When in Kenya...

...CLIMB MOUNT KENYA!! This past weekend was fantastic!! Three of the other volunteers and I decided to head to Mount Kenya, which is about a 4-hour drive from Nairobi. We stayed at the Mount Kenya Hostel, located at the base of the second highest mountain in Africa, which was beautiful in it's simplicity, rural setting, and genuine hospitality of its owners. Saturday we hiked from the entrance gate to the national park, up to the Met Station, which is at 3000 meters. The scenery was amazing and the weather was perfect--lots of sunshine with cool breezes. Bamboo forests, towering pines, streams of glacier water running down them, hearing the birds and occasional monkey, and always on the lookout for an elephant to saunter out of the brush (never did see one though). After resting at the station, which is the first campsite for those on the summit route, we continued on the trail, which got considerably steeper, til about 3500 meters, when the altitude got a little too much and walking 5 feet seemed like a mile! Eating lunch with the view of the Rift Valley from 3500 meters up was incredible!! We then headed back to the park gate and ended our first day of hiking with a few Tuskers and a great dinner back at the hostel. On Sunday, we hiked around the park with our destination being the Mau Mau caves, the hideout for Kenyan rebels who faught for independence against Britain. Crouching as we walked through them, with our flashlights spanning over the rock shelf where the general slept and the separate cave where they cooked their meals, and hearing how the British tried to infiltrate the spot by bombing the caves, but realizing how futile that was upon seeing the precarious perch of the caves in the side of Mount Kenya, was incredible!! Walking back through fields and sharing the trail with numerous cows, goats, and sheep, all the time Mount Kenya providing the perfect backdrop, made for a beautiful hike. The president of Kenya has it pretty good, as his 500-acre ranch sits at the base of Mount Kenya as well. Driving the four hours home, I couldn't help but think about how surreal it is to have been on bedrest for fear of throwing a clot a few weeks ago, and then spending this weekend hiking on Mount Kenya. It was an amazing weekend, my first that far away from the city, and the fresh air was just what I needed!

Another first for me last week was teaching!! Yep, that's right...I went with two of our new volunteers to the school I had visited a few weeks ago, called Hidden Talents, and was going to help them teach math to class (grade) 7, but after realizing square roots of fractions were completely over my head without a calculator, and seeing there was no teacher for class 8 who were supposed to be learning science (all teachers there are volunteers, and thus are not regularly scheduled), I wandered over, asked to see the one textbook they had (for about 25 students), then spent the next 45 minutes teaching them about skin!! We talked about pores, pigment, hair follicles, the dermis, epidermis, oil & sweat glands, bruises, scabs, scars, and they just soaked it all up like sponges...it was great!! I hope to return this week and teach again...we shall see.

Alas, my first GI distress since I got here came to a head today (pun intended), but I'm blaming it on too much Blue Band over the weekend, which is the Kenyan substitute for butter, or as I now call it, the magic bullet or rocket. I have a new appreciation for Pepto Bismol now, and I'm sticking close to the loo as it works itself out of my system. For those that I climbed Kili with, I'm at a stage 3 currently (yeah!) and I have a new respect for those that were doing anal kegels all the way up the Western Breach!! Will try to get to the orphanage today for the community football (soccer) game, but only if my intestines cooperate...