So after a day of rest in Nairobi, on Sunday, Neha, Rahul and I headed to Nanyuki to visit the International Humanity Foundation's orphanage. (The International Humanity Foundation is the organization I volunteered for in Indonesia, and where my family now sponsors a child.) I brought my extra bag of luggage from the US with donated clothes for the kids, and I brought a bunch of art and craft supplies to teach an art class. The center's director recommended we teach an art class because the children had really no other art exposure, they didn't have art classes in school.

Side note on the drive: By this point I have already adjusted to the madness of Nairobi's traffic (and//or Neha's driving, though I would argue her driving is necessary to survive, or get anywhere in Nairobi), but driving out on the roads away from the city was a whole new ordeal. Within all the driving we did that day I decided it was somewhere between a deathly driving video game experience, or a ride at Six Flags because, complete with gasps from Neha in the front seat and fast heartbeats. By the end of the day I decided Rahul was a great driver (I would have been dead otherwise), and that I could never get anywhere in Kenya because I wouldn't be able to do it. The roads have two lanes total, one lane for each direction of traffic, and pass bys are how you make it anywhere, which may sounds like a lovely country road in Illinois where you pass the occasional tractor, but it's not. I have a video I hopefully will eventually post. The pass bys basically leave you inches from hitting on-coming cars every time. And they got really interesting around blind corners on mountains. It's insane. Thanks Rahul again for driving though!!! Oh and there are zebras all over on the side of the road, they are like deer apparently?

Okay, so back to the International Humanity Foundation. We arrive and begin setting up for teaching and end up with somewhere near a hundred kids from ages 4-16, crammed in one small classroom all working on the floor. (There are no desks, only a few benches, so the floor just seemed easiest.) We attempt to split everyone into two groups, one for water coloring and one for cutting and pasting, and we semi-successfully do thanks to Rahul's Swahili. (The kids all loved him and thought it was so strange he spoke Swahili, it was cute, he was very much a Brad Pitt figure there.) Then we just kind of show them what painting is, how to work a glue bottle and scissors and let them go. It was too many kids and too insane to attempt any further actual instruction. It was crazy trying to help and teach everyone, but once everyone got the hang of things, everyone got really creative. A bunch of the older boys were painting very detailed paintings and they looked like they had been painting for years, we were really impressed. I also tried to show them how you can bend and work with pipe cleaners and this turned out to be their favorite thing. With almost no instruction they started creating tribal head pieces, large detailed necklaces, eye glasses, balls ( a ball out of pipe cleaners they actually ended up kicking around). It was amazing to see, you could tell many of them had been exposed to other hand crafts or tribal crafts, or that hand crafts just came naturally to them. I am planning on shipping more pipe cleaners! We hung out for a little while, I played some volleyball (with a mini soccer ball the size of my fist…I am also planning on sending a proper volleyball,), and then headed onward.

Next we stopped at Lake Nanyuki, the famous Kenyan lake that always has thousands of flamingos on it. We spotted the flamingos and some monkeys.And I got in trouble for chasing after some baboons and antelope to get some pictures.... I was told by Rahul to keep getting closer, and that it didn't matter, and then apparently got a little too close.....

We also stopped at Lake Naivasha, a favorite weekend vacation getaway for people in Nairobi. We stop at one of the hotels to have a drink and walk out to view the lake. We saw some hippos in the water, and then a Masai security guard came to us at the viewing point and offered to walk us to some giraffes. So cocktails and beers in hand we take a stroll (just walking, no car), and end up standing ridiculously close to some zebra, and a whole family of giraffes- just another run of the mill afternoon in Kenya. It's so ridiculous, we weren't even in a National Park, we were at a normal lakeside hotel!!

After another near death car ride back through the rift valley we head to bed early to be ready to leave for the Masai Mara safari the next morning!