bring me a day full of honest work...

This morning we went on a game drive. I've had a stomach bug for three days(in hindsight, this is probably the least-nasty of the three or four times i got ill).

We set off after group A left for the school, and saw a Warthog five minutes from the gate(hindsight is on my shoulder throughout this blog - we would be sick of Warthogs). apart from the Warthog, We saw some interesting birds.

The truck stopped at the Mwalaganje traveller's lodge. walking through onto the bar, we sat down and watched the watering hole in silence. A while later(twenty minutes), A Warthog appeared with three hoglets. She slowly and cautiously approached the small pit of water. Before she got there, something in the water moved and the ladyhog was made to leap backwards five foot backwards. Strange little animals, weirdly shaped and adorably ugly, much like my dog.

A short while after, a group of Elephant approached. at first they kept their distance, but every few minutes they would move closer. The main reason was probably most of our group had jumped from their seats up and were taking photos and talking and the like. before we went the elephants had come really close to where we were sitting. Waterbuck appeared from the bush, and my camera, all of a sudden, committed battery hari-kari. Not. Cool.

On the return journey in the huge Camps International truck, i asked Bernard if there were any big cats in Mwaluganje. His response was "Only Leopard. but he is very difficult to find" i know this to be true wherever there are Leopard. I asked when he was last seen, and Bernard told me he saw him last year.

-

As i write this, i am using some heavy-duty binoculars to watch thirteen or fourteen Elephants from our elevated camp. entrancing, amazing creatures, moving with an unexplainable clumsy grace.

-

We set off again for the school this evening. Half the group built bricks, while we went and put up a chain-linked fence. after the first group coming back to camp and whining about it, we thought this would be some sort of horrible chore, but we were enjoying ourselves. We did more and better than the first group.

A joke possibly wasted on the locals.

The kids helped a lot. They are always fun to talk to. One had a orange shirt with "girls love me" printed on it. When asked "so, do the girls love you?" he confidently replied "yes!" I followed up the question with "do you love girls?" to which he said "no,no,no!" Other kids hacked at the trees in our way with machetes longer than their arms, making cuts in the trees centimeters away from their limbs. Terrifying to watch.

you would think this is the least dangerous type of fencing...

Back at base camp we did a fairly un-pubby pub quiz around the campfire. "before we start, i want you to think about a couple of things..." "like why we aren't in a pub?"

Funniest picture ever taken.

Star-Gladiator and the elephant of time.

Gearing up.

we woke up late today, and the girls were packed and off somewhere else. They were packing stuff up, and carrying around benches and stuff. To be fair, they had just climbed a mountain and this contributed to their beastliness.

Sam, was pestering Louise again about handing on the little note. This, we were told, would be the last group we met on the trip.

Before lunch we split in two groups with me as team leader. Bwahaha. This means I have to write today’s collective diary entry as well as this. Anyway, our team went of to cut grass. This doesn’t sound to engrossing.

But we are doing it Kenya-style.

when we were given swords, the last thing on our minds was grass-cutting. it was either re-enacting 'Gladiator' or 'Star Wars'. or, mixing them up and having 'Gladiator Wars', or 'Star Gladiators', or...

We saw a guy doing it before outside the Camps International building with a oversized machete. We were given these ungainly blades, led out to the elephant wire(thankfully, turned off), and told to hack at the ground until there was just red soil either side of the fence. Therapeutic, almost.

We were happy with our first real day’s work. The other guys were digging irrigation ditches.

Later we went out to the local school. The kids are great, with an active(cheeky) sense of humour and the school was pretty well maintained. We were shown the ‘Nature trail’ the kids had set up, and a couple of the kids read poems.

We proceeded onwards to a Swahili lesson, which was fun…

We suddenly found ourselves dispersed amongst the students in a small classroom and told to repeat after the teacher and then speak to the students in Swahili. Then we were thrown into the deep end. They made us do heads shoulders knees and toes – to the kid’s amusement.

how did we get here?

Outside, we played volleyball with the kids, where I pretended to be awful, to make the kids laugh. And when I say, pretended, I mean just play it as I usually would.

