Day 12 - Sunday

It is definitely time for a well-earned rest day. Sunday was a day to take things a little slower and give everyone a chance to recharge their batteries.

Curio Market

Theresa always invites specific people to come to the Karibuni and items that tourists want. Everything from jewellery, wooden figures, and paintings right through to clothing. The beauty of this is it gives us a chance to walk around without other traders hassling us. The traders that come are from the local community and the money that they make goes to support the women directly.

The market was incredibly colourful and our students all flocked to the lady that makes clothes. I know she is going to have a really busy couple of days making clothes for the team for them to try on later in the week. 

There is a sort of respect for these traders and the fact that we are Mzungu, so I am fairly sure that we could buy similar things at other markets potentially cheaper, there is a little bit of haggling here and there and we respect that we are supporting these people's families for longer than just a day!

Matilda is one of the market sellers and she and her family have been responsible for making our Kenyan named bracelets for at least the last 8 years. The first year we met her she took the order and then got on a shuttle bus down to Nairobi to deliver them to us on the last day of the trip in 2015. Since then we have ordered in advance and she has been out to measure and adjust the bracelets as required for nearly a week.

These bracelets are something of a long-lasting mark of our adventure. I have been wearing one continuously since 2015. My first one broke after about 5 years and I then switched to my 2018 one which is still on my wrist today, to be fair it is a real struggle to get off and on so it isn't coming off anytime soon. A funny story about these bracelets is that I was out of dinner one Sunday and our waitress spotted it and asked the random question if I got it as part of a Classrooms for Kenya trip. What a surprise that she was also wearing hers from her trip from another school that had also been part of our work here in Transnzoia. It is a small world!

Volleyball Tournament

Having a volleyball set which we brought with us from the UK has always been a great way to spend an afternoon. The cost of transporting this set has increased so much that it would now be cheaper to buy a new one each year rather than the cost of transporting it!

The tournament was set up by one of the students and we had most of the team taking part. Of course, the staff team entered a team and we enjoyed winning all bar one of our games. We also took the moral victory as playing by the proper rules and rotating players rather than the student-made-up rules, much like playing UNO with the students and the additional rules that they play! I think I may have been a little harsh on our referee, my feeling was they were being a little harsh on me too. She did a great job and the tournament was a great way to while the afternoon away.

Evening Entertainment

Our evening entertainment was a quiz written by our resident princess and her team. Some of the rounds were slightly riskier than I would have written but the morphing of faces round was a real highlight. They did a really good job of entertaining the team for the evening and there was so much laughter all night.