Mt. Longonot

Me and 6 other PCVs climbed Mt. Longonot. It was my first real hike and it was amazing. The view from the peak of the ring is a killer! Below are some facts about the mountain from wikipedia. 

Mount Longonot is a stratovolcano located southeast of Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya, Africa. It is thought to have last erupted in the 1860s. Its name is derived from the Maasaiword oloonong'ot, meaning "mountains of many spurs" or "steep ridges".

Mount Longonot is protected by Kenya Wildlife Service as part of Mount Longonot National Park. A trail runs from the park entrance up to the crater rim, and continues in a loop encircling the crater. The whole tour is only about 8–9 km long but very steep, so that the round trip of park gate - Longonot Peak - park gate takes around 3 to 4 hrs hiking. The gate is around 2150 m asl and the peak at 2780 m asl but following the jagged rim involves substantially more than the 630 m vertical difference.

A forest of small trees covers the crater floor, and small steam vents are found spaced around the walls of the crater. The mountain is home to various species of wildlife, notably zebra and giraffe andbuffaloes (droppings on the rim) and hartebeest. Leopards have also been reported but are extremely difficult to spot.

Happy Holidays!!!

Hope everyone had a merry merry christmas!!! My Christmas was great, got to open some presents from home. Spent christmas with my dog in a hotel.

New year is coming up and want to wish you all the best! 2013 has been so good to me and I am so grateful and blessed!!! Happy New year!

I have been taken off the island and now I am currently in a transition between sites. I don't know where my new site will be in Kenya or what my new assignment will be. Everything is up in the air right now and the holidays have delayed the transition. 

Thats all I got today, happy holiday all!

In Service Training (IST)

We are now 3 month into site and our 2 week in service training has just begun. To me two days to get to our venue. We are staying in a really nice camp and eating some great food. First time outside of my island and back into the real world.

Finally found a scale and weighed my self, to discover I have lost 25 pounds in three month. Not sure whats going on maybe just change of environment and lack of verity of food.

On the plus note we are eating 5 times a day here at IST. Three meals and two tea breaks! I had forgotten that this much verities of food still exists. So good to be satisfied after meals, very grateful!

Crayfish Camp

Camp dinning hall

Missed real food

Enjoying IST

What a weekend!

Had the chance to host at my site for the first time. 3 volunteers came over this weekend. We biked around the island, went swimming, had bond fire and then did some business sessions with local groups. Great weekend #VeryGrateful

Biking around the island for the 2nd time

about to start

My friend just cut the banana from the tree and gave it to me

Bond fire

Enjoying that island life

Story of the week

A pregnant woman was feeling labor pains on her walk home. She wanted to give birth and people around tried to get her on a motorcycle to get her to the nears health center. She jumped off the motorcycle because the baby was coming. So they brought a grandmother from the neighborhood and new born kenyan was born! 10 minutes later as I was walking into my compound she is walking home with her baby and a crowd following her. Tell me why I was the only person among all my neighbors that was shocked by this. Life goes on....  

Lake Victoria serves its people

In my community, people bath at the lake. There is designated area for men and women to bath. Women usually go in groups to bath and is perfectly normal. Men usually don't go in groups but never the less, they are still bathing at the lake in the same area. Luckily I have a bathing room next to my house but sometimes I too bath at the lake. 

However, people are not the only ones that bath at the lake, everything else also bathes at the lake. clothes, dishes and animals are all washed in the lake and our drinking water comes from the lake. Some people do filter their water, unfortunately many don't. Apart from that, swimming as you bath is quite fun lol   

First safari trip!

Me and few other volunteers got together this past weekend in Bomet! It was nice to be away from site and see how others are doing! We actually got a chance to visit the Maasai Mara. It was freaking amazing! We got to see all kinds of animals.

Gazelles

 Mara resort 

Giraffs 

Zibra

Lunch at a beautiful resort in Maasai Mara

 Hippos

   

SIMBA

So, I have been at site for about 2 month now. On September 7, I adopted this precious puppy and named him Simba. He is an orphan, his mother died the day I got him. Everyone in the community knows him and thinks he is the luckiest dog because he is with an american and is well treated. He is my first pet and can't wait to bring him home.

precious 

nap time

When I first got him

 Simba now

Biked around the island!

So, I have now lived at my site for about a month. So far its been great! Then recently I met a group who will be riding their bikes to Tanzania as a fundraiser for an orphanage. A few days ago they invited me and my colleague to join them on a bike ride around our island. So we actually went around the island on our bikes! It was amazing! every corner of the island looks very unique and different. Took us about 5 hours to go all around it but it was lots of fun with number of breaks.

Meet the team

Mimi na rafiki yangu

 

Animals are part of the community here.

Animals here are part of the community and Goats are my favorite. Especially baby goats are dope to look at. So here are some photos I took of some of my favorite animals. I will take more so stay posted as you can find all kinds of animals here.  

scratching 

 Goats relaxing 

 twins

 chilling

 Nap time

 how cool

 New born

More about my site

So now I have been at site for more than 2 weeks and its great so far! Learning how to cook and turning my house into a home, which is not very easy! Schools just opened so I will be introducing myself and hope to start volunteering there soon. Right now my counter part and I are going around and introducing our selves to community leaders, clan elders, beach leaders, youth and women groups.

There was a crazy rain strom yesterday and since I have iron sheets as my roof I can hear everything. It’s a beautiful sound actually lol. But at least its not so hot any more!

My kitchen, making chappti

Movie night with some of the kids

Loving my new home

Chilling 

My host organization and I

My Site!

Mfangano Island is beautiful and the people are very welcoming. I love the children in my host organization; they bring me water from the lake every morning. Since we live on an island our drinking, bathing, washing water comes from the lake. I have started living in my own at this point. So if you have easy cooking tips hit me up!

My house is great as you can see on the below pictures. I have two rooms, a kitchen and dinning/living room. No electricity in my house so lantern is my new best friend. I also sleep early because there is not much to do her when its dark. Finally, I walk about 30 min to charge my electronics.

My house

 Kitchen

Transportation on the island is a challenge. No vehicles on the island what’s so ever, unless people are vising from main land. Therefore, the main form of transportation is Mottobike taxi (piki piki) and Peace Corps does not allow us to ride them. So, I ended up buying a bike and riding a bike here on these roads is quite a work out!        

SWEARING IN CEREMONY

Finally Pre-Service Training (PST) is over! We were sworn in as Peace Corps Kenya volunteers as of Wednesday August 14^th! Swearing in ceremony was very exciting; most of us wore Kenya traditional out fits. Our country Director, representative from USAID, and two Kenyan officials were present. From the swearing in ceremony, we all said bye to our host families and departed to our specific sites. Took me three days to get to my island but I finally arrived safely.

Offically Peace Corps Volunteer

Ceremony

Meet the 37 Peace Corps Kenya Volunteers

WEEK 9: Finishing up training!

So, we finally made it to the end of training! Since everyone passed the LPI, we started learning local languages this week. This was a relaxing week since we were done stressing over the exam. We meet our site partners/supervisors this Tuesday. Our swearing in ceremony is this Wednesday the 14^th. The ceremony is in the morning and we go to site straight from there. Now we are just packing and doing our good byes with our host families!