The Chalbi Desert Adventure

The last week my family and two others had a crazy adventure in the Chalbi Desert, located in Northern Kenya. The other families were the Buntings and the Gunyeas. Our adventure was one of the most amazing, crazy, awesome weeks of my life. Here are some of the most exciting things that happened to us.

First of all, over the 5ish days we had over 7 tires that either had a hole or just totally blew off the wheel. One of the funniest ones was yesterday when we were going 110kph and our tire popped off the wheel. So we swerved off to the side of the road and we all got out. It took about 45mins to put a new tire on since the popped tire was stuck to the car.

The next insane thing that happened to us was that the father of the Gunyeas, Member of Parlement Francis Chachu Gunyea(MPFCG), got arrested! Honestly, he kind of expected it to happen. So, there is a conflict going on between two tribes called the Gabra and the Borana. MPFCG is one of the most important leaders of the Gabra tribe. The important leader of the Borana tribe(I don't know his name) got arrested a couple nights before since he was attacking the Gabra with guns and bombs and very dangerous weapons like that. That wasn't allowed in the in the uprisings that occur in Kenya so he got arrested. MPFCG did not do anything bad, but the government wanted to make it "fair" so they arrested him. They charged him for "talking about violence in a speech last May or something like that" which isn't true because all that he said was that he wanted to STOP the violence, not continue it. So in my opinion, he should not be arrested because he didn't do anything illegal.

Another crazy thing that happened to us in the Chalbi was on the last day everyone got sick. It was terrible! We had to stop driving about every 30mins because someone had to throw up. Luckily I didn't puke but almost everybody else did.

The last crazy things that happened were that we got lost in the desert twice! The first time was on our way there. We were about 3/4 of the way there and the driver that actually knew where he was going had to leave to pick up someone else, so he basically said, "so you drive that way and then you turn a couple times and eventually you will get there." Well, we tried that. And it didn't work. So we just stopped and it was dark and there was nothing at all to see.  We gathered all of the cars and tried to come up with a plan of how to get there. After about 30mins of talking we saw a little light in the distance bobbing about and moving in the general direction of where we were. Once we all saw him we turned on our flood lights and honked a lot until he noticed us and started to come over. He was a shepard in the middle of nowhere.  Someone offered to pay him to come and help us navigate toward the town. Eventually he got out and we were able to know where we needed to go.

Today I will fly back to Lander. I fly to Amsterdam at 11pm and leave Amsterdam the next day at 10am ish to fly to Salt Lake. We arrive there at 1pm ish and drive back to Lander. I think I will go to school on Thursday but that depends on how I'm feeling.

Kwheri(goodbye)

Suruni

Today we are in a place called Suruni! It is very cool here because it has 2 pools!  The pools are shaped like a dolphin and a turtle!  The one that I am swimming in right here is the dolphin shaped one and I am in the fin. Yesterday we met up with our friends, 4 were from America Eli, left Avery, And there parents Chris and Rebekah. The other boy in the picture is Isacko and Ali they are brothers, his dad is a Senator in Kenya and his mom helped start a school in Northern Kenya for high school girls.

It's in the Samburu conservancy, so there are a bunch of animals just running around and the people who run this place are the local Samburu people who are very kind. My mom and I came here three years ago, and I am with the same people as last time, Eli and Isacko. This morning we wen't on a game drive, that is pretty much a safari but for only 7 hours. We saw a bunch of cool things like elephants, giraffes, Dik Dik's, Gazelle, Impala, and a bunch of other things. But the best thing that we saw was two cheetah's running after each other.

Tonight all of the kids are doing a "warriors academy," I did that the last time that I was here. It was very fun, first you get a bow and arrow, then you start a fire by spinning a stick very fast, on a piece of wood, that is on top of some grass. Meanwhile, our parents will be on a walking safari. I think the warrior academy will be very fun!  We'll learn things like starting fires without matches, shooting bows and arrows, and throwing spears like the Samburu warriors!

Tomorrow we will go to an elephant sanctuary and I will say more about that tomorrow, if I have WiFi.

Kwaheri(goodbye)
I will make another post tomorrow!

Safari!!

