I have not completed onion of the work

I am busy typing up yet another English test for my class (they have become a regular Friday thing; I write the scores up on the wall complete with stars for more than 50% and it's so nice to see how happy the kids are when the do well. Last week Mary, a girl who's usually in the bottom third of the class in English, got 90% and came joint top. She was skipping round the classroom grinning, it was amazing). I have subtly slipped in the word 'onion' as a possible answer for five of the questions so I am just waiting apprehensively for my class to prove how attentive they are by answering 'onion' to the questions.

A little bit about Pistis:
Pistis is another orphanage that I've been visiting more often recently; it's a lot larger than St. Stevens with about 150 children and a school attached to it. I wish I'd started going earlier as it's difficult to remember names and stories when you've only got time to visit once a week, but I'm loving going at the moment. It's a funny mixture of cute little girls wanting to manically plait your hair and ask you to imitate how to swim for them, and older boys who are really interesting to talk to about anything and everything (some of which boys their age should not know, both in the horrific-past sense and the spent-too-much-time-with-stoned-Moses-at-the-market sense). We always go there by boda-boda (the bike taxies which feel pretty unstable if you're carrying 120 exercise books on your lap!) and most of the space there is outside in a huge concrete courtyard, with big metal barns crammed with bunk-beds as the dormitories. The owner of it is pretty horrifically corrupt; the money supposed to go to the children has all gone on her daughter's wedding, and thus the only reason they've had food recently is because Nick bought it for them.

The weekend was EXCITING as on Saturday a small group of us went to Hell's Gate, the National Park you can cycle through that I'd already visited and loved with my Dad. After only a tiny argument of 1.5 hours with the charming Kenyan Wildlife Service men about how we ARE residents of Keyna, thus shouldn't be charged extortionate prices, we spent the day cycling past zebra, giraffes, gazelle and warthog, climbing a very tall rock tower with an amazing view over the entire park and all its big, prehistoric cliffs, and clambering over dusty and muddy rock faces through the gorge. Being the immensely clever Zoe that I am, I spotted a vertical rock face that looked perfect for climbing, and reached about half-way up before Anna said to me from below: 'Zoe you don't have a rope!' Now this didn't bother me too much until she pointed out that without a rope, getting down would be interesting. At this point I PANICKED, lost my footing and scrambled down at the speed of light. Other highlights of the day involve falling a few metres onto my bum, into a muddy pool, with white shorts (not so pretty), and watching enormous dramatic rainclouds approach the golden yellow park in the late afternoon sun, making an amazing rainbow and not actually getting us wet. It was beautiful :)Sunday was just as exciting as DAVE was arriving to stay with me for a week, after not having seen him since September! I picked him up from the carpark next to the souvenir market in town, where he was promptly surrounded by some opportunistic street children, and then me, comparing tans with him and admiring his remarkably feminine frilly pink pillow he'd brought with him across Africa. We spent the day at Graceland Hotel with some others, catching up in the sun next to the pool.

Since then live has been pretty normal but plus a Dave! He's been at school with me, and has been taking maths and P.E. lessons (and discovering the joy of marking an entire kenyan-class of exercise books), and visiting the orphanages. We took the kids at St. Stevens to have their hair shaved on Monday, because they're not allowed to have hair at school and because of yet another useless Kenyan-orphanage-manager, some of them had been being caned and skipping school for two weeks because no-one had taken them to the salon. It was really fun actually, and the locals certainly found six white people with a crowd of small children crammed into a tiny, hit, tin-shack barbers entertaining. It was definately worth it, seeing the smile on their faces when they'd had it done.

Now I'm looking forward to the weekend because we're taking 18 small orphans swimming, which they will LOVE, despite the fact that none of them know how to swim and we need to investigate bulk-buying armbands tomorrow to keep them alive :)

The amount of attention you get as a white person in Kenya triples if you take a giraffe on a motorbike

SCHOOL:
I greeted the kids entirely in kiswahili last Thursday, which they found hilarious. When you walk into the classroom for the first time each day they all stand up and chant 'good morning teacher'. Just to show off my kiswahili, here is how the conversation went:
--Kids: Gooooood Morning Teacher
--Me: Good morning class. Habari za asubuhi? (how is the morning?)
-- Kids: Nzuri sana mwalimu, natena karibu. Shikamoo mwalimu? (Very fine teacher, welcome again. 'Shikamoo' is a respectful greeting for people older than you)
--Me: Marahaba wanafunzi. Keti chini. (response to 'Shikamoo', sit down)
--Kids: Asante sana mwalimu (Thank you teacher)
And so they all sat down, grinned and clapped for me :)

