  Basically you have to be assertive (I can already here some of you groan about me being assertive crossing a road).  No one indicates and it's busy so you just have to walk and hope the cars slow down!!

Right now I should probably be preparing for next week.  Planning to do a health audit of all the children in 2 days so we need to be prepared!!  From that information I can then do some health education based on what we find.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Hopefully it will be organised chaos rather than total chaos!!

Iw was the first day in school with the kids today.  Marie found me 2 children who need operations!! I went on a nice walk to the local clinic with one of them today.  I'm going with the social worker and the children to the local hospital on thursday to take them to see the surgeons and hopefully get an appointment.  They've not had the treatment they need because their families can't afford it so the money we all raised will be helping to pay for the treatment of these 2 girls so hopefully they will be in a lot less pain in future! Watch this space!! (And thanks to the people who gave me money!!)

I was jumped on at break time today by a group of kids from baby class and nursery wanting cuddles and picking up.  I think I now have a little fan club being the new muzungu (white person) who has very strokeable hair (they wouldn't leave it alone!!).

For those of you who know me this very well and know how clumsy I can be this next bit will either make you laugh or groan!  Today I used my first aid kit for the first time.......on myself!! I slipped in my flip flops at school and stripped all the skin off my knee (which is now filled with dirt! Yummy!).  When I got home I decided my it needed an extra clean (coz it was still minging).  I thought the toilet lid was a good place to sit as I could get comfy whilst scrubbing my very painful knee and have access to water.   Can you guess what happened?????? Lets just say the pieces of the toilet seat are now one the floor after being fished out of the toilet bowl.  Apparently Marie, the lovely person I am living with, now wants to take extra life insurance out as she now realises what a disaster area I am!!!!!!

Gotta go to bed now. Up early tomorrow.  I'll leave you with a picture of me and one of my new friends.

As some of you may know we have had issues with packing my stuff.  It seems that people have been so generous that I could probably fill my baggage allowance with donated stuff and none of mine!! I would be willing to wear the same clothes (unwashed) everyday if it meant I could take everything but I’m sure the people who have to be around me for the next 10 weeks would have something to say about that!!  Today will therefore be a day of magical packing (I’m hoping my bags will turn into one a bit like Mary Poppins’s bag), or having to decide what stuff can wait until someone else goes to Kibera.

Just a bit about the school I’m going to…… It’s called Spurgeon’s Academy and filled with over 300 gorgeous, amazing, very smiley children from the age of 3 (I think) to 16ish.  All the children have lost AT LEAST one parent to HIV/AIDS.  Many of them live with relatives who very kindly take them in, and a few of the children have no-one to take care of them at all.  My little boy Eliud (he’s not really little, he’s 13) who I sponsor lives with his mum and siblings in Kibera.  His dad dies of AIDS related illnesses and his mum is very very sick.  Most of the kids live in situations like this and still manage to enjoy life, love playing football, love school, have fun, do normal kid things and be very smiley.  I’m sure they know something about life that we don’t. 

While I’m there I’ll be doing a health audit of all the students, checking out what health and sex education they have in school and some other stuff but I’ll write about that as I do it!!

So tomorrow (the 4^th of may, you get  it??) is my last day in beautiful England.  So goodbye work, Manchester, starbucks, arriva trains, black cabs and green grass of England, I will miss you.  Goodbye also to my family and friends who I love loads but hopefully I will be hearing from you all on a regular basis!  (or else!!)