The kids speak surprisingly good English, and I had a long conversation with a kid called Saleen, about English schools and such.

When I got back I wrote a bit of this, sitting at the end of the huge straw canopy building were we had lunch and just generally hung out. The bench I sit on looks over most of Mwaluganje.
For a while Nikki was there too, the camps staff member and mountain guide, who was also writing her diary. everyone can talk to Nikki, she's really easy to get along with.

you mean, this part of the diary was being written as this was taken? woh. mind'splode.

Then we saw a grey dot on the edge of the river. I could make it out pretty well, but opted for the binoculars for clarity. A huge elephant bathing in the stream, spraying itself with water.

-Quick entry, everyone’s playing poker, and I still don’t understand it.

the gayest thing i ever wrote.

a product of my own design - Blackcurrant fanta in a fresh coconut.

I write this whilst in a Camps bus, taking us to our next destination. It’s fourteen past eleven, and I leave with fun memories of the ocean camp. I would love to return some day, it was one of the loveliest places I had ever been.

Me & Sam woke up at quarter to four (well, he pried me out of bed at quarter to four may be more accurate), and went and sat at the bar. My left leg was bitten all over, as i had left it dangling outside the mosquito net. A lot later the girls arrived, and we went and sat on the beach. Eppy now sat on Sams lap, where before he couldn’t even put his arm round her.
at seven we ate breakfast and the diving group had to leave.
So we said our goodbyes, and gloated in the general direction of the boys – just telling them how much we ‘Owned’ them at… well, everything. And after that, they left. We had a briefing from our teachers, and people had to say what they thought of each other at this point. Ben (farina) put his hand up and said “oh, yeah, Sam is a PIMP!” the whole group answered in agreement.

Fifteen minutes later, we were on a bus and on our way. The landscape is so beautiful. Full of rifts and valleys, almost like a tropical Devon. Mwalaganje Elephant Reserve is lovely. Various large hills smothered with trees and open valleys, with winding roads that disappear into the hillside, and a river that runs through the valley between us and a huge valley wall.
The camp itself is on a huge hill which overlooks lush green grassland with small outbreaks of trees and shrubs – all around elephant height.

please sir, can i have some...

JAM?!

We ate soon after arriving, and after a little while, we were sent to a corner of the camp, alone, and told to write what we could see, feel and what we hoped. Sitting there, looking over the beauty of the valleys and the river, the landscape that twists and turns to the horizon, it made me think about the future, the beauty of what was in front of me, and the past few days.
After a while, I saw a wildebeest, but it was gone before I could draw my camera. After fifty minutes of solitude, we were called back and asked to present our work. I had written mine on the back of a receipt and didn’t even fill that.
Mark had the funniest one, by far. It was a barrage of long words, which perfectly complimented his intelligence and was also hilariously funny. "i can see an enigmatic dichotomy of soaring hills and pluging valleys..."

JL had lost his glasses in the sea, so when he got up to read his out, he said
“well, I saw… not much, really. Just a lot of GREEN”(he had a full A4 sheet, but thought it would be more amusing to improvise). My turn came, I got up and pressed the recipt into a nearly presentable shape in a rather dramatic fashion, and said “alright… it’s a long one…” and followed with
“I can see the open road, leading off towards the horizon before being engulfed by an enormous beauty of foliage and hillside.

I feel like I could spend the rest of my life here.

And I hope what we do here will make a difference and I can return as soon as possible.”
Later that night I started talking to a girl from the other group called louise, an all girls school (heaven?). Since they were going to Diani next, Sam asked her to pass on a note for Eppy, that said “keep smiling, Eppy” which I thought was really, really cute. He was like a love sick puppy ever since.

You see, sam has a girlfriend, but Eppy really got through to him. He was really hesitant at first, but she won him over. I must congratulate him on his fortitude, he held of for two days – most people would melt right away. Eppy also has a boyfriend, but from what I heard, he was a bit of a ‘prick’, to use Sam’s reference. But the way she looked at Sam, as though she didn’t necessarily care what he was saying, was quite beautiful. She hung on his every word. We’d leave them alone for hours, literally, and they’d still be at the bar chatting (well, Sam did most of the talking, as per usual).

