Time is flying by

Wow July has already arrived, and it's been almost two months since I've left home. I've lost track of time here, and a week goes by as if it were a couple of days. I've been back to Chanukeni since my last post (Chanukeni is the name of the school). The kids are always in a playful mood, and I helped teach the class a little bit. As for work, I tilled most of the soil around the bean plants and other food plants to help them grow faster. The teacher brought in a couple of young mango trees and another, much bigger passionfruit tree than the first. Things are growig fast here, and we've already got a broad spectrum of fruits and vegetables going up in this relatively small compound. 4 Banana trees, 2 passionfruit, 2 or 3 starfruit trees, 2 mango trees and 1 sugarcane plant. There is also a pumpkin plant, plenty of tomato plants, beans, sukumawiki (similar to spinach) and other vegetables, the Swahili names of which I can't remember. We've also, over time, added several trees and flowers to add shade and beauty to the area which gets quite flooded with sun. truck has been coming by every day for the past week to drop off building materials - stone, sand, gravel and eventually concrete. Looks like work on a second classroom and office addition will finally commence next week. Camp Kenya is funding the project, but I'm not sure if it's their volunteers that will actually be building the additions...I'm thinking locals will do most of the work.

I went to Haller Park, Bamburi Beach and Shimoni last weekend with the father of my homestay (here we refer to the father by his child's name and say baba Tracy...or mama Tracy for the mother) So we visited Shimoni on Saturday, and this little fishing village was very refreshing. Shimoni means "place of the caves". It was named after the large cave underneath the village, which is said to have been a holding cell for slaves on their way south to market in Zanzibar, Tanzania. I took a short tour of the caves and saw plenty of bats sleeping on the ceiling, as well as a shrine that some superstitious locals still use to make animal sacrifices when the weather isn't favourable or when they witness bad omens. The people of this village are very friendly and laid back, considering the number of tourists that go through here on their way to wasini island and kisite marine park. Seafood is also amazingly cheap here - we bought 2 kilograms (10 fish) of tuff fish, similar to tilapia, for 300 kenyan shilling...about 5 dollars. The fish was caught that day and never frozen; as fresh as you could ask for. We also took a boat to Wasini island and explored the town of Wasini as well as a dried up coral park with a mangrove tree forest within. What a strange site this was, with what must have been hundreds of thousands of crabs poking their heads out from holes scattered throughout the marshy park. Seafood lunch on the island was also great, with crab, tilapia, chapati, rice, potatos, seagrass sauce, and fresh kenyan coffee. All this for 500ksh each, or $7.50 Canadian. It was definitely worth it to go with a local who already knew most of the people on the island, as baba Tracy works with the Kenya Women's Financial Trust and regularly visits here for work. Another tourist group of four sitting near us paid 10,000ksh for their buffet..5 times what we paid.

Haller Park just north of Mombasa - where we went on Sunday - was another great experience. This is a very peaceful forest reserve which is hard to believe since it's so close to the city and to the overdeveloped hotel industry along the north coast. We did a lot of walking through nature trails and on our way into reception, we were greeted by a waterbuck drinking from a pond, staring at us as we approached. I honestly thought it was a statue in the water until it ran off haha. There were monkeys playing in the trees, giant tortoise lumbering around and many different kinds of birds. The turles were huge, and they were likely 3 or 4 times my age. These things can live past 100 years. There was also a sign that said "please do not sit on the tortoises!" We visited the giraffe compound past reception, and I was surprised to find that we were allowed to just walk up to the giraffes; no barriers or gates seperating us. So we took pictures about 10 feet away from them as they observed us curiously. There is also a crocodile farm in here, and an animal sanctuary with antelope, colourful ground birds and a few hippos...but the hippos were hiding underwater when we got there. We were too early for their feeding time. Oh, and there were walls around the croc farm and hippo sanctuary...definitely not safe enough to get too close to them. After the park, we visited Bamburi Beach Hotel for a buffet lunch. This tourist resort is always packed, mainly with package tourists from europe who do the usual one week getaway from home. The food was great, and we took a walk along the beach before heading home.

Well I think that about covers everything up til now, and I still have a few travel plans before I go home. I hope to go to Shimba Hills NP and Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary this weekend and possibly Kisite Marine Park to do some snorkelling and dolphin spotting. One trip I am planning on doing should take place on my last week in East Africa before I go home. I want to go to Rwanda for that week to visit the genocide museum and hopefully one of their national parks (parc des volcans) to do a gorilla trek. This is supposed to be the ultimate wildlife experience, so I am crossing my fingers. My friend Erixon from back home in Toronto has told me that I would be welcome to visit his family in Rwanda, and that his brother might even show me around Kigali, which is a very kind offer :)

More to come soon everyone!

Scott