Kenya Safari

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We left Kimilili on 19^th November with some mixed emotions. It’s never easy to say goodbye. But we were really looking forward to having a hot shower! We had a longish wait at Kitale airfield, but one thing we’ve become really good at is waiting! The airport building, the size of a small bungalow, contained toilets, office, check-in, security and control tower, together with a first-class lounge (a three piece suite) and economy (ordinary chairs). The baggage reclaim was the grass outside. Back in Nairobi we stayed at the Wildebeest Camp, run by an Aussie couple with two very young children. Our (posh, with ensuite!) tent was very comfortable and the food delicious, definitely recommended. It was good to chat with other ‘muzungas’ (white people) too!

On the Sunday we visited the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage – sooo cute! And the giraffe centre at Langata, very touristy but giraffes are my (Jane’s) favourite animal so I had to see them.

On Monday we were collected at 7:30 by Kamel, our very knowledgeable guide and driver for the next week. We had an 8-seater Toyota Land Cruiser all to ourselves. We left Nairobi in drizzling rain for the long drive to Samburu National Park. Sadly we did not get a good view of Mount Kenya, due to the low cloud, but the road was surprisingly good and we arrived in time for lunch. We almost had the place to ourselves, there were only two other parties there when we arrived. Such a contrast to the previous five weeks, the lodge was very comfortable, the food good, and there was even a swimming pool. It occurred to us that visitors who spent their whole time in Kenya at such safari lodges would gain a very different experience of Kenya from the one we’d had. At Samburu, in complete contrast to Nairobi it was hot, though not uncomfortably so, but the landscape was surprisingly green due to the exceptionally high rainfall in the last month. At 3:30 we set off for our first game drive, which got us off to a very lucky start, within 15 minutes we had seen 3 cheetahs and a group of 6 ‘reticulated’ giraffes. The next morning, waking at 6am, I looked out of the window and saw a very large elephant just a few metres away. At Samburu we saw many elephants, all reddish brown from the colour of the soil, which they cover themselves with. We also saw ostriches, oryx, Grevey’s zebra (thinner stripes), gerenuk, impala, gazelles and dikdiks. We saw many beautiful birds, including the superb starling, which Kamel considered too common to stop for but was a striking deep blue. The night was quite noisy with a frog chorus and the trumpeting of at least one elephant nearby.

Our next stop was The Ol Pejeta Conservancy, (via a ‘tourist stop’ at the Equator line) where we stayed in another posh tent, overlooking a water hole where a group of giraffes and zebras were waiting for us. We could also see a family of warthogs with 4 babies, impala, and in the distance, a rhino and 2 silver-backed jackals. That afternoon our game drive took in more gazelles, water bucks, a small pride of very sleepy lions, eagles, buffalo, white and black rhino, then, on the way back, a group of elephants with a baby only a couple of days old. The weather there turned cooler again and we were very appreciative of the hot water bottles that the housekeeper had provided us with.

The next day we moved on to Lake Nakuru where the highlight of our small bungalow was that it had a bath! A luxurious soak before dinner was a real treat. Again we saw many beautiful birds, and more rhino. Down at the lake there were flocks of pelicans and flamingos, as well as storks. The late afternoon light and a rainbow allowed Robin to take some really atmospheric pictures of the waterside birds and a group of buffalo. An early start the next morning and we set off in the rain for the Maasai Mara. By the time we arrived the rain was heavy, and we had to drive through a couple of streams much above their usual level. Not how I had imagined the Mara at all. However Kamel was dedicated to his job and we set off for an afternoon game drive despite the weather. We saw a pair of female lions, one had three cubs and the other was heavily pregnant. They had caught a wildebeest and were having a feast (the cubs were just having a lick; they were young and still nursing). The following morning we set off early for a fairly long drive to the Mara River, which is famous for the annual wildebeest migration. We soon came across two huge crocodiles, sleeping head to toe in the mud of the riverbank, and a group of hippos. We also learned a new euphemism for having a pee, ‘checking the tyre pressure’! On the game drives we had to do that in open country, if you went behind a tree you might be gobbled up very quickly! So I won’t forget the ‘comfort stop’ I had to take on top of a hill where I could see across the Tanzanian border to the Serengeti in one direction and most of the Maasai Mara in the other!

