4th - 9th May: Kenya (Part 2)

Back in Kenya, we started our drive back towards Nairobi, where the trip had started, with a couple of stops en route.

Kericho
Our first camping spot was in a place called Kericho - home to a huge tea plantation.

This is where 'YorkshireTea' comes from!

Tea-picking is mostly still carried out by hand, which means only the finest tips are collected.

This tea-picker was on his way to the weighing station

Lake Naivasha 
After Kericho we headed to the shores of Lake Naivasha for a couple of nights of relaxing and wildlife-watching.

Black and white colobus monkey

View from my tent

View from behind my tent!

You can just see the lines of the electric fence in this photo, which prevented us being trampled in the night..

Nairobi 
Back in Nairobi, we took a trip to the Giraffe Centre. The centre is run by a non profit-making organisation whose aim is to provide conservation education to Kenyan children. The centre allows you to get up, close and personal to the giraffes, which is a very unique experience!

Feeding the giraffe their favourite pellets from my mouth...seemed like a good idea at the time, until one burped in my face!

After 19 days of truck travel, our trip was over and the group spent one last night in Nairobi together. Half of the group would be continuing on the truck all the way to South Africa, collecting new travellers en route, but for the rest of us, our trucking days were over.

I had some amazing experiences on the trip and met some lovely people (special mention for Lisa and Often), but I was keen to return to travelling more independently.

Interesting facts:

• A giraffe's tongue can be up to 45cm long and is bluish in colour
• Over recent years, Kenya has sustained numerous attacks by militant group Al-Shabaab, including one on Nairobi's Westgate Mall in 2013 when nearly 70 people were killed and much of the mall was destroyed. The mall was re-opened on 18th July this year.
• Kenyan tea has been proven to have higher levels of anti-oxidants than tea grown elsewhere in the world. It is of such high quality that it is often blended with lower quality teas to improve their quality. 

:)

X

29th April - 3rd May: Uganda (Part 2)

After an all too brief trip into Rwanda, we headed back into Uganda, enjoying some stunning scenery on the way.

After arriving at our camp site in the early afternoon, we were met by a local man who ran a project to help displaced people and he took us to visit the village and school he had helped establish on a hill on the other side of the lake.

The people living in the village were members of a forest tribe whose home had been within the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest for many, many years. When the forest was proclaimed a protected area for the gorillas the people were made to leave, with no alternative accommodation or services provided for them.  

Outside of the forest, where they had lived as hunters and gathers, the people from the tribe faced discrimination from the broader community and extreme poverty. They struggled to adapt to a very new and different way of life; struggling to find work, or finding only very lowly-paid jobs that no-one else wanted and sending very few of the children into school, due to discrimination and the gap in attainment levels between them and the local children.  

http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/pygmies

The project we visited aimed to support the people in tackling some of these problems; by educating the adults in agriculture so they can grow their own crops, directly donating clothes, bedding and other supplies and setting up a school to educate the children.

The school - started for the forest children - also welcomes other local children to support integration.

After a night in Kabale, we headed East, eventually setting up camp about 100 metres South of the Equator! 

From the equator we headed to Jinja - a small town at the source of the river Nile, famous for its white-water rafting. Not being a massive fan of throwing myself down and into rivers, I spent my time kayaking on the lake, horse-riding through the local villages, browsing through craft stalls in town and enjoying the lakeside view...

Interesting facts:

• Forest tribes are often referred to as 'pygmies' - a term created to describe people who were seen to be unusually short. The word is still used, although it is deemed offensive by some and 'forest dwellers' is often preferred.  
• English and Swahili are the two official languages in Uganda, but 'Lugandan' is widely spoken
• Ugandan street food for vegetarians consists of the 'Rolex'. This isn't a fancy Swiss watch, but a thin omelette wrapped in a chapatti (roll eggs...!) Yes, I ate a few - it beats the alternative of 'meat on a stick'...

:)

X

27th - 28th April: Rwanda

Many years ago I applied to VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) to do voluntary work in Rwanda. In the end, I decided it wasn't the right time for me to go and I withdrew my application, but Rwanda has been somewhere I have wanted to visit ever since that time, so it was amazing to finally get there - even if just for a couple of days.

Despite being right next door to Uganda, there were some very obvious differences as soon as we crossed the border; the most obvious being that we were driving on the right-hand side of the road - and very smooth roads too! The landscape was as hilly, green and lush as Uganda, but much of the land was neatly divided into plots and full of crops, even on the steepest slopes.

Our first stop was Kigali, the capital city, where we visited the Genocide Memorial Museum.  

The museum is a living memorial to the 800,000 men, women and children who were murdered over a period of just 100 days in 1994, while the international community (including the UK) looked the other way, despite having prior knowledge that the massacre was going to happen. 

To read a short summary of the genocide, click the following link: 

http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm

The museum is an incredibly moving tribute to all those who were killed as well as to the survivors who lost countless family and friends. It is also the site of the mass graves of thousands of the victims.

Since the genocide, a process of justice and reconciliation has been taking place in Rwanda with the aim of all Rwandans being able to once again live peacefully side by side. 

It is impossible to visit Rwanda, or indeed write about it, without considering the genocide - it is such a tragic and horrific time in the country's very recent history. But the justice and reconciliation process has offered people the chance to rebuild their lives and move forward and it is truly humbling to see how people are doing just that.

After Kigali we made our way north west to Ruangheri, a small town not far from the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where we stayed.  It was a really friendly little town where I spent a day wandering around, drinking coffee, exploring the market and having a new skirt made by one of the market tailors!

Sadly my time in Rwanda was all too brief, but it is somewhere I would definitely like to return to one day.  

Interesting facts:

• Rwanda has the highest percentage of women in parliament of any country (63% of women in the equivalent of our house of commons - compared to 29% in the UK)
• Rwanda is sometimes known as the 'Land of a Thousand Hills'
• Rwandan lions were also victims of the genocide. People displaced by the genocide moved into national parks and the lion population was eventually reduced to zero 15 years ago. Last month, the first lions were re-introduced into the country to Akagera National Park. Amazingly, two of the lions introduced were from Tembe in South Africa where I spent two weeks and this is one of them!:

:)
X