1 2 2016 Today we take the bus down to Kamembe

Off this morning driving down to the diocese of Kigeme and then through the forest to Cyanguugu.
broadband not so reliable so may not get a post for a while.
We have arrived after a long journey. we arrived to a tremendous welcome from the staff and later Nathan and the Bertha and Ephrem came later so lots of happy welcomes.
It is wonderful journey up through the forest which is very beautiful the largest high altitude virgin rain forest in Africa. It stretches for mile after miles disappearing up and down the hills.

Bishop Augustine and his lovely wife Virginie

31 1 2016 Charles and Juliette's Church

Another dry warm day today has dry so far. Woke as usual to the sound of birdsong.A leisurely breakfast then off to Charles' church which is really a house church it is a tent in his garden. There were about 40 people very enthusiastic singing and dancing to a lovely small choir, Charles translating as we went along. Charles is a pastor and evangelist we have known for a long time Juliette is a pastor and teacher trainer, who live in a  big house in Kigali a short ride from Solace. We heard the testimony of a young lady who had an amazing story. Her family were very in to witch craft and she was raped as a teenager fled to the city and ended up as a sex worker on the streets. She was diagnosed as HIV positive. She met some pastors who were evangelists among those people. At one stage she was in a quiet spot and heard God talking to her telling her she would be healed. Later she came to faith the pastors persuaded her to go back to the clinic for treatment and she was found to be persistently HIV negative on testing. She now has two healthy grown up children aged sixteen and eighteen. Charles says that she is now a pillar of the church, and has lead many to Christ through her testimony . After more singing and praying  I preached a sermon about the four gardens in the bible. Garden of Eden, the Garden of Gethsemane, the garden of the tree of life in Revelation and the garden of our hearts which produces the fruit of the Spirit.
Then tea and chapattis in their house and return home via the golf course to a restful Sunday afternoon.

301 1 16 Star School

Awoken to the wonderful sound of African bird song, urban birds have to sing louder to compete with all the other urban sounds. Then down to the new extended veranda for a hearty Solace breakfast. Then we set off in the Solace minibus with Johnathan driving with our two new engineer companions Jonathan  and Alan who are part of an organisation called Christian engineers in development. We went to Star school which is the school bishop Nathan has built and we met him there discuss a water harvesting project.

The bishop told us t he story of building this pit latrine

The people digging this pit smelled gas but one workman still went do to collect his tools

He was overcome by gas so another went down on a rope to retrieve him only to pass out himself before he could put a rope around him. Finally the fire brigade came before he was killed with breathing apparatus to rescue him.

Steve McKellar joined us he had put in solar panels into the classrooms which seemed to be working very well.

29 1 2016 Masai market and fly to Kigali

Sadly our last day in Nairobi before flying over to Kigali. Flight a bit tedious slightly late and touched down briefly in Bujumbura to refuel. Finally arrived and it was lovely to be met by Jonathan Jan and Rob. So a lovely first meal and off to bed for a much needed nights sleep.

28 1 16 The bungalow and Dream Children's home

After a very relaxing start we went to Ngong where Simon and Cecilia's old bungalow was situated to have a look round and collected rainwater from their big tank. Then we went to the Dream Children's Home a project which they were supporting. It is a very well run place with many happy young faces they take children from 0-19 often with very tragic stories one little boy called Barrack O bama who is hiv positive and was jus left in a room alone for the first three years of his life but is slowly responding to care and love. You can read more and donate to this very worthy cause here:

http://www.dreamchildrenshome-kenya-orphanage.org

Mary and Cecilia with Rachel the lady who runs the home and school
They are holding the two youngest babies.

27 1 16 Giraffes and Frances' church

27 1 16 Today we went to the Kazuri centre where they make pottery beads. We had a tour of the factory from mixing the clay through pressing moulding painting and firing. The work is very labour intensive this was done by the lady who started it to provide a lot of work for single unemployed mothers. The main product is beads but they produce all other sorts of pottery as well Mary bought a necklace and bracelet. We then went to the Giraffe sanctuary where they have Rothschild's giraffe. We were able to feed them and a young man gave us some interesting information about them. We went next to a place called the souke a small coffee house and retail outlet for fancy goods and had coffee and soup.  Finally we went to visit Frances's church and meet his Pastor John. he welcomed us and introduced us to his team. He was very keen  in helping his congregation and Cecilia would like to do some of her healthy living and diabetes prevention presentation. His church was planted there in 1978 and has totally transformed the area from one with a lot of drunkenness and a dangerous place to a prosperous place with a market he introduced. Then a wonderful lady from the church took us around the market and Cecilia bought lots of interesting African vegetables then off to Pork corner the meat.
Then Cecilia turned all these into a delicious African meal with ugali.