On the last night they were together, with his makeshift bed sheet robe wrapped around her, somehow managing it without putting his arm round her. That didn’t last long though. They were secretly snogging all night, but I didn’t realize till our talk after we went back to our room. I feel really bad for him, because he doesn’t know what he wants now, and guilty for getting them talking, and yet through that, I see something missing from my own life. She is very beautiful, so much so that Sam believe she Is out of his league, and if that is the case, I’m sure that sort of girl(pretty) is well out of mine. Sam might not realize it, but he is a very handsome guy, and he has a great personality. Sure, it’s a little twisted, but who’s into normal?

Sometimes, it seemed like Puppy love (most people saw it that way), but there was something pure about it – an innocence, if you will. She’s lovely, and he deserves a girl like that. Wow, this is depressing to write.

It’s gotten dark now, and the fire has been started. We were all sitting around it and partaking in a quiz the girl’s teachers had set up. Since I wasn’t in any other group, and I was already sitting on Louise’s team’s bench, I joined theirs (I was feeding out guys answers too, don’t worry).Sam reminded her SEVERAL times to pass on the note or he would “hunt her down”… charming as he is. We chatted for a long time throughout the quiz(we owned them in the quiz, like every other group that came before them), and the award ceremony the girls had, which seemed quite childish, really. Since the smoke was blowing in our faces and hurting both of our eyes, I pulled my scarf up over my mouth and nose (after offering it to her several times of course, but she didn’t accept it.

crossdressing in africa.

Saywha?

I woke up at eight. My first word of the day was rather obscene. By the time we left our hut, their group had gone diving anyway. It turns out JL had gone back to sleep after hearing the alarm. Hm.

After breakfast, we hung out on the beach, and I wrote my diary up to this morning.

guys, we are in Kenya. we could do anything. WHY?

All the groups present competed in a volleyball tournament, then a tug of war. Needless to say, WBS came out top – we owned the tug of war, and it was done as efficiently as only rowers and rugby players know how, with a one, two, three, HEAVE!. Until we actually broke the rope, of course. Can anyone smell ‘man’?

After dinner all of our group got changed into make-shift fancy dress, using bed sheets, toilet roll – they looked fantastic. Nobody else really made an effort at first. But all the girls in the new group had attached leaves to bikinis, but that didn’t look half as good as the togas of our group. Ash, the barman, wore a stuffed bra – it was the most convincing pair of fake breasts I had ever seen.

Would.

Eppy came as a sleepover girl (very cute) with Pyjamas, bear, bunches and drawn in freckles, and one of the girls went as a traveller. Not that she wasn’t already, or anything, being on the other side of the world. Sam and Mark came out wrapped in toilet roll from almost head to toe – mummies, of course.

that toilet paper could have gone to Kenyan children...

They pushed back our ‘curfew’ a little, and we skipped between the huge bonfire and the bar. Most of the group played dare games, whilst Sam and Eppy got friendly. Very friendly. For all his holding back, I couldn’t blame him, she was a pretty girl. We went around twelve, me being the only person to know about Sam’s new lover.

Insanity charts

I woke up at four and got ready, and let the others get up at five, as was agreed. We left our house and Jake(Lankford)’s undead groans at quarter past.
Sam, Jean-Luc and I made our way to the bar. Outside it was pitch black, but Sam was already animal spotting, the little David Attenborough that he is. He tried to pick up a small gecko, but it was too fast and all he got was its tail, which moved on its own for a disturbingly long time. He later caught another gecko, which, when I was at the bar and he was standing behind me, jumped onto my shoulder. I froze, and it took me a couple of seconds to figure out what it was. As when we arrived, large crabs were running around all over the camp and the beach. At night, this became their domain, and the beach became a moving floor of carapace.

We were met half an hour later by other members of our group, and all stood by the fence waiting for it to happen. Then one of the girls from last night turned up. Our conversations, when in this little group, as we found last night, always bordered on insanity. So after the usual random banter, we decided to keep a chart, with the number of sane and insane conversations counted in a sort of retarded tally chart.
By the time we finished talking, the sun had risen – we hadn’t even noticed. And the tally chart was slightly heavier on the insane side.

