Korando and the weekend

So this will have to be a short blog seeing as the internet keeps disconnecting and it’s starting to get dark out.

I was in Korando this week with Solveig and Hinrika. We were staying at Anne Lauren’s place which was very nice but it took us a little while to get used to the fact that she had bats, rats and cockroaches the size of my hand in her house. But she is doing an incredible job here. She has raised a nursery in her back yard where we spent most our mornings teaching the little ones how to write the letters and numbers.

One afternoon we went to lake Victoria and took a short boat ride and then we carried water in bucket s on our head all the way from the river and home to the house, it was surprisingly hard! Part of our project was to visit old or/and sick people and give them soap and sugar, just some basics. It was quite hard especially when one old lady just burst into tears all of a sudden and started telling us that she had just lost her grand child the other day and started pointing to the floor and saying that she had been there just the other day laughing and smiling. This woman was also HIV positive and had a tumor on both her head and neck which were causing here a lot of pain.

The stories that we heard about the children were also very shocking!  Other wise this weekend has been great. We went on a boat ride on Lake Victoria and got to see hippos popping their heads up right next to the boat. It  was amazing! Then today we went to a Kenyan market and then to a museum and got to see crocodiles and loads of highly venomous snakes, very cool!

I think that’s all for now

Until Next time

-C

Kisii

The cuties  at the orphanage (baby class) 

So my first project in Kenya has come to an end. We went to a city called Kisii where we stayed at the home of a woman called Florence and her husband Dr. Manduku. They are angels on earth! They took us in as we were their own and gave me, Sunna and Hinrika a private room and bathroom in their home. Their house is by the way very large. We were expecting mud huts and a dusty floor but it was quite the opposite. Their house has at least 6 bedrooms and 2 living rooms. One of the living rooms had a plasma tv with loads of channels! so after a long tiring day travelling to Kisii we got to relax in front of the tv and watch MTV. It wasn't too bad.


So Florence and Dr. Manduku own a private hospital in town which is really nice, I got to experience it first hand, but lets not skip ahead! Our project revolved around an orphanage in the outskirts of town... in the country side really. The kids there are so cute that I just wanted to steal one and take it with me back home to Iceland! But I was able to control my self. We taught two classes, 8th and 7th standard. The kids in the same class aren't always the same age here. Like 8th standard was kids from 13-16. We were told that this was because the kids might not have the funds to keep on studying so they have to take a year off to raise money for their education. Sometimes on the other hand the parents look and their kid and still see a child and think they are not mature enough to go to the next class so they make them stay back and take the same year again.


We came in to the first class and were just supposed to teach them social studies. It didn't seem like a big deal until we took a look at where they were in their books and saw that they where learning about how the Kenyan government works and all kinds of stuff that we had no idea how to teach. We finally decided just to teach them about Iceland and they could tell us about Kenya and we looked at the differences between the two countries and looked at how different school systems work. Ended up being a lot of fun and the kids asked tons of questions!
The orphanage didn't have a water tank for the kids to drink clean water from or to wash the dishes or any thing so we decided to buy a 3200 litre tank for them to collect rain water in to. They seemed really happy to get it and were extremely exited to get to role it down a hill in the school yard. We spent 2 days at the school but on the third day I started getting sick again!
Florance and Dr. Manduku drove me straight to the hospital where I had to get an IV drip and loads of injections and drugs. Then I was driven in a wheelchair to a private room where I had my own bathroom, balcony, TV and sofas. Turns out it's the same bacterial infection that I got in India but because I didn't go on antibiotics it never cleared up. So now I have finally got antibiotics and it should clear up for good this time.