 The ladies hand shaping the beads

 Our guide demonstrating the finished product

 Beads for yhe necklace making

 Feeding the giraffes

   We were able to get very close to giraffes

26 1 16 Elephants and Friends

26 1 16

We visited the David Sheldrick elephant sanctuary today which is still run by the Sheldrick family. It was very interesting to see how they managed to rear the baby orphaned elephants and reinstate them into the wild. The sanctuary is situated on the edge of the Nairobi game park where the elephants are gradually reinstated in to a herd. Elephants need milk until they are about three years and it takes another two years or so. They are given human infant formula which is the closest to elephant milk.

We then went to view a new build house which Simon and Cecelia were interested in, a very beautiful property in a gated community, but prices were similar to those in England. We dropped intoa café in a little railway town called Liauru where we had beans and chapati

We then went up to the area where the tea plantations went on for miles we managed to see a flower farm by accident while we were looking for the tea farm could not visit the factory but went around the estate and bought some tea. Then we popped into a coffee mill and bought some coffee as well. Then went  to George and Mary’s house  in the Focus compound and saw the family and had a very pleasant evening over yet another beautiful African meal.

 A baby elephant having a mud bath

 The keepers leading the elephants

An elephant coming to say hello

25 1 16 Ngong Hills and The Shade Hotel

Yet another lovely day. We woke up quite late and had omelette for breakfast with parsley and some arrowroot fried eggs came from Cecilia's mum fresh and very yellow..
Then off to Ngong hills.The Ngong Hills are peaks in a ridge along the Great Rift Valley, located southwest near Nairobi, in southern Kenya. The word "Ngong" is an Anglicization of a Maasai phrase "enkong'u emuny" meaning rhinoceros spring, and this name derives from a spring located near Ngong Town. The Ngong Hills, from the eastside slopes, overlook the Nairobi National Park and, off to the north, the city ofNairobi. The Ngong Hills, from the westside slopes, overlook the Great Rift Valley dropping over 1000 metres (4,000 feet) below, where Maasai villages have been developed. The peak of the Ngong Hills is at 2460 meters (8070 feet) above sea level. The hills form a line of very steep single hills which look like the five ridges of a man's fist.
The landscape is afro-alpine with a very rich flora we managed to climb 3 of the hills with stunning views over the rift valley they have just put in a wind farm helping Kenya to reach its target for renewable energy. The hills were very steep and at a high altitude so were puffing away up to the top of each. Good high altitude training for the years cycling. The hills are well used by the Kenyan athletes who do a lot of their training up there. We were accompanied by a guard from the Kenyan army they do weekly stints up there and complain bitterly of the cold nights.

The group at top of one of the hills with the rift valley behind

A  small sample of the vast variety of flora  

 A beautiful beetle hiding in an efflorescence

These blue flowers are in fact yellow the blue are bracts

We came back to the car exhausted but happy, 

24 1 16 Arrow-root breakfast, St Francis church and feeding the Nile Crocodiles

Cecilia got up early to scrub and boil arrowroot. Which was an interesting African breakfast a bit like boiled potato but much more solid texture. We finished of with some cereal and toast. Then off to St Frances Anglican church. This was a new building just opened they still had the old church building in the compound which was tiny compared to the massive very traditional looking building they have built, it would hold several thousand people. The service had a good mixture of traditional and African hymns this service was in English but there was a youth service and a service in Swahili that morning as well as an  8 o'clock Common prayer book communion for the ex-pats.
We then went to the Karen Blixen coffee house to have Coffee and very good Kenyan beef burgers. Baroness Karen von Blixen- Finecke was the author of out of Africa she was on very good terms with her Kikuyu tenants and workers who the colonists called squatters even though they actual owned the land before it was enclosed and taken over by the ranches and her book is a very colourful picture of colonial life and she is well liked and remembered by the Kenyans.
We then went to the crocodile sanctuary where Sunday afternoon is when they are fed. We were taken around by a very knowledgeable young man who explained   all though was to know about Crocodiles and tortoises. The Nile crocodile is very well placed in it's ecological niche and a group of them can tackle anything within striking distance of their teeth. He also took us around the estate and explained a lot about the native plants and trees that were in the area.
Then home to a wonderful avocado salad and green smoothie which Cecilia had prepared.

 The crocodile has a fixed tongue and a very flexible palate to swallow large chunks whole.

The gaping mouth allows cooling from the mucus membranes they do not sweat.

 Mary holding a baby crocodile.

"can I have made into a handbag please"

 The crocodiles feed in groups holding and twisting the food betwen them to tear it into chunks

Mary holding a small Leopard tortoise you can tell how old they are by counting the ridges on the largest section on their shell.