The insanity chart itself.

Breakfast was waffles, which rocked. At about eleven we headed into town, and bumped into the other group again. We then went to the Camps Kenya Office, where Matt(C) left us. He was going home. Nobody would blame him, and most of us would do the same in that situation.

We then proceeded to a beach restaurant called the “forty thieves” where we hung out for a little while. The sea looked even clearer here, if that was possible, even though it was but a minute up the beach. I couldn't help but get in and swim, especially with a sea that looks like that. After I got out, I ate. I mean, I really ate. All day I just ate. We went to a supermarket to stock up on chocolate of course, and went to a small local village.

Before I go on, chocolate. CHOCOLATE. Why does everything taste the same, and slightly on the ‘dated’ side? How can we tell it was made in the middle east, by it’s taste? The only thing that actually tasted any good was the Cadbury stuff – I will later purchase a fifty pack of dairy milk, to be used as high-tender bartering tools within the group. we also bought some crisps that looked like giant Wotsits, but tasted like polystyrene, and custard creams that were foul.

The village had a woodwork shop, which was amazing. Carved animals of all shapes and sizes row on row, so you could barely see the floor. When outside, I gave some of the kids some of my chocolate, which they seemed to enjoy.

Sitcom Minority attitude at its roots.

We returned to the Forty Thieves and had a fantastic dinner there. Steamed crab! Fun to get into, but not much to eat, really.

Stop.

Hammer time.

Then, just as we finished, the room lit up, and a DJ started playing. We were all singing at our table along to Bohemian Rhapsody, Sweet child of mine and Wonderwall. We sang all the way home. Rockstar went down a hit, as did Wonderwall, again. Did anyone actually realize how cheese this all was?
We then met the girls at the bar, and chatted for ages. We learnt that the boys in their group hated us, mainly because we steal away their conversation. Ah well, they’ll get over it. This is the start of us inadvertently proving to everyone that we are better than… well, everyone.

We decided to meet early again. Asked JL to wake me at five since my Ipod was packed away. The Ipod, again, would be a high-tender item later on - mainly due to it's, eh, content.

Ocean and Anti-rape devices.

Mombasa was nothing I expected. Various fires at the side of the roads and many homeless roughing it outside derelict buildings and shops that were close to falling apart. I wasn’t overly worried, but a hell of a lot of people were freaking out about getting robbed. It was quite funny to listen to. The bus was a wave of paranoia and bad jokes that did nothing to reassure anyone about the security of the minibus.

We then boarded a ferry to cross a river. We waited a half hour as the boat, if it can be called that, slowly filled up with people. then the driver said “this is wrong. This is taking too long.” Everyone’s paranoia went into overdrive. Our driver then got out to check with the ferry driver. The ferry was still filling steadily, and most people’s eyes were on us. The upper levels overlooked the bus. Lots of people were freaking out about people stealing our luggage or jumping on the bus, Predator-style.

The bus was boiling, and Sam(G) opened the window about half an inch, stuck his mouth out and sucked in air, obviously looking like he didn’t want to open it all the way due to the risk to personal safety. One man saw this, and was staring at him for a very long time.

The driver came back and told us they were about to get moving.
Some man in a grey hood circled the bus. I’m sure someone squealed. Then, all of a sudden, the ferry started moving. To slow down, it cut its engines and drifted in to shore on the other side of the river. Everyone freaked out when the engines cut out, they all thought they where going to be stranded in the middle of a river surrounded by potential criminals(I know, this seems a horrible way to put it, but enter the minds of thirty-one middle-class teens, in a small bus in the middle of a river)

We docked after little more than five minutes. Driving off the ferry, the driver swerved to avoid a pothole and ended up on a slope leading down into the water. The vehicle was at a 45 degree angle, and the minibus was extremely top heavy due to our luggage. Almost everyone was leaning to their left to counterbalance the bags! When the minibus finally got back on the road, we were welcomed by people selling knives, of every shape and size, at the side of the street. The bus had to swing from side to side to avoid the worst of the potholes.

At one point on our journey towards camp, a monkey ran out into our headlights and then disappeared into the foliage on the other side.