I've also picked up a lot more random lessons; I'm now teaching 3 different maths classes, 1 English, millions of P.E. and 1 science. I've been asked to take a lesson on animals 'removing waste', in which I have to draw pictures of various different animals pooing on the blackboard and ask a group of 9-10 year olds to draw them. It's gonna be hilarious.NIGHT OUT:
We all went out on Saturday night for my birthday, dressed in lots of different coloured clothing items. The idea was to all swap clothes until we were each just one colour by the end of the evening, but everyone had drunk a little too much to remember such a complicated theme so it didn't really work! We started at Taidys, spoke to some random Kenyans as usual, everyone marvelled at Amy and I's self-decorated white hats, and then went to Summit by motorbike. Got attacked by Nick (very drunk already) when I arrived, DANCED for a few hours without really stopping, then suddenly someone reminded me that we'd said we would jump in the swimming pool at Summit on my birthday! Now the swimming pool is technically closed at 2am, and you have to have done some extra exploring of the back-alleys of Summit to know where it is, but thankfully we have done our share of exploring Summit, and so ran through and leapt into the pool :D It was AMAZING. But suddenly the entire group of Summit's security guards appeared and told us sternly to get out of the pool, despite us having asked two of them if it was okay for us to swim before jumping in. They locked us in the pool area and a huge long argument ensued, ending in them threatening to call the police and charge us a fortune, until a Kenyan friend of ours paid them something and we stormed out,
screaming that we would never be coming to Summit again!

So overall an extremely eventful evening!

BIRTHDAY:
I had a really lovely day :) I woke up to open some extremely exciting post from Louise and my family, then I went to school, happily taking photos of anything and everything on the way there (NEW CAMERA!), and taught English and took Standard 3 for P.E. (fun, did skipping with them). My class remembered it was my birthday and all sang happy birthday to me as I walked into the classroom; it was so sweet. I had lovely phonecalls from the guys in Hawaii and from Rebecca :) Annie and I left school at lunchtime and went to the most expensive cafe in Nakuru (still cheaper than Starbucks) for the cheesy chips and mocha fudge cake that I finally had an excuse to buy. I stopped off at the souvenir market to say hey to my market friends and bumped into Nick, who presented me with an enormous wooden giraffe as a present from him and Rebecca. LOVE IT.

Amy, Annie and I went to the orphanage in the afternoon, which was equally lovely as they all sang to me and Amy gave me a lush book of lots of photos from Kenya and drawings by all the children at the orphanage for me. I'd discovered that my favourite girl, Becky, didn't know when her birthday was (she estimates her age at between 9 and 10) and so I told her she could share my birthday, which she loved. I gave her a photo of the two of us as a present :) The kids loved my giraffe and carted it around, taking photos of it everywhere in the orphanage, until I got it back at the end and it had a broken ear! Poor Mr Twiglet (as he's now named).We went straight from the orphanage to Taidys, where I met all my friends and we had a big meal together :) Annie gave me a beautiful present: a hanging string of photos from the last 4 months, with birthday messages from all my friends on the back. We all chatted and laughed and had loads of fun :)

I finally finished the day by taking my giraffe on a motorbike home. This was hilarious; I attracted so many funny looks from passing matatus and had quite a few "give me that giraffe"s. No! It's mine! I put all my lovely cards on the wall, hung up my photo thingy, talked to my family and propped Mr Twiglet up at the end of my bed before curling up in my Masai blanket and sleeping :)

WET

There is lots and lots of rain here. The bottom of my trousers are all soggy and there's a thunderstorm at least once a day. Everything's MUDDY and I want my blue wooley jumper from home but I know Rose, the maid, would ruin it by handwashing and bleach (why do they add bleach to the washing? Nobody knows)

Last week was a big blur of school, which is going really well, I'm so proud of my kids. It makes me happy when you have a kid who usually doesn't understand anything get 7/7 in your exercise :) The marbles were working well, I just had to take them out of my desk and the class was silent within a minute, last week, but not so much today when my English class went nuts and wouldn't shut up. I've also picked up some more lessons; I'm doing Standard 4 and 5 maths regularly now as well which is awesome as maths is really easy to teach.

