Saturday morning saw us back at the church/ school for our last part of the Scouts camp. The morning started with the customary meeting for Laura and I, where we get taken through to meet another important member of the community, this time the Senior pastor for the church and then off for a brief meeting where we discuss the already planned and agreed programme for the day.
This seems to be a standard set of protocols for each and every day. So whilst we are meeting and discussing the rest of the team are left to be entertained by the scouts marching in various parade marches around the ground.
Kitale Museum
The museum and nature park in Kitale is a really busy museum. We walked from the church along the road to the museum and we saw a number of school busses coming into the park. The museum itself has a couple of animal enclosures.
Our guide, who spoke really good English, took us first to see the tortoises. He was really informative about them and explained how to tell the difference between a male and a female one and how they can live to approx 200 years old.
Next was the crocodile, this large African Nile crocodile was huge! Only 38 years old and about 4 meters long. It was still growing! It wasn't in the largest pen in the world but had been put in this smaller one as it had escaped its other pen a while ago and that pen has not yet been repaired. I can only hope that it gets a bit more space soon.
The Black cobra snake was the next creature on our tour. The good news is that this snake isn't poisonous. Instead, it suffocates its prey to death by wrapping itself around and squeezing every time the prey exhales! Then simply swallows it whole! Not dangerous at all. This snake was longer than the crocodile. Our hosts were not happy that the snake was curled up in its den and so paid a whopping £3 to the snake handlers to go into the pen and pull it out of it's home. These two guys were clearly not keen, neither were we, to disturb it but our hosts were adamant to see this creature. This snake is a magnificent creature but the contempt for animals isn't something any of us were happy with. Years ago we used to visit a crocodile sanctuary just outside Nairobi but we weren't keen on how they treated their animals so we stopped going there.
After the animal enclosures, we went on a tour of the traditional tribal houses that they have on display there. They have a number of recreated houses here that follow the traditional style of house for the tribes and the reasons why they built them. One tribe deliberately built their doors really low so that any intrudes would have to stoop really low and could then be attacked without the ability to fight back!
From there we went into the museum's gallery. This is a small natural history museum focusing on the development of man through the ages including the evolution of man from ape to modern man. It is a fairly basic museum but interesting enough for a visit.
The rest of the Scout adventure
Once we got back from the museum we ate our lunch. Unlike the UK lunch is usually a good hour! Our students had taken a packed lunch which we had agreed upon but we were still presented with rice and beans. We graciously declined the food which some of the other visitors, a small group of rover scouts from France who had joined us, ate.
After lunch, we sang and danced some more with our new friends before the presentation of gifts etc took place. Everyone knew about our need to finish at 3 so that we could get back to the Karibuni to meet another group from the UK that was also local to us in Billingshurst! Things were looking good. The MC, the school's deputy ran through the order of speeches and told everyone that we had to be quick. Everyone, from all of the scout groups, teachers from the schools, etc were given the mic for not very long and then the rain started so we had to move into the church.
At 2:40 pm we were in the church and the certificates and gifts were started to be given out. Lots of parades, presentations of gives, and photos followed, a couple of speeches later, we were done by about 4:20 pm. I feel like this is becoming fairly standard in Kenya. We jokingly talk about Kenyan time but essentially it is a way of life here!
One of our team, and I'm not going to mention any names other than he is a teacher, has perfected the art of sitting incredibly still whilst asleep in church so it looks like he is in prayer. This is an incredible skill that he has mastered whilst being in Kitale and we are all in awe of him!
Gifts
The gift presentation felt really one-sided with all of our team being given a t-shirt and then the members of scouting or guiding were then all given a Kenyan scout necker and woggle. However, as a leader of a scout group in the UK, I spoke to my leadership team and offered to pay for the uniform for the members of their scout group that can't afford it. The school is a boarding school, and as such is supported by fees and also the church and they support 23 kids from really disadvantaged backgrounds. 10 of these kids joined the scouting programme but can't afford their uniforms either. A full scout uniform is less than £20 so our scout group has offered to cover the cost of these kids' uniforms for this year and we hope to support this in future years too. We are also going to explore the option of inviting scouts from Kenya to a camp in the UK, next summer. This is an exciting opportunity and the Kenyans will sort out their logistics of getting a group over to the UK and we will look to host them at a camp and also for a short homestay too. Lots to plan and explore when I get back.
Some of the kids were hoping for a more intrinsic gift, I'm not entirely sure what they were expecting as this isn't part of our culture or what we had expected to do.
Our relaxing evening
Once we got back we had a shortened meeting with some students from Steyning, being nearly 2 hours late meant they had to move on to their next plan, but we did get to interact and play some volleyball. I then took a small group into town to get some drinks for the evening's entertainment and we visited a much calmer supermarket. Unfortunately on our way out of we got held up in traffic where some of the street children surrounded our bus with a couple clinging onto the side of the bus begging for food and money. This was a little bit intimidating, not a fun experience, but our drivers knew exactly how to handle the situation.
Finally, back at the Karibuni, some of the students were having their hair braided by a couple of local women that live in the slums. They worked on the students and essentially asked for about 30p to braid people's hair. Our students and staff were unhappy with this and we overpaid these ladies greatly in their terms but was still incredibly cheap in UK terms.
Dinner was a Mexican meal for our dinner followed by Cocktails and Karaoke.
Our students definitely deserved it and we remained in control of the cocktail bar so the students could really enjoy themselves without them drinking themselves silly! It was a really perfect end to our really busy and hectic week.
These young adults have continued to impress me throughout this trip. They have been incredibly patient when listening to people speaking the waiting around that seems to happen at times and their sheer desire to experience as much of the Kenyan experience has been a real pleasure and they have done themselves proud. I would happily take this team on another adventure!
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