Mimosa pudica or sensitive plant this plant actually collapses before your eyes when you stroke it 

folding it's leaves. It is used as a defence from herbivors and works by cells suddenly loosing turgor by a rapid outfall of water and salts through their cell membranes. 

Organic market, Kibera Slum and New Stanley Hotel

We woke up to sunny skies and pleasant warmth. After a breakfast of toast and cereals including weetabix.
We started off going to the local organic farmers who work as a little co-operative selling organically grown food. There were many stalls selling lots of organic veg and fruit of all sorts and descriptions including an apple custard and a white sweet potato which was delicious fried.
Then we drove to  the city centre via the Kibera slum. This was a bit of a shock we had heard about it but encountering the sheer size and smell of it was a real revelation. Today we were being taken on a tour of central Nairobi so after a brief cup of tea and a bun we set off for the centre of Nairobi , which Simon and Cecilia wished to show us. On the way we took a road through the middle of the biggest slum in Africa.
There are approximately 2.5 million slum dwellers in about 200 settlements in Nairobi representing 60% of the Nairobi population and occupying just 6% of the land. Kibera houses about 250,000 of these people. Kibera is the biggest slum in Africa and one of the biggest in the world.

The original settlers were the Nubian people from the Kenyan/Sudanese border – they now occupy about 15% of Kibera, are mostly Muslim and are also mostly shack owners. The other shack owners are mostly Kikuyu (the majority tribe in Nairobi) – although in most cases they do not live there but are absentee landlords. The majority of the tenants are Luo, Luhya and some Kamba – these people are from the west of Kenya. There are many tensions in Kibera, particularly tribal tensions between the Luo & Kikuyu, but also between landlord and tenant and those with and without jobs.

Francis told us that the government is trying to improve the conditions putting in public toilets Public baths and health clinics and police posts as well as improving electricity supply and putting in security lighting at night. Also some of the slum is being demolished and replaced by fairly rudimentary high rise apartments.

However their are still the open sewers which leak onto the streets and piles of rotting rubbish everywhere. The houses are just shacks are just mud built shored up by bits of rusting corrugated sheeting. The streets are lined with  tiny shops making and selling everything you can think of, there is a massive fleet of little matatus the little minibuses which pick up and drop of passengers barely stopping, also bizarrely a camel trotting down one of the roads .

So we drove out of the slum and around the corner we went past the French ambassadors residence and massive expensive residences. We drove into Nairobi stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the park and the centre of Nairobi.   

The centre was a busy bustle with large markets and skyscrapers.We saw the building where Dawn Stanley's father worked. We dropped into the cool and calm of the New Stanley Hotel for a drink which is an old style colonial hotel. One of the last places Princess Elizabeth visited before she was announced Queen at the Tree Tops safari park.

Then home to resurrect the water filter which Simon had just got back from Cecilia's mother which after a little clean and grease was working perfectly. 

 A picture of a child in the slum

View of Nairobi from the public park

So today was a day of real contrasts. We saw the very rich and the very poor. The poverty in the slum is something that all of us in the rich.world really need to be doing something about.

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21 1 16Hello Nairobi 22 1 16 Karura Forest

21 1 16 Good flight into Nairobi, Arrived in a very busy and bustling city. The first thing that stands out is the traffic. Stationary traffic provides a perfect captured audience for any sort of business operation selling papers fruit and all sorts. The next is the massive amount of new building all over, gated communities, shopping malls and office accommodation. There is a massive amount of new infrastructure going in.
We were met at the airport by Simon and Cecilia and there driver Francis. We weaved our way to the apartments where they live in the same compound as her sister and mother so the flat was soon invaded by little nephews and their friends. Being a walled compound with guards at the gate all the children are free to wander outside and in and out of the houses.
In the evening we experienced a power-cut so  dinner, a chicken freshly slaughtered was cooked on the gas by torch and candlelight. We were very glad to sink into bed and  recover from our long flight.

22 1 16

Today we went to Karura Forest.

This is an amazing forest of native trees on the edge of Nairobi. Good way-marked walks What struck us at first were the multitude of brightly coloured butterflies all colours very bright the emerald ones were particularly striking like jewels flitting over the forest floor. We walked along a path to a waterfall which was very spectacular and along the side of the river there was an abundance of jewelled butterflies, lacewings and dragon flies. We also visited some caves where the Mau-Mau hid out, partly hidden by a massive manikara discolor tree.
We then had a tea and chips,  
 

The intrepid explorers at the waterfall

Walking on the road in forest

Massive tree at mouth of the cave

The forestry department had put these useful labels on the trees along the trail

Francis added extra information as to which ones were good for medicine or cleaning your teeth