Because you can’t. More on that later.
Arriving at Rowallan campsite on the outskirts of Nairobi was incident free, if you don’t count many near crashes as incidents! Travelling on matutus, small minibusses, you are at the mercy of all other road users, where normal rules of the road dont necessarily apply!! Anyway we arrived and got our tents up and then became aquainted with the monkeys which are about as common and tame as Thriftwoods squirrels!
Dinner was interesting. This is the first camp that has ever been in Africa, of any size, and although at only 2000 people its not big by british standards, it was enough to make food distribution run 4 hours late. But it was ok, we got talking to the scouts in the queue next to us and ended up playing a few random games.
It all picked up the next day with the opening cermony, attended by the president of Kenya and his millions of secrity staff. Thats in addition to the security staff that walk around the campsite with machine guns!
Machakos, our expedition centre from the sounds of it was one of the better sites as we had proper toilets and camp showers that had been built especially for us. There was also plenty of food and bottled water. Cooking has been interesting at points because of the differences between Kenyan and Western food and the fat we are cooking for ourselves in a group of 50, but we’ve got there with organisation and there has always been hot food so I cant really complain.
Our first full day was spent doing a mammoth hike, which i still dont know how long it was or whether we took the route which we were actually meant to take or not! Despite not ever knowing where we were going and just following our local guide it gave us lots of time to get to know the other scouts in our group.
Our group has two english (Tom and I) two Scots, two Aussies, three Danish, two norwegian, two swiss, two angolans, two luxembourgians, two spanish, two rwandans, two burundians and the rest to make up 50 are from uganda and kenya.
Our second full day started with a trip to a local school where we did some tree planting for them and then played games with the kids, which is where the trying to outrun the kids came from. We were looking for an easy game to play that the kids could pick up easily with a low understanding of english, so we decided to play duck, duck, goose. So you go around tapping kids on the head saying duck, and then when you say goose, the kid gets up and starts running around the circle with you chasing them trying to catch them, where if you catch them they start tapping people on the head.
The first kid i chose was probably about 8, and thinking it would be like playing with the beavers i didnt try very hard. I was wrong and ended up about 10 meters ahead of me after 50 meters of running. And so it went on with me chosing smaller and smaller kids, and being unable to catch any of them. Eventually i gave up and megan, one of the aussies took over and did just as rubbish! Luckily we were saved from too much humiliation when Ceasar, (Other name Julius, no joke) took pity on us and managed to catch a kid on his first go!
Our final day on the camp was spent building a bus stop with very few tools, no expertiese and pieces that didnt quiote fit together. So despite taking a whole day for what was supposed to be a half day activiy we got there in the end.
The next day, the first, was spent coming back to Rowallan, settling in and catching up with the other groups.
Yesterday we went to the national museum of Kenya, the best bit of which was the coffee shop. The worst bit of the day was the bus ride back. Our driver seemed to have forgotten how to drive so bounced the coach every time we accelerated or braked. It was also really hot adn dusty which amde it even better. And he drove like some kind of maniac. Lucie you would have loved it!!! And this was a new bus company that was supposed to be better than the ones that took us to Machakos which were sacked because their buses kept braking down.
Today i spent the morning being lazy and trying to wash some of the dst of my single pair of non scout trousers and then queuing for this, which although free is in high demand!! This afternoon we are going to spend doing GDV things, so could possibly end up as not a lot!
Tonight is a international carnival, tomorrow an onsite activity day, thursday we are going to BP’s grave in Naieryi and then the closing ceremony finished it all on friday. We then set off on safari on saturday until monday when i come back and meet stef for the next part of the adventure.
Thats enough essay for one day. Some photos are on the moot website if you are interested, http://www.scoutmoot2010.org/index.php?option=com_imagebrowser&node=Machakos+Camp&Itemid=185 is one that I’m in. Its of our group at the school and I’m somewhere at the back wearing my aussie hat.