The weekend has been really nice except Solveig ended up in the hospital like me (because of this bacterial infection). On Friday we all went out to  a small club with 5 Kenyan guys keeping a very close eye on us the whole time. We didn't stay for long seeing as the night life here isn't the safest place in the world but we got to dance and taste a Kenyan beer which is really good. We danced our butts off to really good music for about two hours and then rushed back to the hotel. People here dance a lot more with their hips while we were danceing with our shoulders which seemed to be the main source of amusement amongst the people there.
Yesterday we went to the swimming pool and relaxed all day and today we started the day by going to a gospel church which was really cool. It was a very inspiring hour but after mass we left because we thought it was over so we missed the singing part. Next Sunday  I am definitely going again and staying for the songs.


Other wise life in Kenya is good!
Until next time
-C

Arriving in Kenya!

We have finally arrived in Kenya after a very long trip. Two plain trips, a troublesome 2 hours at Kenyan immigration and a 7 hour bus ride later and we are at our hotel in Kisumu! On the bus ride over here we saw antelopes, zebras and donkeys all over the place, just running wild! It was amazing. We also had to drive through an area that was not quite a dessert but not far off. It had a few shrubs scattered here and there and we kept on seeing these sand storms that looked like small tornadoes or something. Sand swirling up in to the air as high as you could see. Really weird!


Yesterday we spent all day by the swimming pool sunbathing, taking a dip in the pool and eating really good food at the hotel restaurant. This is not our hotel though, we are using the facilities of some other very fancy hotel. Oh no! our hotel has a different kind of luxuries!
When we arrived at the hotel I was bursting for the toilet so I ran in to the room and was happy to see a toilet but not so happy to see that there was just a shower curtain in stead of a door on the bathroom. Thinking that this wasn't too bad I went to the toilet but as I was flushing it all the pipes on it came loose and the bathroom floor flooded with water! I went down in to the lobby and asked one of the staff to come and take a look at it. He came up, plugged the pipes back in their spot and then asked me to come while he demonstrated to me how you flush  a toilet. This was a little embarrassing.


After the toilet flushing lesson I decided to take a shower which I did but when I was done the shower knob had come loose and wouldn't shut off the water. Again I had to run down to fetch the same guy to come and turn off the water. For some reason it wasn't broken any more when he came so he gave me a another lesson but this time it was 'how to turn a knob' lesson. I think the staff here think I'm a lost case.


A part from the bathroom problems the hotel is actually not bad. We have only found two cockroaches in our room so far and they where not very big. Yay!  Now we are heading off to the swimming pool again to relax and prepare our selves mentally for the tomorrow when we set off for our first projects in Kenya.


Signing off from Kenya in 33 degrees C!


-C

Kumbakonam and the food poisoning

This week has been very colorful indeed! So Me, Tara and Sólveig were sent to Kumbakonam where we slept at Velanganni´s home. He is a retired school teacher and headmaster who is very nice and spent most of our stay there with us. Our project was to work at a school fpr the poor during the day teaching the kids English or just what ever we wanted to then in the evening we went to a village that had been hit by a cyclone. The villagers build their houses out of mud and the roofs are made of palm tree leaves so when the cyclone hit it completely destroyed their hoses and we could even see 5-10 meter high trees on their sides that have blown over, roots and all. It was quite incredible.
So these village people have managed to rebuild their houses (if you can call them houses) but because they are so poor the men in the village have a tendency to get drunk a lot of the time. There is one girl in the village that is 19 and she has offered to have what they call a tuition center where the kids can go after school and study so they don't have to be at home. This is where we went every day after we had been teaching at the school. 
The tuition center is just the ground out side this girls house and they didn't even have mats to sit on or a board to write on or any thing. So we bought bamboo mats for the kids to sit on and a board for the teacher.


