Good afternoon everybody, I hope you are all enjoying the nice weather I hear you are having!? I am still very much enjoying living in Kenya, although its been a little bit quieter this week in terms of excitement (the quiet before the storm of the safari next weekend one may argue). I will nonetheless do my best to keep you enthralled and entertained as possible in a few paragraphs about my week.

Monday at work was hot and tough going. Back at the forest site, we were clearing a patch of the weeds, scrubs and general stuff growing there, this took more or less all day and was done with machetes. Yo will all, no doubt, be sad be sad to hear that I no longer have a working relationship with Matilda. She has been replaced by a much more manlier machete which I have christened Sergent Slash. So me and the Sarge bonded and got to know each other over a spot of plant killing. It didnt take long for Sir Slashalot to get blood on his hands. A smallish (roughly a foot long) miscellaneous (because there were 'discussions' about what it actually was, I am staying neutral) creature resembling a snake riggled his way suicidingly into the path of a particularly brilliant, arcing blow from Sergent Serpent Slayer. It was no more. In other Monday related news, we found a baby Chameleon who made its way up my arm.

Tuesday was more machete work, chopping back tea plants from the path. This was done in a different part of the forest away from the main forest site, and we got a lift in an open sided army/safari truck which was quality. The Work was very hot and hard going again, though it was pleasantly interrupted by another bunch of monkeys, different types to the ones before and swarms of toucans swooping inbetween trees. Wednesday was another hard day back at the main forestry site, clearing another patch (a recurring theme) so that we could dig it up and cart it off in wheelbarrows to the patch cleared before. The point of this was so that we could spend Thursday and Friday bagging it up into little pot bags again and then plant the seedlings into the bags. I don't think theres much else to say about the end of the week, except that it was spent putting soil into little bags.

The weekend has been nice and relaxing. It started off with doing some washing outside with a basin and a tossbag (I should explain. This was a particularly amusing little discovery I made a week or 2 ago at the corner shop, when I went to buy a coke I spotted a series of little plastic bags with 'TOSS' in big letters on them. My instant reaction was, that they sell tossbags in Kenya, my second was that I must buy one immediately. I must admit, i didnt think till afterwards whether buying a bag of toss would make me a tosser. So I asked the shop assistant with as straight a face as possible whether I could buy a tossbag please? I then had to repeat this 4 or 5 times until she understood, by which time a queue had formed behind me and a straight face was impossible. I only realised when I got home and looked at the packet that it was detergent, a little bit disapointingly I must admit). So thats how I spent Saturday morning, washing clothes in a bag of toss. The afternoon was spent at the local school playing football with the locals. This week was a little bit better than last week, as we got a match going between the British vols and the Kenyan Locals. It is my proud duty to report that against all the odds, in unforgiving weather conditions, the sweaty, heavy - breathing mzungos (white people) from GB were victorious 10-8. Such a monumental victory was down mostly to the acrobatic magic performed between the sticks by Luke 'the cat' Sawyer, which made Peter Shilton look like Barry Roche, as well as the battling, creative midfield hat-trick heroics from yours truly. The rest of the Platform2 groups have a lot to live up to.

So thats about my week in Kenya. I am not sure what will happen next week with regards to blogs as it is the safari weekend and I wont be here on Sunday. Most likely, I will do one on Tuesday or wednesday after we get back, so I can update you on the week's work as well as the safari.

So until then, in a bit. x