The last 4 days we have been on a safari! That pretty much means that we stand up in a truck with no roof and go thirty five miles per hour on bumpy roads looking for animals! It's very fun! We have seen a TON of cool animals! I think the coolest animals that we've seen are lions(simba), leopard(chewi), cheetah(Duma), giraffe(twiga), elephant(tembo). We saw many other animals including gazelle, ostrich, warthogs, dik dik's, baboons, monkeys, antelope, hartebeest, hippos, crocodile, zebra, Cape buffalo, wildebeest, and many other animals. But the first ones I listed were my favorite. We also went on a walking safari that was very fun because we saw Cape buffalo which are very dangerous and we didn't have to be afraid of them because our guide was caring an AK-47. It was also cool because we walked to a huge waterfall and next to it was this crazy looking tree and it's roots were all tangled up going over a big wall.

JIFUNDISHE

Two days ago we went to an organization called JIFUNDISHE (g-found-de-shae). They provided a free education for girls and boys that was actually a top quality place. It had a primary school which is usually for ages 5-11 but here they were much older because some of them had to drop out of their previous schools because they didn't have enough money or something like that. Then the secondary school which is what we call high school is usually people ages 14-18, but there the people were in their twenties. One of them had a full grown beard! But anyways, we didn't just have to stand around and introduce our selves and say why we were happy to be there and where we live and how old we are and share with them our dissertation.........(just kidding).

Although we did all the introduction anyway,  we got to play soccer with the primary school kids! It was very fun, there were probably 35 kids on each team so even though the fields were huge they were still very crowded. My team won like 17-1 and I scored about 5 of the goals for my team. There were two people that stood out to me the most and they were the person in the green sweatshirt and the guy with the blue Tanzania soccer jersey. They stood out to me because they were the two most talented players. 

Segal Family Foundation

We were at a conference for 3 days last week. It was very fun, even though my sister and I just sat around and did homework and that kind of thing. But the reason it was fun was because every night they would have some kind of party, for example they a had cocktail party, an awards ceremony for some of the best donating organizations, and on the last night there was a concert. The concert was definitely the best of all. So we got on a bus and they started to drive us to the concert, on the way there they gave us bracelets to show the workers there. The bracelet meant that we didn't have to pay for the food and drinks. On the bus they were also telling us when the buses would leave, "the first bus will leave after the first act, the second bus will leave after the second act, the third bus will leave after the third act..........." and so on and so forth. Then after she said that the fifth bus will leave after the fifth act, she said, "the final bus will be leaving at 3am". I was like WHAT!!!

     We finally arrived at the concert and it turned out that it was a night club! There were bands playing and people drinking and dancing! It was crazy! When we walked though security(yes there was security)the bouncers letting us in hesitated while letting us in, we were too young to go in since it was a bar. Well, even though we were too young they let us in anyway. When we got up into the spot that the Segal Family Foundation was suppose to stay in, we got our drinks and found a place to sit down. After about an hour of bands playing and drunk people dancing, someone came up to us and said, "the children are too young ma'am, I'm afraid they will have to leave". We said okay, but stayed anyway. On our way to get food somebody else came up to us and asked us to leave again. We said okay, but we still didn't leave. Finally when we were sitting back down to eat our dinner, three people came up to us and told us to leave. We said okay again, but didn't move and waited for the men to go away. But they didn't. They told us to come with them, and this time we did. They got ahold of us and pulled us along with them and didn't let go of us until we were outside of the bar!

     The first act wasn't done yet, so we had to stay outside until the bus came. It wasn't bad though, considering that the bouncers hadn't taken our dinner, it wasn't cold outside, and we could still hear the music from inside. Then when the bus got there we hopped on and drove back to the hotel.

     Earlier that day we visited two organizations that my moms job supports, they were called, The Action Foundation and the Kibera Girls Soccer Academy, both of those places were very cool, but to me they weren't AS cool as the night club!

Youth with Physical Disabilities Development Forum

Today I didn't really do anything! I mostly just swam in the pool and played soccer. My mom told me that I had to write a post today so I am going to write about something that I saw two days ago.

