So I guess its been another week full of stories and experiences, I seem to find it hard to talk of all the interesting things though because they’re fast becoming normality. Like the camels that spend the evenings outside my compound – the first time I saw them I was pretty surprised but now its just normal and its quite fun to be living near a group of camels, it makes for interesting scenery anyway! I was on the way to school the other day and a group of monkeys had escaped from Haller Park and were just sat together on the side of the main road scavenging for food, that was funny. I guess there are a lot of animals dotted around the place here, there’s the goats that are always in the middle of the road on the way through the local area of the school and the chickens with their chicks that are walking around the place, and the ducks feeding off the dumps, thats not such a nice sight and seems to be a contradiction to all of our concerns about the plastic we use because even though people don’t produce as much waste here, the waste they throw on the street is mostly plastic bags which is obviously not good for all the animals that hang around the place grazing on anything that isn’t dirt.
We’ve had lots of fun with the kids for the last couple of days, we made the bracelets and necklaces and even rings out of the beads that I bought and there were enough for everyone to make a couple so they were happy. Then the kids started rehearsing for a ‘fiesta’ at church where they have to do a number of performances to compete with the other groups at a celebration they go to. The mama, Violet, taught them a song in her mother tongue about heaven and I’ve been learning it too! And all of the classes were practising today for the closing tomorrow, they all do a performance of something and the parents come and watch. I hope the weather is nice and I’m sure it’ll be fun and everyone will be in high spirits.
My Swahili is improving enough now that I can convince the people I meet like the matatu conductors or the local women that I can speak Swahili, for a few sentences at least until they ask me something complicated or speak so fast that I can’t catch what they’re saying. But it’s fun to be able to reply and talk a bit at least, I just hope that I won’t forget it all by my next visit.

Anyway, thats it for today,

lots of love, Chagit.x.