So the first day at the school, to be considered a teacher and have to stand in front of 50 staring faces is easier said then done. But I think we did pretty good. We also taught them hokey poky which they found a blast! 
 When I was working at the school there where 7 teacher trainees there that didn't hesitate to use a stick to beat the children with. We were so shocked at this that we asked them why on earth they would do that, but they just went all shy and pretended not to understand us. We ended up talking to the headmaster about it and he took one of the sticks and threw it over the fence that surrounded the school yard. This, I´m afraid, did not stop the teachers from finding another stick to beat the children with. 
I soon found out here that Indians don't really like making a fool of them selves! That is something I don't seem to have a problem with. I was teaching the children hokey pokey and shaking my but all over the place and generally dancing like an idiot. The kids really loved this and in the end felt comfortable enough to join in. That was fantastic! Seeing all these kids shaking and dancing and laughing was so incredible. It looked like they had never felt so free in their life. We gave all the kids at the school pens to write with which they were very happy with. 
After the second day we were all three feeling a little weird in the stomach then I got a really high fever. From there on it deteriorated and I set up camp on the hole which Indians prefer to call a toilet. Sleeping on the floor and doing your business in a hole when you have food poisoning is something I do not recommend putting on your list to do before you die. After 2 days of this business we decided to go to Pondicherry so we could get to a bed and a western toilet! We hired a taxi for the 2 hour drive to Pondicherry and it cost us 1800 rupees which is 4500 kr! 2 hours! I pay that for taking a taxi from Reykjavík to Hafnafjörður sometimes. 
When we arrived in Pondicherry my cramps were getting worse and I ended up having to go to hospital. There I got injections and medicines. I put up a bit of a fuss when it came to the injections saying I wanted clean needles. They kept on going on at me ,,Madam, madam! needles clean okey I wipe them with paper'' Yeah right! It was not very convincing.  I just said to them. ,,If you want to use your needles you are going to have to consult my grandmother. She is a very respected nurse in Iceland who studied in Denmark. You are going to have to go threw her first or buy me new needles!'' In the end they didn't seem up to the challenge to talk to Amma so they ran down in to the basement where there was a pharmacy and bought me new needles and let me watch while they opened the packed. 
After the injections I felt a lot better. Now I am still at Pondicherry and tomorrow everyone is going for their next project but I think I am being sent to Chennai to recover properly before heading off to Kenya. 


Besides the food poisoning it's been a great week! I hope it will be easier to get to an internet cafe in kenya so I can blog more often! :)
-C

The first project

Oh lord there has so much happened the last few days! Me, Tara and Helga went to a girls home called Pasum Kudil and it was amazing. The girls are so nice and cheerful even though they have all gone through incredibly difficult stuff. Most of them have lost their parents or parent to AIDS. But they where so wonderful. I took pictures of them all so when I get home if someone wants to become a sponsor for one of the children I can show them pictures and tell you a little about their background.We staied with them for 3 days and it was surprisingly hard to say goodbye to all the girls, especially when they started saying to us ''don't forget me, please''.
As we were leaving I went to the bathroom (which was a hole in the floor) and to flush it you get a bucket and put some water in it then you just chuck it over the toilet. But I had my camera on me (I was not trying to take a photo of my self using the toilet!) and it fell in to the water bucket and is now ruined. So I have to wait for about 5 days to get a new one because there aren't any legit camera shops here. But the girls are taking loads of pictures for me.
We have all bought some Sarees but its so complected to put them on that we can't do it by our self. We 
At the moment we are in a mountain town where we are spending are ''weekend'' and have been doing tourist things all day. We lost an ice cream to a monkey and have been touring viewpoints and rose gardens. This country is so beautiful. We visited some rice fields out in the country side just as the sun was setting and it was so incredibly beautiful.
My next project starts on Saturday and is a children's home. I hope it's not going to be so hard to say goodbye to all the kids this time as it was last time.
I'm afraid I can't have the blog longer this time so I am going to have to sign off.
-C

Arriving in Chennai

So we have arrived in India... At last! took us 2 days to get here and 4 flights but it was worth it. John and Michael our sponsors here picked us up at the airport and took us to our hotel. Which apparently isn't a hotel after all, its just open for people doing volunteer work or some kind of social work, founded by some priest.

The area we are staying in is also the main place for famous people and so on so it's quite ''nice'', but there's still rubbish every where you look and people sleeping right next to all the trash and stuff... but still... quite nice.

