SAFARITIME!

Last weekend we were finally able to go to Masai Mara National Reserve that is located about 250 km away from Nairobi next to Tanzanian border. The same national reserve is called Serengeti on the Tanzanian side of the border. We booked the safari from a tour agency called Basecamp Explorer and I have to say that I was surprised how well everything went! This might have been the first thing here that has actually gone as planned.

A driver picked us up from Juja Saturday morning and we drove to Masai Mara with a mini bus. The 250km drive took 6,5 hours and the last 100 km was really bumpy dust road. The road was in the middle of nowhere and there where only some small villages along the road. There were a lot of shepherds with their cattle, sheep, donkeys and goats, children playing on the roadside and people wearing colourful robes and clothes. I wish I could’ve filmed the whole drive there, there was just so much to see.

The biggest surprise was when arrived to the camp. I was waiting for a campsite with average  safaritents but in fact it was a really fancy lodge that had huge safari tents with electricity, big beds, hot showers and normal toilets. We stayed in Obama tent where Obama himself had stayed. So yes, that was a pretty great safari tent. Never did I believe that I would stay in a tent like that. If you can even call it a tent.

We stayed there from Saturday to Monday and the days we spent on game drives at the reserve. Our driver was called Joseph and he clearly knew a lot about the animals, too bad he had such a strong African accent that it was really hard to understand him. Anyways we saw soo many animals and I think I haven’t seen that many even in a zoo. We saw the big five; elephant, lion, buffalo, rhino and leopard in two days, which was apparently pretty rare. So I guess we were pretty lucky! We also saw a lot of zebras, wildebeest (the bastards that killed Mufasa), hyenas, jackals, giraffes, baboons, monkeys, crocodiles, hippos, so many different birds, Timons and Pumbas. The whole place made me think about lion king.   I didn’t have a proper camera with me so most of the photos are pretty shitty, but they’re better than nothing for sure!

We also visited a Masai village which was a really weird place. There where Masai men and women dancing, singing and welcoming us and showing us the village. Obviously the reason why they do that is to get tourists pay a lot of money for the visit. It was nice to see the village and the culture but no need to go there again.  

All in all it was one of the most awesome trips that I’ve done so far! It was pretty expensive so now the rest of the trips have to be done with a smaller budget. But I think it was worth it! 

Issikka approves!

And while I am posting something here’s some random things that’s been happening here:

·      I was supposed to have my first lectures last Thursday 7 am. Nobody showed up, not the teacher nor the students. So I went to the pool in stead. And got sunburnt. 

·      I found a Cyber Café in Juja that’s supposed to have skype access. It costs about 40 cents per hour.

·      We went to the notorious Westgate mall in Nairobi and had super delicious burgers. Now we are at a Java house in another mall in Nairobi, the first place where the internet is actually working.

·      I booked flights to Ethiopia 19-26.10!! J

Love, Iisa

KENYA EDITION.

This blog is back and this time I decided to write it in english so that all my foreign friends can read it as well. How thoughtful, right?!

So, I have been in Kenya for two weeks now. We came here the 1^st of September with another Finnish student, Enni, who is also studying at the University of Eastern Finland. Since we arrived everything has been pretty hectic. We have had a lot of trouble with the accommodation and course registration.Here I can practice my patience, that's for sure haha. So almost two weeks in and we still haven’t got our student ID numbers and because of that we can’t register for courses. We are also currently living in a hotel since the student hostel that we were booked in was well… not good. 