Welcome to Africa, guys.

We arrived at camp Ocean in Diani around 2:40 and were greeted by the camp manager and retinue, and various refreshments. It was quite dark, but we could make out crabs scurrying across the undergrowth and paths. We entered our designated rooms, small stand-alone huts, almost cottages, to find they were quite good. The were cleaned every day , and sure, the showers weren’t fully functional, the toilet seat had a piece missing from it, and several small animals had set up residence, but it was liveable. We slept well.

monkeys overhead.

In hindsight, we should have been glad to have the shower and the toilet.

I awoke at eightish to the sound of heavy rain. Stepping outside into the refreshing downpour and fresh air, I followed the winding path past several buildings not dissimilar to ours towards the breakfast table. When everyone turned up, we got a short briefing from the group leaders, ate breakfast and were left to our own devices. We got up, walked past the bar and out onto the beach through a small wooden archway decorated with flowers.

oh, hai. i was just on my way back from the middle-east...

Diani beach is Beautiful. Pure white sand for miles to either side, with palm trees hanging lazily over the beach. The water was clearer than anything I had seen before, and you could see the sand through the water for about twenty meters, before it gently disappeared into a light turquoise, which changed in colour the further it went out, before breaking over the reef in light waves. We spent the rest of the day in the sea and playing volleyball with the two lifeguards and haggling with the locals who gathered on the beach for that exact reason. one of them had a pair of magnificent white sunglasses, making me really tempted to ask him if he would sell them, but I never got round to it.

At lunch whilst we were eating, there was a scream, a little rustling, a loud thud and the reverberating sound of rubber. We had all been witness to a monkey falling out of a tree and landing on a tent, which sent the dogs crazy. It was one of the funniest things me or any of us had ever seen (no monkeys were harmed in this extract). Shortly afterwards, as I was walking back to the hut, a monkey threw some fruit at me from the top of a tree. I picked it up and chucked it back, of course.

hell yeah with a side of yes please?

After dinner, we started socializing with the other group – well, the girls, anyway. The boys seemed threatened by our presence, and kept their distance to make snide remarks from afar. Me and Sam (Nutt) started chatting with two girls from Stanstead. I bought everyone drinks(not really that big a deal, as each drink cost all of about 15p). Between the four of us, we had some hilarious conversations. It ranged from general stuff to the criminally insane, one of the topics being this.




We were talking about how rough Mombassa was, and I said




“that’s nothing though, really. Johannesburg is worse, roughness-wise”




and Sam Piped up(first time he had spoken in said conversation) and said




“oh, Johannesburg, that’s where they have anti-rape devices”




we all turned to him and in unison said




“What?”




we were all new to Sam’s conversational topics, but we would come to know them well by the end of the week. Sam followed this by spending half an hour explaining what they where. We left him with his new found best friend, Eppy, who was hanging on his every word. And went and sat at the fire that had been made on the beach.

When we got back to the bar, we had the girls give Sam a makeover, with bronzer, Mascara and eyeliner, making sure he looked very pretty before returning to the fire.
Whilst deep in conversation, one of our guys and one of the girls picked Sam up, an arm each, and dragged him around the beach. It was harsh, but hilarious all the same. We decided that the four of us would meet in the morning to see the sunset.

That night, Jean-Luc (bailey) thought it would be funny to go and jump on Jon (Patton)’s bed whilst completely naked, save for a baseball cap, tearing down the mosquito netting. At the moment of the traumatic attack, Mr. Griffiths walked in the room. Turning a paler shade of white, He left saying “I don’t want to know”.
All who witnessed it are scarred for life.

Day one: A short walk between airports.

hey guys. it's 13th of March, 2010. two years ago, i took part in a group trip to Kenya, with the help of the Windsor Boys School and Camps International. on this trip, i kept a diary that ended up with about 300 pages. what follows is a cut down version of my diary for your viewing pleasure. I'm sorry i haven't posted this before, and hope that it brings back wonderful memories for all those involved, and good, fun reading for new readers. enjoy.