So we are in Chennai and our first project starts tomorrow after a 12 hour train ride which we will be taking this evening.

If I had to describe India in one word it would be Chaos followed buy Dirty! but the weather is great and the people are... weird but nice. The traffic here is utter chaos. There don't seem to be any rules and every one is constantly honking their horn. We were getting very annoyed by this so we asked John what the deal was and he said because the traffic was so chaotic they did it to keep each other alert and aware. Then we had to take one of those buggee things on three wheels, which are called autos. We had to go three and three in each auto and it was amazingly terrifying but we got to our destination unharmed, thank god. But men and car are as one here. There are no pavements so people are just walking along with the cars like it's the safest place in the world. I have not seen one person look to either side before crossing a road here. They just some how dive in to the traffic and come out the other side unharmed. But they never run! oh no, they would never take a risk like that.

Otherwise, besides the traffic I am quite liking it here. Believe it or not I have not yet done my business in a hole. I have managed to get to western type toilets every time, but I'm afraid that is going to change as soon as I get to the project tomorrow.

The food here is amazing so far. It's so good, which surprised me because I usually don't like Indian food. But this is nothing like the Indian food you get at restaurants at home. It's waay better!

I have only had one traumatic incident here so far and that was last night. I had drunk a huge bottle of water just before going to bed and woke up in the middle of the night bursting for a pee. As I opened the bathroom door and turned the light on I saw a huge lizard run up the wall beside the toilet. It was seriously about the size of my arm. If you can imagine it's nose starting at my fingertips and the tail ending at my elbow, that's about how big it was.  Of course I just jumped out of the bathroom and slammed the door waking up Solveig my room mate. She was way to tired to help me out so I just climbed back in to bed and held it in until morning. The when she woke up we made it our mission to go in to the bathroom to see if we could see it but it was long gone. We came to the conclusion that it had come in and gone out through the drain in the floor, even though we were on the third floor nota bene.

Other wise every thing is going really well and John is helping us like crazy. We would probably still be at the airport trying to find our way to the hotel if it wasn't for him. We took him out to dinner last night and we all dressed up in Indian dresses, but being Icelanders we of course managed to find the only Italian restaurant in the city or something! But Indian/Italian food is really good too.

I am going to have to sign off now seeing as I'm in a tiny internet shop in the corner of a really shabby mall and there are people waiting (it was b.t.w. incredibly hard to find an internet cafe).

I'll try to put in another blog soon!

-C

India - Africa!

I am going as a volunteer to India and Kenya in January. We are 9 Icelanders that are going on this trip which will be 1 month in each country.  We will be working at orphanages, kindergartens and schools. At the moment we are organizing fundraisers for the trip. The proceeds will all be going to the schools and homes that we visit. We're going to try and buy what ever each home or school needs the most like bunk beds, desks or school books and so on. 

            The past few days I've been freaking out a little, wondering what the hell I've gotten my self into. The rest of the group seems pretty chilled out about the whole trip which is the only thing that's calming me down these days. But our fundraising is going pretty good.

            A few minor hiccups have occurred though, like a small problem with my visa and also Hreggi (one of the guy's that's going with us) has managed to damage a nerve in his right eye by spraying water from some sort of high pressure pump into his eye. I think you have to be pretty talented to manage something like that so I do hope it gets better and can come with us! 

            Otherwise I'm pretty excited! We will be sleeping on sandy floors and pooping in holes in the ground, what more can you ask for? (I am not being sarcastic). One of my main concerns about the trip is the traffic in India. It is the cause of the most deaths among tourists in India. I have been consistently trying to psych the other guy's out. I haven't yet succeeded but the more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that it might not be such a good idea after all. I can just imagine 9 terrified Icelanders about to step in to a car... or one of those buggie thingies with three wheels which Indians seem to prefer to regular, safe cars with airbags and seat belts.

            Well, I'm going to try and put blogs in every now and then so you can read about the trip.

44 days till lift off!