I went to a site visit to YPDDF in Uganda and we met this girl named Joyce, she is in fourth grade. She had cerebral palsy, that is something that happens when children don't have enough oxygen while they are being born. The cause of that is your muscles curve in towards each other and that effects the way that you write or the way you walk, but they aren't different than us mentally.  They understand everything but sometimes they can't talk or communicate how we do because of their condition.  Although, Joyce had come up with a way to be able to write, she could write with her LEFT FOOT!!! Using her left foot writing, she became one of the best students(out of 150 students)!! She wanted to do something to make it easier to write with her foot so she came to YPDDF and they came up with a chair to hold her up and it also had a sort of a clipboard that could hold the papers that  she writes on.

We also met many kids with different disabilities but Joyce stood out to me the most to me. There was one other kid that stood out to me, his name was Sam. I couldn't tell what his disability was, but my mom thinks he has polio. It is caused by a virus, that is preventable by an immunization in the US, but people still get the disease in other countries, the effects are weak muscles and sometimes it causes people to not be able to walk. The reason that Sam stood out to me was because of how friendly and sociable he was. He was singing and talking to us, it was pretty cool. Now its time for me to go to dinner and to wrap this up.

("Kwaheri" - good bye in swahili)

My First Day

I'm finally here! Today I went out and visited a whole bunch of sites including Girl Up, Special Children Trust, and the YPDDF(Youth with Physical Disabilities Development Forum).

 Something crazy happened at the Special Children Trust. Here's what happened. So my sister and I were really bored so we decided to swing on the swing set while my mom was talking to the director. Then all of a sudden these two kids that were probably eight years old ran out of there classroom and sprinted towards us yelling "muzungo"(that means white person)! Then a guard ran out and yelled at them telling them to go back, but only the girl ran back. The little boy kept running and at first I thought that he was a good little kid and was only interested in us since we are white people but then he ran up behind me and pulled back my swing. Then just when it was far enough, he grabbed my hair. I originally thought that he just wanted to touch my hair because a lot of people do in Africa(strange fact). But then he started pulling and he yanked and he pulled and I almost fell backwards! Then he ripped a huge chunk of my hair out! After me he ran at my sister, but she was more prepared than I was and started running away. He chased her, but eventually he ran out of energy and WALKED back to his classroom.

I really liked Girl Up because they help really poor girls to get an education and learn how to sew which is helpful for making money. They do a lot of activities that help with self- esteem and help girls to live a better life, more like girls in America. They sang a bunch of songs and seemed very happy.

These kids are from YPDDF.  The boy with the school uniform was very happy, his name is Sam.  One of the girls in the far back with the pink shirt uses a wheelchair with a special adaptation that allows her to write with her left foot because she can't use her hands to write!

Before we leave to Africa!

        This is the first blog post I've made in two and a half years! When I am in Africa, I am going to try to make a post every other day. Today I'm going to tell you where, when and how we will get to Africa. So to start the trip, we'll leave on September 30 at 8:30a.m. from Lander. Then we drive five hours (including rest stops) to Salt Lake City. Once we arrive in Salt Lake, we will fly 10 hours to Amsterdam. From Amsterdam we will fly another long 9 hour flight to Kigali, Rwanda. Finally we fly for 1 hour to our destination: Entebbe, Uganda. We arrive there at 11:30p.m. (Monday) which is 2:30p.m. on Monday in Lander. That is around 20 hours and 30 minutes of flying! Then add on the 5 hours of driving to Salt Lake and you have about 28 hours and 30 minutes of travel to get to Entebbe, Uganda!

         These are some of the places we will vist and an interesting fact about that country. The first place that we will go is Entebbe, that is in Uganda. There are two other places that we will go in Uganda, those places are Kampala and Mityana District. One interesting fact that I learned about Uganda is that there is a law in which for every tree you cut down, you have to plant three more. The next country that we will visit is Kenya. When we are there we will go to Nairobi for a conference. One interesting thing I learned about Kenya is that in terms of sports, Kenya is known for its middle and long distance runners. They have produced many champions. After we leave Kenya, we fly to Arusha. That is in Tanzania. There are a couple other places in Tanzania that we will visit such as The Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, and Lake Manyara. One interesting fact about Tanzania is that 30% of Tanzania is national parks. 

This is Lake Manyara in Tanzania.

This is a map of Eastern Afica, this is perfect because it is also a map of all of the places we will go: Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. 

Kwaheri! (that is good-bye in Swahili, that is a frequently used language in East Africa).