Sun, Castles, Art Galleries and 40,000 Skeletons.

Prague was really pretty :) It was a beautiful city everywhere; even away from the traditional old town all the buildings were lovely pastel shades and decorated ornately. It made a difference from all the agricultural shops smelling of grains and chickens lining the street in Nakuru.

Pragueness:

-- The castle: long walk uphill but compensated for by the amusement of seeing some famous window out of which someone was 'defenestrated' (i.e. thrown out of it, and I think this is a word that should be used more often in modern english) causing some big war. Seeing a medieval torture chamber complete with spiky chair was interesting but gruesome, and we spent ages queing to get into quite an impressive cathedral.

-- A chapel filled and decorated with the skeletons of 40,000 plague victims. Well weird. There were bones all strung up like streamers across the gloomy stone room, and enormous pyramids of skulls, not to mention a huge chandelier made from every bone in the human body.

-- An art museum I've been wanting to see for years, AWESOME, I should do more art.

-- Pretty old streets with little open air cafes where you could get a cold drink, and gardens with fountains and peacocks creeping up behind you.

-- A fascinating day spent in the National Museum because it was raining, consisting of several million rock specimens, 10 of which may have been interesting, the other 999,990 being the kind of standard lumpy grey rock you find in your back garden. A scary exhibition on pregnancy filled with photos of mutated babies completed this wonderful experience. Yay.

-- Watching street artists drawing quick portraits on a very old bridge, eating evening meals in the sun with my family, eating CHEESECAKE and TIRAMISU for the first time in 6 months, and burning my nose because I am just that cool.
Oh my God I want that much tiramisu.

Now I am in Bristol, where I am SO UNCONVINCED about this summer thing. This place is just one big ball of grey mist. And my umbrella is broken so looks ridiculous, metal things dangling in front of my face when I use it. Work is the dullest thing ever but well paid. I need to buy new i-pod headphones because I hate the radio station that's permenantly on in the office.

Nimetoka Kenya na sasa ninakaa Uingereza.

And for those English speakers of you (i.e. all of you, the only point of typing Kiswahili is my own comfort), I have left Kenya and now I live in England.

Leaving is really difficult to describe. Until you're sitting in the plane chairs with a tiny TV screen in front of you and a British Airways blanket draped over your knees (which you feel would look better placed on Sid's bed back in Nakuru after the long-term borrowing of some in January) and suddenly the plane starts moving and lifts off the ground with a terrific roar, you don't really believe it. The country's sinking away below you and you realise that it's irreversably taking you thousands of miles away from what's been your home, your family, your friends and your children for the last six months of your life.

And although you're extremely excited about seeing your family and friends in England again, the sadness from leaving Kenya is quite overwhelming because you're not only going to miss it, but you're so worried about what could happen whilst you're not there. When you leave England, you're not worried that you leaving will have a bad impact on anyone's lives, but when you leave Kenya you're terrified that if you're not there to help the kids, and make sure they're going to school, and learning, and happy, that no-one will be. Seeing how sad the children are when you leave makes you feel TERRIBLE for leaving.

Anyway, despite that, seeing my family, and my friends, and EATING CHEESE again, was so good. I spent Sunday on my Nan's farm, with my Nanny and Jilly the dog and Mum, Dad, and Ilana, walking across the fields and smelling the beautiful sunny green Devon countryside and eating trifle and cheesy pie, and that was perfect. It was so good to be back there again.

Being in England is SO strange though. Everyone's white, there are no children, there are actual roads with concrete and no enormous holes filled with god-knows-what, nobody understands when you say 'asante', mangoes cost a flipping fortune, the streets are all empty of happy Kenyan women selling fruits or cutting maize or carrying brightly wrapped babies, and your feeling that you're doing something productive and worthwhile with your life suddenly disappears. I feel so unproductive; in Nakuru if I didn't spend all day at school and then all afternoon at the orphanage I would feel awful, and here I'm doing nothing. I'm looking forward to starting work so I feel that, at least, the money will make a difference to the school.

