Habari! That is slightly more authentic Swahili for 'how are you' to which one usually replies 'mzuri'. This week is a little less exciting than last week but there is plenty to talk about nontheless.

I believe I promised a bit more about the home stays; I am staying with three other guys (Nathan, Fraser and Luke) in a home about 30 minutes or so walk from the church project site. The walk is usually tiring as it involves hills and rough terrain as well as equatorial sunshine but the views are stunning and we go over a river too whose source is from Mount Kenya, so it is quite small and has rapids and odd rock formations around it. The house itself is comfy and has electricity and a warm shower (most of the time). We are in a different part of the housing to the rest of the family, although they all seem to use the living area in the part we live in. I think this is because it is the most comfy and they all moved out to let us in. Through the door from the living area is two small rooms with bunk-beds in and one chest of draws between them and a shower/toilet room. It is possible to sit on the loo and wash your feet at the same time, as an optimist I see this as luxury, but I will let you make your own mind up. The family we live with are all very nice and welcoming, they take good care of us. There are also a few slightly alarming monsters who like to temporarily move into our house, especially to lurk in the toilet/shower room to try and have a chat during lavatory time or to try and hop into bed with us. We had to draw the line at this, its against the platform2 code of conduct.

Anyway, back to the week's activities, we visited a waterfall last sunday, off the cuff, as one of the family members mentioned it and offered to take us there. The waterfall was perfectly hidden away off the main road and seemed like it was completely unknown to anybody but a handfull of locals. There was no proper path down to the bottom of the waterfall so we had to stumble down through bushes, over rocks and between trees on a 70 degree slope. Unfortunately, because this little outing had not been pre-planned I was wearing flip flops. This quickly became apparent to be inadequat footwear and they didnt stay on my feet long. My lack of anything resembling sensible footwear also led to my falling and sliding on my backside leaving a pretty inconvenient and thoroughly conspicuous mark on my shorts. It was all worth it though, the views and natural beauty were stunning and it felt untouched and undiscovered. There were no others there, no litter on the floor from previous visitors, Just a torrent of water tumbling 50 odd metres into a pool at the bottom. The trip was even better because it was just a momentary decision to go on an arbitrary little adventure.

From Monday, we were back to work on the project at the Church. The work we were actually doing was filling soil pots with mud for 3 days. I will be honest, it was not the most fun I have ever had, but we did manage to fill 8000 of them and then put 4000-5000 seedlings into the pots before thursday. That basically concluded or part of that project. It is now down to the locals to take it over. The leader of the local project said she was very happy with our work and that they would not have been able to do it without us, which was great as it did not seem like a great ordeal to us, but the group are all volunteers and they can only ever spare a couple of hours at most a day. So to know that they are happy with our work and that we made a difference in a week and a half is a good feeling. From Monday, we will start work in the forest on the main project.

On Friday we went to the funeral of a prominent, and apparently popular, local figure. The whole local community was present, literally hundreds of people crammed into what I believe was his garden. We had met the deceased-Kennedy- in our first 2 days in Meru, but some of tehe other volunteers felt uneasy and a bit intrusive at going to the funeral of someone they hardly knew. Those of us who did attend, however, were almost like guests of honour, which did seem a bit strange, and we were graveside when he was buried, which was definitely felt a bit strange considering te volume of people who were present and evidently knew him more intimately than we did. It was announced during the ceremony that we were present as recent friends of Kennedy and as colleagues in the work we are doing with the community. Afterwards we were thanked for coming by several of people there, I think they saw it as a mark of respect, not just to Kennedy but to the community as a whole, as we are now a part of the community.

Saturday was my Birthday. I am now 22. This does not please me, I still feel 17 at heart. But anyway, i had a nice day with the other volunteers and ate ridiculous amounts of sweets/cake/fizzy drinks, playing daft games and gambling with humbugs and murray mints (last of the high rollers eh?). A little bit less boozy than the last few birthdays, but a good one anyway, and one I will definitely remember at least.

Thats just about it for now. See you next Sunday. Pow xx