Annie and I also visited a new orphanage last week, one for babies between 3 months and 3 years old. It was SO cute, they all clung to you and wanted to be picked up and played with as soon as you arrived. It was a really wealthy looking orphanage for usual standards, which surprised me - it was in an enormous beautiful house with such cute little tables with multicoloured chairs set out like a tea-party for their dinner! Hopefully I'll go again sometime but I seem to have no time anymore - everyday I go to school from 8am until 1ish, then into town for lunch, then spend the afternoon at the orphanage or preparing for the next day's lessons.

The weekend was awesome and horrible at the same time. On Friday we had the leaving party for Rebecca, Amy and Lorna and each household had to dress up as a country. Annie, Rebecca and I chose America as Rebecca already had an interesting pair of 'shorts' from the second-hand-market in American colours, and so I went dressed in a red t-shirt, painted with white stars in tipex, and each of us in very attractive white hats with the American flag drawn on them. We spent most of the evening at Eunice's house, a friend of ours, just generally being stupid and messing around, until our HEADMASTER from school arrived, a 'surprise' for Rebecca, as she was leaving. WE HATE OUR HEADMASTER. He's always really unfriendly and patronising to us at school, and the evening just confirmed that he is a man to be avoided. URGH.

Anyway, the evening was still really awesome and we have some hilarious photos (I am resolutely not untagging them on facebook because I love them despite the fact that some are pretty awful - BLAME REBECCA for that). BUT, by the next morning, everything was sad and nasty as the reason for a leaving party is obviously that people are leaving.

So, on Sunday morning, all the volunteers went for a final meal at Taidys, the first place we all ate together in Nakuru, and then trooped to the shuttle station to say an extremely sad goodbye to Rebecca, Lorna and Amy. We all cried and the Kenyans all stared at us. We ate a hell of a lot of comfort food in front of a film at Karanja's house, and then Annie and I went home to see the room SO HORRIBLY TIDY due to the lack of Rebecca's stuff.

The last few days, other than the absence of Rebecca, have been quite nice. The kids at school have (mainly) been lovely; everyday we walk with our standard three girls to the road to get a matatu and give them all giant hugs before we go. They love it, and so do I :) Oh and we went to Ann's house (one of the standard threes) and met her cow! We got stuck at the orphanage during a giant thunderstorm the other day which was pretty nice actually as we played clapping games and sang with the kids for ages. Then yesterday I went to Pistis, a different orphanage, which was awesome but crazy, the kids just swarmed me and basically stole all the wool I'd brought for them to make bracelets. There are a lot more children there, about 150 at the orphanage and tons more at the school it's attached to, and lots of older kids who are really interesting to talk to.

Anyway, this is getting pretty long, so to sum up: school is good. Orphanage is good. Absence of Rebecca is very sad and I miss her a hell of a lot as I spent nearly 24 hours a day with her for four months. Rain is bad. Need more jumpers.

Red and Yellow and Pink and Green....

After a movie night where I slept at Amy and Ellen's house on Friday night, the most exciting thing that has happened recently has been Gemma's birthday party, which was on Saturday night. The theme was colours and we all picked a colour and spent an amusing hour or two at the second-hand-market in town (sells cheap but dubiously stained clothing - Katharine I bought your topshop emo shorts for 2 pounds or something!) finding a wide selection of strange clothing items in our colours. I was red and bought a large tie-died shawl thing that they call lessos here, along with a red waist-belt for 50p :)

So, decked out with our various weird items of clothing, we headed to Karanja's house (where Gemma lives) to begin a colourful and hilarious evening where alcohol was downed through funnels, we all did lots of dancing and bouncing around and screeching at Scooby the dog everytime he ran into the house, covered each other in facepaint of varying degrees of appropriateness, and finally left in the back of a pickup truck to go to Summit, leaving Annie, Rebecca and Becky already in bed at 10pm. We spent a lot of the journey trying to stop Ben tumbling off the top of the pickup truck, and then had lots of fun at Summit doing normal things like yet more dancing, screeching and scaring random Kenyans.

The next day was spent teasing certain people for things they'd done the night before and watching in horror as Gemma continued drinking after no sleep and as part of her I-must-drink-for-four-days-straight-to-celebrate-being-eighteen-idea. She passed out that evening, finally. We also met the two new volunteers, two girls, who seemed nice but rather scared by the interesting morning-after scene they found (I couldn't really blame them!)

