And then...

Hello loved ones! I hear its practically spring time which is very exciting news! Right now I am learning just how much one person can sweat in a day, but I'll get to those details in a bit.
So in Nairobi (I'm back to the first week of march) we spent some time hanging out in the National museum and where all our little bits of archeological gold were going to end up to be sorted, catalogued and studied. We also visited another of the large slums in Nairobi called Mathare to see the education project that the Beijing consulate has started funding - a group of students dressed in bright red little dresses and did this really wild traditional dance that put every school pagent/performance I've ever been a part of to shame on a scale of cool-ness. We also discovered that flash photography in the Beijing school is a novelty of epic proportions and spent a good couple of minutes provoking screams of delight from entire classrooms of small children. So much fun. Besides that in Nairobi we wrote finals for our second session courses and enjoyed a few days of running water.
On the 7th we made our way to Tsavo East national park. Our campsite was right inside the park which means that we were accompanied by a team of armed askaris to keep wildlife at a safe distance. The coolest part is that a 'safe distance' was at one point as close as 50 feet for this pair of enormous elephants that were terribly curious about our setup. One night a lion actually ran through our campsite which freaked everyone out pretty thoroughly (Tsavo is where the 200 railroad workers were killed by man-eating lions - its the plot of the movie 'ghost in the darkness') needless to say our risk-management guy was not terribly pleased. Tsavo east has the highest concentration of elephants anywhere in Kenya so we spent alot of time talking to people about conflict with the animals -who are notorious for crop-raiding and trampeling people to death - not quite the gentle giants I had come to expect. We visited a secondary school to see the wildlife education programme in action - and I met this fabulous girl my age who is in her last year and wants to become a nurse to council people on HIV/AIDS. She says she's already working to set up a peer councilling circuit among the schools to help girls stay safe and finish their education. The next day the Geography class (my session 3 choice) went into the park to herd cattle (who illegally graze and take resources from the wildlife) across the boundary line. It was exhausting and so futile... and oh man my internet time is up... more to come! xx