Elective Africa PART 3/3

Read Elective Africa PART 1 HERE and PART 2 HERE before you continue below.


  The next few weeks were ones that i will never forget. The people I meet, friends I made and the whole experience in general----I will never trade. I can't begin to give day to day account of my time in Kenya, That will have to be the longest blog post and you'll get bored. Luckily I already did some posts while I was in Kenya. These are the highlights.......
1. First weekend-----trip to masai mara. Check out my previous posts on the following links Rift Valley, Masai Mara National Reserve,  The Masai Tribe,  Camping site.
2. Places to visit in Mombassa Mamba Village,  Haller Park, Fort Jesus, and the beach---->>>> Definitely

   
4. Other places to visit in Kenya------->>>>> Malindi, Diani beach(pictures below)

Malindi

Malindi

Diani

Diani

    We had very good food as well. Dollars and Lilly cooked for and took care of us. Thank you, miss you.

Chapati and fried vegetables with some kind of soup. YUMM.

    Finally this post will not be complete if I don't take out time to remember "Pebbles" the cat, the official pet for the house. Unfortunately she died before we got back from Masai mara. A very confident, beautiful cat she was.

   And as the day finally came for me to leave this place I had grown to love, these people who I had come to call friends, I was very nervous. I had a cocktail of emotions running through me because I knew I would greatly miss this place, these people and that wasn't even the part that hurt the most. It was the fact that even though we had added each other on facebook, and had exchanged email addresses, promised to keep in touch and even to probably plan a reunion, I knew that distance and indeed time does separate people and that we would get busy when we got back to our normal lives and that this summer of 2011 will just be a memory we will always treasure in our hearts. If any of you guys (anyone i met in Kenya, 2011) are reading this right now, just know that in your own individual unique ways, you made Kenya very special for me and this I will treasure.

  As 6.30pm came, time to leave for the airport, everyone came out to see me off, we took last minute photos, hugged and hugged and struggled to fight off the tears. On the way to the airport, the driver (not Bernard) who could speak very little English, looked up to the centre mirror to speak to me and said "your trip, very good?" and I answered "indeed It was very good."

    Now I know that this is one of the best things I have ever done, one of the best experiences I've had. And now I say Kwaheri Mombassa, Kwaheri Kenya. (Swahili........Kwaheri----Goodbye) 

Elective Africa PART 1/3

    This post is coming very very late. I was supposed to write this in August but I kept postponing it for some unknown reason. Anyway, here we are.
    I found out about Elective Africa from some friends who went to Kenya through Elective Africa. I knew right away that I wanted to go to Kenya after hearing all their amazing stories and challenges as well. I contacted the admin, applied and I was ready to go to Kenya.
   To be honest I didn't know what to expect as I knew I was going into a totally new environment ,  to meet a lot of new people and my social skills not being the best. People think that because I'm Nigerian, Kenya shouldn't be that far off culturally, but there's a lot of ways we differ. The way we think, dress, talk, the languages we speak (except English of course) are different and if I have to pick one thing we have in common, it is the colour of our skin. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to build a divide where none is needed, all I'm saying is people shouldn't assume. Just because its Africa doesn't mean everywhere is the same.
  Anyway, I packed my bags and after a 5 hour flight to Addis Ababa and another 2 hour connecting flight to Nairobi, I was in Kenya. Wohoooo. I arrived very early in the Morning and had to wait at the airport for the first flight to Mombassa. I have to commend 'Elective Africa' because their agent in Nairobi called 'Flavia' kept me company at the airport till it was time to board my flight to Mombassa. I felt special and very welcomed.

                                                           Continue to Elective Africa PART 2

Camping site at Masai Mara.

     We finally got to our destination after about 6 hours from Nairobi. We travelled on really bumpy and dusty road for about 2 hours. Thank God I didn't get car sick.
     This is the camp we stayed in.

The hut was very decent, not great, but decent. Not at all what I was expecting (I thought we were gonna stay in tents)

Our dinning room, we had a great Masai chef.

The safari Vans.

Just couldn't wait to go to the reserve.

Still waiting!!!!!!  Can we go already?

Safari

  A safari is an overland journey, usually a trip by tourists to Africa. The word safari means "long journey" in Swahili. Traditionally, the term is used for a big-game hunt, but today the term often refers to a trip taken not for the purposes of hunting, but to observe and photograph animals and other wildlife(Wikipedia).
  This past weekend has been an exciting one for me, but also very tiring. I left Mombassa with no clue as to what to expect. I went on safari with a group of about 19 people. From mombassa we travelled nine and half hours to Nairobi (it was supposed to be an 8 hour drive). We spent the night there and the next morning left for Masai Mara. It took about 5 hours. We had a few stops on the way. One was the view point of the Rift Valley(check the next post).
  This whole week I am going to blog about the whole safari trip, everything I saw, everything I experienced. I hope you do not get bored.  

Just before we left Mombassa.

On the bus to Masai Mara