Yesterday school started again and I am so happy to be back :) Despite yesterday being spent preparing new textbooks for use (i.e. not all that productive), today was brilliant. Miriam, the teacher I share my class with, was away and so I took them all day, teaching them lots of English and playing a game with them which involved some of the kids acting out different professions. They loved it and went mad when a really funny boy named Isaac, who acts like a clown the entire time, zoomed around the classroom pretending to be a pilot. They also clapped and cheered when I drew a beach on the board to demonstrate the concept of sand, which I didn't really understand! Anyway, I've also started a new behaviour system where they have 50 marbles in a jar, which are increased or reduced according to their behaviour, and if there are 50 still there at the end of each week, I've promised them prizes. They LOVE it and it works so well. They all did my exercise in complete silence, insanely quickly and well earlier and then cheered when I gave them a marble for it.

Another awesome piece of news is that we got the results from last term back yesterday, compared to the other 46 schools in the area. Nakuru Workers, my school, is NUMBER ONE in nearly every class and subject, and my class, Annie's class and Rebecca's class are ALL the best in the area for English. SO SO SO HAPPY. It feels better than I can explain to feel that you had something to do with that.

It's a Zoe in a Tree!

After spending Monday at the orphanage making yet more woolen bracelets and catching up with the kids (their puppies have grown enormous!), on Tuesday we took Gigi and Vanessa (the daughter of Karanja, our 'helper' person in Kenya and another host family) to Graceland Hotel to swim. We'd promised Gigi ages ago that we'd take him and he was so happy :) We spent the day outside in the amazing sun, tanning and leaping into the dubiously cloudy pool and watching Gigi having a lot of fun.

The next day I had planned to travel to Nanyuki, the town at the base of Mt. Kenya, as Amy has spent the last 4 days climbing the mountain and so Becky and I were going to go and meet her on Wednesday, then stay the night and do exciting Nanyuki things on the Thursday. The journey to Nanyuki should only take 4 hours, but due to our bus breaking down irreversably half way there, we spent three hours sat on the side of a hill, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, watching the road for possible vehicles we could get a lift with and watching the dark clouds gathering over the opposite hill and creeping closer and closer towards us. Thankfully, before the enormous rainstorm quite got to our lovely hill, we managed to get a lift in a matatu with a sheep in it, and finally arrived in Nanyuki at 6pm, 4 hours after we'd hoped to. We could see the snow-peaked caps of Mt. Kenya through the clouds, extremely dramatic, and found Amy extremely tired from having clambered all the way to the top.

That evening we went to a local bar to watch the football and phone Karanja to gloat when Arsenal lost 1-0 and then slept happily in our cold and lumpy beds.

The next day was pretty awesome :) We walked for 9km along an extremely muddy track, following the fresh trail of elephant poo, to the MauMau Caves, which aren't really caves but a kind of large overhanging rock, right next to a big pool with a waterfall and river flowing in and out of it. Years ago it was used by the MauMau, a group of Kenyans, as a hospital where they could hide from white settlers, as the waterfall drowned out the sound of the screaming. Despite this being a slightly gruesome historical background, it was really interesting. I had also promised myself that I would swim, as the others had when they visited, and so, remembering Rebecca's words that it was the coldest water she'd ever felt, I apprehensively stuck my toe into the water and INDEED IT WAS BLOODY FREEZING.

Nonetheless, I was determined and waded in fully-clothed, squealing and swearing more than I should, until I was deep enough to swim around a bit. I'd wanted to swim right up to the waterfall but the current was too strong, so I settled for swimming for about a minute before getting out of the water as fast as physically possible to check that all my toes were still attached to my foot. IT WAS SO COLD!

Once the feeling had returned to my toes and I was dressed in dry clothing again, we walked the 9km back, bumping into a chameleon, which we held and stroked and generally scared, before continuing on our way. Chameleons have really sticky feet! It didn't change colour but we did hopefully hold it up against Amy's red jacket to see if it would.

We ate lunch at this amazing restaurant. It was basically an enormous tree, surrounded by the ponds of a trout farm at the bottom, with a huge wooden tree house at the top in which you could eat. There were giant, furry black and white colobus monkeys bouncing around the tree, stealing sugar bowls and creeping into the bar, clutching bottles of alcohol. We ate some tasty spaghetti and carrot cake with cream (SO good), and fed the monkeys with peanuts whilst the waitresses weren't looking :)

After eating we took a matatu back to Nakuru, through a big rainstorm that came through the windows of the leaky van and got me rather wet. I felt quite at home, watching the torrential rain pouring down over miles and miles of grey, bleak fields, surrounded by rickety fences.