Tall and Skinny, Big and Dumpy

Here are photos from Samburu.

The baby giraffe is just sooooooooooooooooooo cute! :)

Despite their docile appearance, elephants can be very fierce and dangerous. One of them was annoyed by us, shook his massive ears, blew his trumpet, getting ready to charge. Needless to say our driver moved the vehicle quickly to escape the elephant's wrath! It was quite a scary moment. I prefer to be near a wild lion than a wild elephant... Shudders...

Elephants crossing... we counted about 40 elephants altogether. Old and young, big and small, they crossed the river in orderly manner. The babies were well positioned between the adults, to protect them from being easy target.

A beautiful oryx in the wild.

Close Encounters with the Wild Kind

= animals we saw in the wild.

These photos were taken in Nakuru.

Zebras - very pretty stripes...

Lion - our vehicle stopped right next to it!

Mighty buffaloes, bigger than the ones in Indonesia.

Black rhinoceros - if you see them approaching, you have to make lots of movements with your arms and legs while making lots of noises. They have bad eyesights, so if they think you "suddenly" appear in front of them they might be shocked and might run you over, as they think you're a danger to them.

Kenya: Bricks and OUR Tree...

Msangga school: they make their own bricks for building the classrooms and equipping people with practical skills. They have their own furnace as well.

Every visitor was given the honour to plant a tree at the school compound. This one is OUR TREE! :) Wonder how long it will take to grow to a full-size plant...

Entertainment time: the children sang Hockey Cockey, complete with the movements, taught by an English PE teacher. They absolutely enjoyed themselves, though some confused the movements of left/right and arms/legs. Hilarious! Notice their colourful clothes...

Kenya: school projects

We visited some school projects funded by our church.

Nazarene Empathy Nursery School: the nursery for orphans in one of the widows groups. They sang beautifully and were a very polite bunch of kids. Because of AIDS there are a lot of orphans raised up by relatives, grandparents, or neighbours. Very sad. The kids seemed very content though...

Next is the Ka Chieng School. They have a garden project to teach students how to grow plants. Quite impressive, giving them useful skills for life, like the saying: "Don't give a man fish, give him a rod and teach him how to fish." Because the water pump & water tank were broken, they have to get water from the river, somewhere downhill across the road. We're so spoiled in the western world!

School kids at Ka Chieng school: ready for assembly. They sang for us before the visiting team gave some words to them, followed by Q&A time. Fantastic kids...

School rules at Ka Chieng School: pasted outside the classroom. We found them amusing.

Fresh Rain in Kenya

The other day it rained almost the whole day. Made a refreshing change to very hot summer days. The rain took me back to the time when we were in Kenya with some friends to visit local projects our church was supporting.

Lucky us stayed in a "posh" house with western style bathroom and toilet, though the water pipe was broken the whole time we were there. Every day the local ladies went down to the river to get us a big drum of water for showering. It was a dry summer so we had to save as much water as possible. We also felt a little guilty if the local ladies had to make an extra trip to the river when we ran out of water. It's along way to the river.

We had to stand on a big plastic bucket while showering so we could use the water to flush the toilet. 2 small buckets of water per person for shower. Everyone had to refrain from flushing the toilet, though flushing was a must after "big business".

One day there was an unexpected heavy rain. So a friend and I grabbed the opportunity. Us girls changed into our swimming costumes, took our bath towels, shower gel, shampoo, and conditioner with us. We went out to the side of the house where the water was pouring down from the roof, forming a natural shower stream.

The pure rain water felt so good. Water in abundance means we could took shower as long as we wanted, taking our time slowly to wash our hair and just soaked ourselves in the glorious amount of water nature provided. It felt like finding a gold mine, we screamed loudly like excited children, the rainwater was very cold!

The rest of the people stayed inside the house, taking shelter from the rain. The locals were amused, they couldn't see us but they could hear our screaming, they thought my friend and I had gone mad over the rain.

It was one of the most luxurious showering experience in my life.