The flight home

After getting up, showering and packing our last items; we went for breakfast and had some interesting conversations. 

The van needed refuelling and washing, so Max organised all that. 

Judy and Nina arrived to say goodbye for the last time, and then we got everything stowed in the shuttle van and were driven to the airport. 

Check-in was fairly straightforward; the security checks seemed a bit strange and inefficient, but then we were on the plane. 

The flight home was a bit of a blur - all 25 hours of it!

 

Five hours from Nairobi to Abu Dhabi, and the plane arrived slightly late, so we were running to our transfer flight an hour later - and still having to go through security. Abu Dhabi airport is well laid out and very efficient though, so it wasn't long before we were at our Gate and boarding. 

Fourteen hours from Abu Dhabi to Brisbane on a comfortable Etihad Dreamliner, and Logan decided not to eat on this flight because he was a bit nervous about the food. He started to feel unwell again about half-way through the flight, but it was probably because he hadn't eaten. He soldiered on through though, and I tried to support him as I could. Logan was sensible and didn't watch anything or play games, and tried to get as much sleep as he could. Before too long it was over, but we did arrive late again after having to circle Brisbane a few times. 

We had another hour stopover, so we were rushing again to get to our transfer gate. Boarding was delayed, so it gave us a bit of time to get some food - Logan could eat - and do a bit of shopping. 

The flight from Brisbane to Auckland took only three hours and we landed at Auckland International Airport on 22nd January at 1am.

After declaring everything, we moved through the system fairly rapidly and Rodney had kindly organised for family and friends to drop us home. There were hugs and stories shared, and then we separated and Logan and I were dropped at our house by about 3am.

We were home!

Kwa heri Eldama Ravine

It's such a strange feeling knowing that we are leaving the Ravine.

We went to Town Church for the last time and said goodbye to all our friends. 

The sermon given by Pastor Gideon was very good. He challenged us to follow Jesus and bear good fruit: love, joy, peace. I have been struck by how grateful people are. 

Brian - one of the church elders - and I had developed a good friendship, so we exchanged contact details and I encouraged him to plan a trip to NZ in the near future. 

We had packed, so we hit the road straight away; on our way back to Nairobi. I tried to sleep for a bit, but also decided to take a few more photos of things which had become common place. 

We stopped for a late lunch at Delamere's in Naivashu again. Unfortunately, both Logan and I had got a little sloppy with the ordering and he was bought a meal covered in a wheat batter. It took a while for him to realise this,  and we were wondering what the consequences would be. There wasn't really anything else for him to eat, so Gillian very kindly bought him an icecream for his lunch (I was nearly out of cash).

Getting back on the road, it was not long before we were travelling the upper Rift Valley highway again - with its beautiful views - and then into the congestion of the outskirts of Nairobi.

We would be having dinner at Judy's sister's house, but we had no idea how to get there, and Google maps was sending us on a strange route. At one point we were travelling down a dirt road, across a stream and past an abandoned communication facility before we decided that this was clearly not the route. 

Judy agreed to meet us at a common point, and then we drove in convoy to the house. The driving involved travelling through a nice suburban area and then onto a dirt road until we arrived at some large security gates. 

We saw the house looming up as we approached. Oh my goodness! It was impressive. 

After arriving through further gates, we met Vicky and Simon, Judy's sister and brother-in-law, and their children, and were invited indoors. 

(My phone then died, so I was unable to get further photos)

Logan and their son Keith really hit it off, and their four year old daughter entertained the rest of us all evening. Dinner was delicious, having been provided by a local chef, who had been commissioned for the evening. Chef Manga was an amazingly talented person, who had worked for UN in the past and had cooked for President Obama.

Not long after we had finished second helpings, additional family members including Nina and Kimu arrived at the house - back from the movies - and dessert was on its way. 

Rodney and Chef Manga got along really well, and Rodney became the sous-chef for the remainder of the evening. The time we had was truly awesome. 

Of course, towards the end of the night our group had to perform, which we did and then challenged them for a response. There was then some shuffling, until Chef Manga - who was also a performer - got Vicky, Keith and Kimu organised and he performed one of his dance routines. Everyone was invited to join in, and we all had a fantastic time singing and dancing. 

The time went far too quickly, but before leaving we were given gifts and then extensive farewells were said. 

The drive to Mayfield did not take too long, and shortly after we were asleep. Our final night in Kenya. 

Quiet contemplation

This day was Saturday, the last day before we knew that we would be leaving Eldama Ravine. Max and I arose early to go to the Men's Bible Study, but the other guys decided to sleep in. 

It was a good time of prayer and the men showed great concern for conflict issues in Kenya. 

Following the study, we dropped the car off for cleaning and then Max and I went for chai at Venus while waiting. 