Let me tell you a bit more about the hostel, now that we don’t have to live there anymore. So the deal is that internationals are always staying in the guesthouses that are located in campus due to safety and privacy. Something went wrong and all the guesthouses were full booked when we arrived so we had no choice but to stay in the hostels. The hostels are in campus as well and mostly the first year students live there. The rooms have two bunk beds and couple of chairs and tables. They are not nice I tell you that. Toilets and showers are shared with the whole floor of students and they were the worst part of the hostel. Toilets are just a hole on the floor and really dirty and showers have ice cold water unless you are very lucky. (Yesterday I had the first proper hot shower at the hotel since I left Finland two weeks ago and it never felt better.) We got a bit used to the hostels already but apparently the biggest problem of us living there was that it was not safe. That’s why we couldn’t (thank god) stay there for longer. After a lot of work and negotiation and a lot of help from our teacher we were able to move out from the hostel to our own apartment! A hotel nearby has couple of apartments that are affordable and quite nice and only 5 minute walk away from campus. We were meant to move there this week but we had to come to the hotel saturday morning since we are both suffering from food poisoning or something like that and the hostel just wasn’t an ideal place to be sick. And yep, it took us less then two weeks to get the first food poisoning. But anyways, just got the keys to the place and I am so glad we are staying here! Although it's a bit ridiculous that we are practically living in a hotel for four months... But it's nothing fancy, I swear!

Okay, that’s enough about the accommodation for now. So the reason that we are here is a program called Global Foodnet. It’s between University of Eastern Finland, La Molina University in Peru and this one, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).  We attended an intensive course last week with students and teachers from Finland, Peru and Kenya. Most of them were from Kenya of course. The aim of the course was to develop a new food product using amaranth or quinoa in groups. I really liked my group and we developed a tomato sauce where we used amaranth flour as a starch. And it was a great success! We are probably even taking it further and trying to develop it more which is going to be interesting. I really liked working with Kenyans! Hopefully this week we can attend classes as well. I am taking two courses so I’ll have lectures only on Thursdays and Fridays. That means heaps of time to travel!!

The university is located in a small town/village called Juja, which is about 40km outside Nairobi. The campus is pretty modern, clean and really peaceful compared to the surroundings. When you step outside the university gates there’s dust roads, roadside markets, food stalls, animals, lots of people, crazy traffic and a bit of chaos. It’s quite the opposite compared to Finland and like nothing I’ve ever seen before but I really like it! There’s definitely not many white people here so we just have to get used to people staring at us A LOT, strangers saying hi and asking how are you, being called mzungus (mzungu is Swahili language for white person), asked for money and getting every child’s attention. The attention can be a bit stressful at some points but mostly it doesn’t bother me. Of course we draw attention because we just look so different than the rest in this small town. I will probably wonder why no one is staring at me when I come back to Finland hah. People that I’ve met here are really friendly, helpful and warm hearted. One thing that I’ve also noticed is that people are looking to each other’s eyes for example when passing by which I like a lot. 

To get to Nairobi there are buses and small buses like vans that are called matatus. They are really cheap and the ride to Nairobi costs less than 1 euro. Especially in the buses there’s always really loud hiphop and reggae music during the whole bus trip. And the way they work is that they always leave only when they are full which in my opinion is really smart. Who needs timetables, right? We have only gone to Nairobi couple of times so I can write more about that when I know the city a bit better!

I am really excited of all the travels that we are going to do here. Our plan was to go to a 4-day safari in Masai Mara National Reserve yesterday but these stomach problems and a safari just ain’t a good combination... But that’s definitely a must see here! Other places that we plan on going are Mombasa and the South coast, Lake Nakuru, Tanzania and several lakes and national parks located near this area. I plan on going to Ethiopia as well since my mum is going to be there in October. Gonna be awesome! We’ve got so many great travel tips so it’s good that we are here until Christmas! We already went to Giraffe Centre in Nairobi and it was super nice. The giraffes were so kind and cute, I could have stayed there for hours!

Okay well that was at least something that’s going on here. I haven’t found proper internet access ANYWHERE yet so that’s why there’s no photos. But I’ll figure it out, I don’t want to be here for four months without skype.  All in all everything’s good here and I’ll try to write here often AND post photos. So remember to read this and I am hoping for comments from you guys as well. J

Lots of love from Africa,

Iisa

PS. I wrote this couple of days ago but because of the internet I couldn't post it! Now we finally got the student IDs and registered for courses! In the end it turned out we don't even need the registration number we tried  to get for two weeks. Classic. I am not feeling sick anymore and we even booked a safari to Masai Mara this weekend! I'm suuuper excited! Also, still no proper internet access but I decided to try my luck in the middle of the night when I happened to wake up. Works better this time, less users I guess.. Now back to sleep!