Sunday 27^th November, the long-awaited date (by me anyway!) of our return to England. It started early with 1 ½ hours on a very bumpy road from the game park back to the main road. We arrived back in Nairobi in time for a visit to the Karen Blixen Museum (remember Meryl Streep in ‘Out of Africa’?) and lunch in the garden of the nearby restaurant. Very colonial. Then another drive through Nairobi’s totally crazy traffic to the airport. Our flight to Heathrow left at 11:30pm, so we had another long wait, but we are good at those, thanks to Prof. Layton on the Nintendo DS and a book of Daily Telegraph general knowledge crosswords.

Now we are back in England and suddenly it’s Christmas everywhere – we hadn’t given it a thought in Africa. (Actually there was one motorcycle taxi driver in Kimilili who always wore a Santa hat). Apologies if this sounds trite, but my time in Africa has reduced my enthusiasm for all the things I apparently ‘must have’ and ‘must do’. The thing we are both most looking forward to is seeing our families again.

Lake Nakuru

Kamel our excellent driver and guide

A sausage tree

Kenya Volunteering

Volunteering in Kenya

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The roof leaks and harbours mosquitoes. But, this woman will soon get a new house.

This woman is very happy with her new house.

The vocational centre

Some of the girls at the orphanage

At the orphanage on a Sunday afternoon

The building on the left is the kitchen! A new kitchen is almost complete.

At at commissioning ceremony for a new well

Our room

Some high school girls entertain the kids

Students using treadle sewing machines, you can still buy them new in Kenya.

Our compund in the rain (it's maize under the tarpaulin).

Robin dishing out the mid-morning porridge

Top Class after their tooth-brushing lesson

Hand printing for the class posters

Jane and Essnas, one of the preschool teachers

Robin making ballon-driven buggies

Our neighbours who greeted us every day

The 'Modern Laundry' in Kimili

We are now back in England, and it is wonderful to be home! (Despite the cold). The frost-covered countryside looked beautiful in the early morning sun on Monday as we travelled by train from St Pancras up to Corby (where Robin’s mum lives).


We weren’t able to update this blog while in Kenya as the only internet access we had was on Robin’s phone. So now we’ll try and catch up…


We arrived in Nairobi on 15th October after flying from Cape Town to Johannesburg, then to Dar Es Salaam, where we spent an uncomfortable and somewhat anxious night in the transit ‘lounge’, then a very early morning flight to Nairobi, which afforded a wonderful view of Mount Kilimanjaro in the dawn light. We were met at the airport by Kefa, a contact of James, the project director at Omwabini, who drove us to a guest house and told us not to go out by ourselves, he’d come and take us on a ‘city tour’ the following afternoon. The dirt roads had been turned to seas of mud by the overnight rain, and people and vehicles were covered in muck. Traffic was crazy, very busy and no apparent road rules. The guest house was very basic, but, we did have a TV.


On the Monday 17th we returned to the airport to fly up to Kitale, where we were met by Omwabini’s project director, Mary Bunyasi, and 3 of her staff who had come along for the ride. After lunch of chicken and chips (a treat) and a visit to a supermarket to buy essential supplies (drinking water mainly) we were driven to Kimilili, the small town where the project is based, along one of the worst roads in western Kenya! In theory Kenyans drive on the left but in practice they drive wherever they have to, to avoid the potholes, the oncoming lorries on the wrong side of the road, donkeys, goats, motorbikes, etc. Often they drive along the dirt at the side of the road as there are too many holes in the road itself.