26/09/2008

The night was spent in the Pavilion, a building opposite the school used for the Cricket/Rugby Clubs, which resulted in the worst nights sleep I’ve had in a long time. If you want my advice, if you are asked to spend the night in a room with twenty or so Over-Excited boys – do what you can to get out of it. It should really go without saying, actually.

We awoke several hours later (those of us that slept), and left around five-thirty. We said goodbye to Windsor and were at Heathrow just before six. My bag, in a socially-risky flecktarn camouflage, rather than being heavy, was an awkward shape, and the attached sleeping bag was massive in comparison to everyone else’s. It actually completely messed up the balance of the bag. Nothing some duct tape couldn't fix, and I ended up using most of a roll, but everything still looked slightly lop-sided(and DIY Nazi). I would be walking around the airport at a slant for the rest of today. I also managed to get the trolley with the wonky wheel...

The line to the check in kiosk was by no means short, but between Neil (porter) & Sam (Nutt), we were able to keep ourselves amused. Now Neil I had known forever, but this was the first time I’d ever spoken to Sam – but we got on like fire and Amy Winehouse's face. The fact that we both liked Muse sparked the flame, and we spoke about music and bands for ages. He then introduced me to Mark (churchman), another guy I would come to get rather close to over the space of the month.

After the nerve-racking experience that always is Customs, We were welcomed by the familiar sights and sounds of the airport’s Duty free shopping zones and the gates, each one a portal to another world, in my eyes, anyway. To most, they must have looked like a gaudy plastic-looking tunnel with a rather bored looking airline staff member at a temporary desk.
We had all of about an hour of time to spend (and a little money), so I went straight to HMV, the last media outlet we may see for some time, and invest in some UMDs(those stupid PSP disc things). Neil & I then ate in Costa, again, for the last time in a long time (how I am to survive without all day breakfast toasted sandwiches and double chocolate frescatos, I do not know…). In hindsight, I should have spent less and bought more books, but The Motorcycle Diaries(Che Guevara) would last me a short while, and this diary should keep me occupied.

After food we went straight to gate 5, Heathrow to Nairobi. One of our group members suffered a great personal tragedy, and had only been told a few minutes previously. Due to the circumstances, he was in two minds whether to leave and go home or not, but decided to stay. The news(I would write more about it, but I don’t want to seem disrespectful by writing this in my diary.) dampened the spirits of the whole group, and I couldn’t bring myself to imagine what was going through his mind.

aha. i'm glad we are not on board a tin can with sheet metal wings, being propelled towards our country of choice at 500 miles per hour.

On the plane I was seated between Josh(Lovell, from which a good percentage of the great photos are produced) and Tom(Horsefield). The flight was pleasant enough. I chatted with both guys throughout, and by the end of one of the in-flight movies, we could see what we assumed was the Sahara Desert. All there was, all the way to the horizon, was sand and waving dunes. We arrived at Nairobi International airport at ten, and headed through to the National airport, which was across the road.

and now, for a skilled, practiced and graceful dismount.

We had been warned, but didn’t think it would happen quite like this.

We were walking across the road, with all our bags on trolleys, when a small man with a shirt that was too bright a shade of green(seriously, glow in the dark) pushed right up against me, grabbed the handlebars and tried to pry my grip from the trolley, using all his bodyweight to force me off(attempted to, anyway).
My instant reaction to this breach of security was to use my bodyweight and forced him off with one quick shoulder barge. He lost his grip, and his balance, and was launched a meter or so to my right. He turned to me and said “no, no, I am a porter, this is my profession”.
I would hear “this is my profession” a lot more throughout the month. After telling him I couldn’t (wouldn’t) pay him, he escorted me to the pavement, asked me for money in every currency he could think of, and then buggered off to pester someone else.

After waiting for the others to catch up, I saw Sam, strolling alongside his trolley, in conversation with its new pilot, the little man with is fluorescent shirt. It took some explaining, but the small man soon left without Sam’s money. Sam now had a new phobia of porters. Let’s hope Neil doesn’t count.

Mombasa airport was deserted, save for a couple of hopeful taxi drivers. We made our way across the car park, loaded our bags on top of the minibus, boarded, in time to see the large digital clock above the driver’s compartment change from 11.59 to 12.00.