After returning with the car, we settled back home, did some administration and began packing our bags ready for the trip home. 

Abbey and Rodney made a delicious lunch of leftovers and then began preparing dinner. 

We cleaned and relaxed. Some slept and others reminisced and wrote. It is somewhat sad that we are heading home so soon, but at the same time, it will be good to see family again. 

After eating dinner, we were invited to the Stover's house for dessert. It was very nice and the conversation with Roy, Helen and Pat was enjoyable. 

Logan was particularly taken with their golden labrador, and he spent a large part of the evening hugging and scratching the dog. 

We walked home for a time of sharing and games, before heading to bed. 

Goodbye Children's Centre

We were back on the road again at 7:30am, in order to try to be at the Elma Barnett High School by 8am. This target was missed by a few minutes, so we were late for the flag raising and the pledge at the start of the day. Nevertheless, Mwalimu David was ready to jump straight into the lessons with the Form 3 and Form 4 students at the school.

Students from both forms crammed into the room, bringing chairs and books. David introduced himself and began his lesson for the first half of the morning: statistics.

The students know a lot of theory, so the focus of the lesson was on a practical project. We decided to leave the classroom and gather data for our project, 'To determine the quality of the bricks (in terms of regularity of size and shape) being used by the builders in the yard'.

All of the students took their rulers and went to measure the brick length, width and height. The principal and their mathematics teacher came and joined them.

Following the data measurement, we went back to the classroom and began our exploration of the data. We combined all of the data from the students, and then talked about data presentation and generated histograms (on paper) of the brick length, width and height. There was lots of discussion at the tables, and everyone was sharing answers; while being encouraged to present their data in an intuitive manner that provided insight to the reader.

David ensured that they got to use their mean, median and mode knowledge as we summarised and generated further insight from the data.

The Form 3 and Form 4 classes producing histograms of the brick length data

The Primary and High School students gathering for the flag raising

After chai, the lesson was chemistry and David continued by recapping atomic structure with them and we did several activities which got the students moving.
The students had the theory, so we continued with oxidation and reduction and David was able to show a couple of interesting YouTube clips. The size of the device was a limiting factor - so some of the students chose not to be involved - but they had no trouble balancing the redox half equations.

For the first block everyone except David, Max and Rodney went to the primary school and helped them with their PACE work, where the students made amazing progress. Before chai time we got to say a couple of words to the students which was really cool.
After chai we then went to the high school and taught them a NZ geography lesson, in which they asked lots of questions and we answered them well. The principal Henry asked a lot of questions about the schooling system, clothing and food. We then said goodbye to the high school and had lunch with the primary school to which we said goodbye and we all sang songs.

Saying farewell to the primary students at the centre

We left so Gillian could go to Mums In Prayer to speak. While she was at Mums In Prayer, the rest of us except Max and Rodney went into the city and got clothing and food. When Mums In Prayer finished we got picked up by Gillian and went to pick up Rodney and Max who were at Baringo High School teaching the rugby team and preaching. We left to go to Mama Musa's house, to which we were invited, and we were amazed by the size and quality of their house. We got a quick tour of the grand house and then we had a great dinner and relaxed on the couches. Everyone was very full from the meal.

We said our farewells and left.  We were so tired and ready for a sleep.

Logan, Gillian and Mama Musa in her beautiful house.

The Maasai village

We arose in time for our 7am breakfast, feeling well rested after another very comfortable sleep. Showers were had, and the bags packed ready for our return journey. Our meal was slowly consumed, and Judy was again amazed with the care that I put into constructing my breakfast. We then loaded the van with our gear and decided on which vehicle to take. Logan and I ended up in the safari truck, much to the approval of Judy (surrogate Mama Logan).

Logan and I saying farewell at Aruba Camp

A line of ostriches feeding on the plain

I just had to take another acacia tree photo!

There were many further animals to see, but we quickly traversed the park and headed towards Sekenani - a Maasai village. What an experience!

The boys were invited to join the celebratory Lion Dance, and then the jumping competition. Those Maasai warriors could seriously jump! Of course, the women then had their opportunity to dance later.

Logan and Rodney join in the Lion Dance

Ariana, Abbey and Gillian join the women dancing

We then had the opportunity of entering the village of about 320 people. All of them are family members, and their cattle are all protected inside the ring of houses and fences. It is very biblical seeming; however their diet is animal blood, milk and meat - they do not eat vegetables. Children eat eggs. Logan found the flies somewhat difficult to deal with, but the flies are not surprising given that the interior area is covered in animal dung. They also use dung for cooking, and for mixing with soil for their mud houses. 

Village houses - made of sticks and mud

We then saw some of the young men start a fire traditionally by spinning soft wood in cedar. They took a couple of tries to get there, but it was impressive watching them. Logan was then gifted the fire lighting materials.

