Jambo again!

We're one week in to our stay and have realised that we have a love and hate relationship with Mombasa. We love love love the people and the way of life and the beer and the food and the other volunteers. we HATE the traffic and the commute to our project, but this changes daily. Our friend Megan who is volunteering with us quite rightly said as we piled 4 people into a tuk tuk (the 3 wheeled open taxi) that driving along is like one of those computer game simulator type things where you have to steer at the very last second to avoid impact. Only here there is a very real risk of death we have taken to closing our eyes and screaming 'pole pole' (slow slow) until we reach our destination several shades paler than we ought to be...

So having spent most of the week volunteering, here is an update:

Most days we set off from our homestay at 7.50am and walk to the volunteer house to pick up Megan and MK, our other volunteers from the USA, cool gals. We then walk to the pick up point where we are either bundled into a matatu(multiple people taxi) or tuk tuk which ever comes first. We get to our project usually within an hour...ferry permitting.

We go to the school first. the word school summons up a nice image of a lovely school with doors, walls, windows etc. Wrong. The school is pretty much thrown together from bits of stone, mud and that's about it. Katie is in the baby class with Megan, there are 35 children from 3-5 years old and they are extremely well behaved apart from trying to pull my hair and high five me at all times. MK is with the middle class and Joshy boy is with the oldest children; his dudes around ten years old.

We mainly sit and watch because actually the teachers are awesome at their job; they have so much control over their children and they are really bright children that to have us fool around for a week would be pointless. So we do things like draw on the board and cut out cardboard, that kind of thing. One thing Josh loves is that everyone here says sorry for something that you have done wrong yourself. For example, he was writing on the chalkboard the other day and he dropped his chalk, everyone in the class said sorry at the same time! Two of them ran out to pick up the chalk for him! they are the sweetest kids! they have so much desire to learn and respect the teachers which is a pleasant change...

We would have to say that the funniest part of the trip so far has been the other day we were trying to flag down a tuk tuk to get back into Mombasa from our project and one came along with 7 school kids in it. the driver threw them out and we thought he was being cruel but actually he was getting us in first so that he could bundle them onto our laps! these children were about 7 years old and weren't phased at all! we had a grand total of 13 people in a 3 person tuk tuk!

Well thats it for now, last night was karaoke and tonight hopefully we will go to see a live african band, last day at the project tomorrow and then safari at the weekend!

Camera lead

• africa
• Kenya
• volunteering