Jambo! From Malindi

Jambo everyone!

Just checking in from MALINDI BABY! The team is now officially in Kenya, rocking the boat in Malindi. The town definitely felt our arrival - whispers have been spreading around the town like wildfire about the 'mzungu's (foreigners) and it is virtually impossible to leave the house without what seems like several hundred people staring and shouting, 'Jambo!' 'Habari!' 'Mambo, Poa!' etc...it's funny but a little disconcerting. Particularly when someone comes up to you and knows your name and all about GX, but you can't remember when and where you've met them before?! It's mental but awesome at the same time.

We arrived in Mombasa on the 5th July, pretty late at night but still with gorgeously warm weather! We spent 4 days training in Mombasa with the other GX team - it was good to see them again and hear about their time in Manchester while we were busy bunnies up in Glasgow. We did several workshops in Mombasa, going over our time in the UK and then looking forward to time in Kenya...finding out what's acceptable, doing some language lessons, health and safety...the usual when you're experienced jet-setters like ourselves! Haha.

We then moved on to Malindi on Thursday 9th July, and life just has not been the same since =] we're all shacked up with our host families and everybody is loving it - personally Najeeba and I are living with a lovely lady called Ramla (or Mama, as we call her!), her daughters Soraila and Zanib, and another one of Ramla's daughters, Mariam, comes over everyday with her sons, Izaat, who's 3, and Abdallah, who's 7. I swear I'm going to bring them home with me, they're absolutely adorable! And so cheeky - in a cute way! Our new family are absoluely lovely, and we're being so well looked after - I was planning on losing weight in Kenya but I don't think it's going to happen, the food here is so amazing and my family keep trying to feed me up - I'm going to come home about 3 stone heavier than I was, I reckon. Oh, and eating on the floor rather than sitting at a table and using fingers rather than cutlery is WAY better!

We had our community welcome on Saturday morning in a local hall, and it was an event to remember! I'm sure there will be an official post on it at some point (if the computers are ever fast enough to put it on!) but I'll just say a couple of things quickly about it. It started with a lot of introductions and speeches, and explanations of what GX is and what we'll be doing etc. Then there was a traditional dance by an amazing dance group called Tosha, and some pretty spectacular acrobatics, too! It ended up with a big lunch, which was tasty but just far too big - I was so stuffed. After the community welcome we went on a group jaunt to the beach, where some of the Pakistani's attempted to learn to swim - there's still a long way to go but people are definitely getting there! It was a really fun activity, and hopefully one that can happen frequently, seeing as most of us live only about 10 minutes walk from the nearest, beautiful beach!

Just so everybody knows who's doing what, I'm going to list the host homes and work placements =]

Host homes;

Ramla - Sabina and Najeeba
Saumu - Deborah and Rabail
Priscilla - Suzanne and Kiran
Nassir - Alex and Sarmad
Mariam - Salma and Maria
?? - Zaake and Raheel

Work Placements;

MEDA (Malindi Education and Development association) - Deborah and Najeeba
The Omari Project - Alex and Rabail
The Gede Health centre - Suze and Salma
Vision Magnet Theatre - Sabina and Raheel
Malindi District Hospital - Zaake and Maria
NUSRA - Kiran and Sarmad

Fingers crossed and wish us luck for the next few weeks!

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