Since getting back I've also been watching a ton of Scrubs (I bought season 1-6 for 6 pounds on my last day in Nakuru, wahey!), sending enormous packages to teacher-friends in Kenya, plotting many many ways to fund everything from a classroom roof to a food programme for Nakuru Workers, and missing Kenya a great deal but also loving being able to see people again.

Hello is Always Followed By Goodbye, and Goodbye is Always Followed By Hello.

Before we came here, when we spoke to previous volunteers, they all said that leaving Kenya in July would be far harder than leaving England in January, and I didn't believe them, but now I'm here, I just want to say that it's true. It is so hard to leave and I don't think anyone who hasn't been here can understand because I had no idea before I came. I've had my last day at school and it was really lovely in some ways because the teachers and classes, completely unexpectedly, had arranged a three hour show, taking the entire school out of lessons, for us. We had NO idea, and all the classes we've taught sang us beautiful songs, did dances for us, taking us out of our seats to join in and performed plays, all on the grass with the whole school watching and laughing along, in a big semicircle around our new classroom. Everyone did speeches, they gave us such lovely gifts, and afterwards the teachers had bought lots of soda and cake so that all the teachers could have a drink together for the last time. I spent the morning, before the show, singing and dancing crazily with my class, and then after the show we were shepherded into Standard 7's classroom, which they had decorated with flowers, cloths, and set out a big table with a beautiful table cloth, juice and cake for us all to share. They'd found some perfume and made it smell really nice, and on the blackboards were written amazing messages for Annie and I. They sang songs for us, gave us gifts and I think it was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. It was perfect, and they have so little but always want to give so much, and they were so lovely to us.

I also had brought beads for my class to make bracelets with, lots of gifts for them like colouring pencils each and prizes for the top students, and then the rest of the day was made up of a million horrible goodbyes. I must've made so many goodbye speeches on the verge of tears. All the children cried, wouldn't leave, I cried, and gave enormous hugs to every child and then had to go outside and speak to them again because none of my class would leave until I did. The following morning we had about ten kids from my class and ten from Annie's waiting outside the gate because they wanted to see us again. We played with them for ages and it was so nice but it doesn't make saying goodbye any easier.
I've also said goodbye to the kids at Pistis now - I took the six who I'm closest to out for a meal, then on motorbikes to feed the monkeys by Lake Nakuru, then for ice cream in town. It was really touching because when I took them to Taidys for the meal, they just sat there looking so bewildered. Eventually one of them said "I'm so confused. I shouldn't be in a place like this. I feel like they will serve everyone else before me because I shouldn't be here." Taidys isn't really posh at all, and about half the price of English restaurants, but they were just so surprised and amazed. They couldn't decide what to order and when I told them they could have whatever they wanted and not to look at the prices, they were so amazingly happy. "There is a whole chicken! I can have a whole chicken, just for me?" They loved the motorbikes too, grinning like mad every time theirs passed mine.

Then yesterday some of us went on a bit of an unexpected daytrip. We wanted to go to Lake Nakuru to see the animals one last time, but after getting up at 5.30am to get there early, we ended us arguing with the lovely people at the gate who refused to let us in for resident price, despite the fact that we have alien cards proving that we're residents of Kenya and every other national park has let us in for resident price. Instead, they wanted us to pay US$60 each. As we still had to pay for the vehicle we'd hired all day, we decided instead to go to Lake Elementaita, which is about 15 minutes away from Nakuru and has giraffes, zebras, buffalo, gazelle, and literally thousands of flamingoes. Unfortunately, these flamingoes were to blame for getting stuck at the side of the lake for 4 hours as our van had sunk about 1.5 metres into the mass of flamingo poo that surrounds the lake. This was pretty ridiculously funny as it took two rescue vehicles to get us out, the the first one having joined us in sinking irreversably. We had a lot of fun anyway, having a picnic on a masai blanket spread out on the flamingo poo, with a ton of junk food, chatting and then visiting the hot springs nearby which we paddled in :)

Now there's not much more to do but say goodbye to the children at St. Stevens today, pack (something that has still not started) and warn everyone back in England that YES, I know I have got fat.