November 14th – Start of the Journey

After a good nights sleep, up for breakfast:- pineapple, water melon and omelette – the water melon and omelette is good but the pineapple is delicious.  Washed down with African Tea.

I am picked up by Samuel at 10am and off we set.  The traffic around Nairobi is heavy but not grid locked.   

We join  the Mombasa Road, heading North, this is the main road for all the freight traffic from the ports at Mombasa and up into, Northern Kenya,  Uganda and beyond.

We drive through ‘downtown’ Nairobi with the big office blocks, government buildings etc, a sign of money and wealth.  Then as we get out onto the outskirts we see the shanty towns and slums.  The contrast is always striking.

Then we are out into the countryside, small family farms, well tended form a patch work around the fields and hillsides.  The road is climbing all the time.  Then we suddenly get to a viewpoint and I am seeing, for the first time, the Rift Valley stretching out in front of me, the valley floor 8,000’ below me.  Samuel points out the landscape to me; the roads on the valley floor and, off in the distance, he tells me is the Masai Mara wild life park.

My first view of the Rift Valley 

 Samuel, backdrop of the Rift Valley

The owners of the Tourist craft shops come out and start trying to sell me souvenirs, time to start haggling.  I am not very good, but still get an OK deal.

We continue and start to see antelope grazing in the fields off to the side of the road and then  a herd of Zebra in a field, grazing alongside cattle.

An hour later we arrive at Egremont University and the Agricultural Resource Centre (ARC), where we will meet John and Mary and stay the night in the guest house alongside the ARC.

John and Mary are well, they have been in Kenya for two weeks and have spent the time ‘full on’ visiting Bees Abroad projects.  They reel off everything that has happened so quickly the detail is lost.  I remember the gifts of chickens, them seeing giraffe and John sleeping through a Lion breaking into one compound and stealing a lamb.

One thing is certain, they are delighted with the progress being made on their Bees Abroad projects.  I will get more detail and some photos for you to do this justice for them.

This evening we will meet some of the project workers and sponsors for dinner, then tomorrow we leave here and head North to visit more projects.  Mary tells me I will be trained in how to make cosmetics so that next week I can help train in some of the project communities.

Every day on this trip is going to be different.