In Kimilili we stayed in a house inside a walled compound. Mary and some of her extended family lived in the other house, and there was a courtyard where every day maize, to feed the orphans, was spread out on the ground to dry. We had use of a sitting room, kitchen and shower room, as well as our own bedroom. All basic but sufficient for our needs.  The project is called ‘Omwabini’ in Swahili, or ‘Rescue Steps’ in English http://www.omwabinirescuesteps.org/ (this link opens in a new window). The following is a quote from the document ‘About Omwabini 2011’.


“The traditional social fabric and social/familial safety nets found in Kenyan culture have broken down and been overwhelmed by the sheer number of orphans left behind by parents dying of AIDS and other poverty related diseases. Prior to the HIV/AIDS epidemic Kenyan families and communities had the potential to provide a safety net to families suddenly stricken by parental death. The orphaned children could be supported or absorbed into the families of the parents’ brothers, sisters or close community members when tragedy struck. Children were able to recover from their loss through the support of their extended families and communities. The unprecedented scale and scope of the AIDS epidemic and the basic poverty found in Western Kenya has left so many families affected that traditional familial support systems have been overwhelmed for a decade and are no longer giving support to orphaned and vulnerable families.


The resulting situation in Western Kenya is that orphans find themselves having to scavenge for food, shelter and struggle by every desperate means possible to meet the needs of themselves and their siblings. The goal of Omwabini’s Orphan Program is to meet the immediate nutrition requirements and basic living condition needs of these families. After food, clothing and shelter needs are met, we provide these families with the skills, tools, education and the other resources necessary to begin on a path toward a sustainable, healthy, and hopeful lives.”




Our experience was one of mixed emotions, it was good to see what Omwabini is achieving, and the intelligent, honest and realistic way they are doing so, but hard to see the real poverty that exists there. It was rather frustrating often, too, as things happen very slowly, and we spent a lot of time sitting around. It was very much left to us to find something to do, which we actually found quite stressful. It seemed that our main role was to observe and learn, then to go back to the UK, spread the word and fundraise. By the end of our second week however we had sorted ourselves out a sort of programme, helping out in the IT room of the vocational centre for the first part of the morning, then going over to the preschool (ages 3 to 7) to help out there. In the afternoons we ran English conversation groups with the tailoring and dressmaking students in the vocational centre, and introduced them to using the computers. Most of them dropped out of school at around 14 years of age, because they could not afford the school fees, and most believed they were incapable of learning to use a computer. Robin took each girl’s photo, then each created (and we printed for them) a Word document with their photo and some biographical information, in English. There were many challenges, including the power cut which accompanied a thunder storm on most afternoons, the hammering of the rain on the tin roof, which made it almost impossible to hear or be heard, and the small children who crept in to crowd round (very close) and watch (and start playing Need for Speed if they spotted a computer left free for half a second).


The good things:


•    a feeling of achievement that we’d helped several girls boost their self-confidence;
•    The friendliness and courtesy of the Kenyan people. You can’t just walk into a room and start talking to someone as we would in Britain, you have to shake everyone’s hand and greet them appropriately first. The greeting ‘how are you?’ (to which the answer is always ‘I am fine and how are you?’) we heard many times from small children as we walked from the compound to the Omwabini Centre. 
•    The friendliness, in particular, of the teachers in the preschool, with whom we enjoyed working, and their evident dedication and care for the children in spite of extremely limited resources.
•    The creativity of the children in making toys from almost nothing, e.g. spinners from soda bottle tops and unravelled school jumpers!
•    The greenness and beauty of the landscape, which was a surprise as we had expected a parched brown landscape.




 Less good:
•    People’s complete lack of awareness of time!
•    The mud after the rain, when it was almost impossible to walk along the deeply rutted dirt road.
•    Power cuts, as already mentioned, and for a few days at the end of stay, no running water either.


We expected culture shock, and I would not advise a health and safety inspector to visit rural Kenya! Motor bikes with 3 passengers and two goats on board were not uncommon, and few if any drivers, let alone passengers, wore helmets. It's just not possible to sum up our experience in Kenya, but it has certainly changed u,s and many of our attitudes and priorities.