How many Maasai does it take to light a fire?

We have fire!

The firelighting was followed by a tour of Brian's house, and I had the fortune of meeting one of the midwives with a child.

I was very surprised at how small and dark the houses are. There are no chimneys so the smoke from the cooking fire fills the house causing one to spend the whole time crouching. The smoke keeps the flies away, but it was also incredibly hot and in no time everyone was sweating profusely. 

The cooking hearth

After leaving the house, we entered the market and searched for treasures, then we said our farewells and left the village and the park. 

The drive home was long, as we were trapped by trucks and other slow vehicles. We stopped a couple of times for toilet breaks, chai and gift shop perusal; but the driving itself took a lot longer when there were so many more vehicles.

Some of the driving was just scary - we saw matatu vans overtaking trucks with oncoming traffic. At times there were three lanes of traffic on the two lane highway!

We swapped vehicles again at the turnoff to Julius and Judys' road and crammed into the van for the final hour of driving.  

Max and Gillian ordered dinner at Venus cafe, while we were still half an hour away - and we were preparing to eat dinner at 9pm - closing time! The order repeated back was concerning, and we really had no idea what we would be eating when we arrived.

Dinner was great, but before long we were home and I was in bed thinking about the next day.

Logan at Venus cafe waiting for his dinner

In the Mara

We woke up, had a good breakfast, refilled our water bottles and swapped cars before we got to the Maasai Mara. We saw a tawny eagle which was perched on a high tree from which it had a good view.

We also saw some zebra in a herd.

Soon after we were attracted by a big group of vehicles huddled around a bush, turns out it was a cheetah. Just as we had got there the cheetah moved to hunt and it was so cool seeing these beautiful animals up close. When you look at them close up you can see that they are built for speed. The one we saw was a pregnant female so it couldn't go as fast as others. Sadly we didn't get to see it hunt because you had to stay to the track and we didn't want to break those rules so we just let it be.

On the way to some elephants we saw some mongoose standing up. It is so amazing how such a little animal can take down snakes. A group of all different animals were on high alert when we saw them but sadly nothing happened.

We finally got to our destination of the elephants and we were surprised how close the elephants allowed us to get near them. The animals were so big and they demolished a forest so they could get food. The calf in the group was so cute and boisterous and it would destroy the forest and just run around. There was a time when it ran out to attack us and then got scared and called for "mummy" who essentially said there is "no threat" and kept on eating.

After a beautifully scenic drive in which we stood up and got pelted by dust and rocks, our car had a problem so while Max and David fixed the problem Jesse and Logan had to be on lookout for lions because there were some just down the road - what we had come for.

When we saw the lioness it was amazing. Basically face to face with one of the world's most powerful creatures. It was just perched on a mound of grass watching something and it seemed as if it was posing. Just as we were about to leave to go into Tanzania the lion passed behind our car and we got some amazing pictures.

Not long after gazing at the lioness we came to a monument which is the border between Tanzania and Kenya. We took a lot of photos and made videos of going either side of the border.

When looking at the hippos we saw some very colourful lizards that were basking in the sun and eventually going into the shade. We sadly didn't get good photos of the hippos that day.

For Logan seeing a crocodile was top on the 'must see' list. Because he really wanted to see one he commonly mistook lots of other things as crocodiles. A sandbank shadow was a crocodile, a rock was a crocodile, even an underwater hippo was a crocodile. So when Logan called "CROCODILE it really is one" everyone else in the vehicle didn't want to stop. So when he finally convinced them to stop, they were quite happy to see that it actually was a crocodile, a baby Nile crocodile. Just above the crocodile there was a dead hippo being eaten by a huge Monitor lizard. Sorry that we didn't get good photos of that but it looked quite a spectacle. 

We got very close up to a giraffe and this is an amazing photo of a giraffe.

We all took a break for lunch which was devoured quickly so we could get back out into the Mara and we were so hungry after all that driving. Just as we were about to go to the Mara again, the weather turned for the worse, so Judy and Max decided to stay behind. The rest of us put the weather aside because we wanted to see more animals. Luckily for us the rain stopped and we opened up the sun roofs. The anticipation of what we were going to see next was in the air and we were hoping that we would see a leopard or a rhinoceros. We got some good photos of buffalo and topi and then we saw the highlight of the day - a whole pride of lions.

We saw the big brother as seen below and sisters, mothers, even cute little lion cubs. They were so cute and funny to watch, they would wake up every other lion there and jump on each other and practice hunting skills. From a young age they already know how to bite the jugular, how to pounce and to stalk. Midway through our experience we saw and heard roaring where the mother and father were communicating. Just after that we saw the father lion and he showed us his big mane and teeth.

The sunset was beautiful and we had amazing dinner, a good devotion led by Judy and then a well deserved sleep.