Dear All, (Jumbo/Hi)


This is our second attempt to send you details of our adventures the PC system here is not great but hopefully we will be OK now.

After much travelling around we are now in Mombasa. It is a much more laid back place than Western Kenya and the people friendly and helpful. There are a lot of children and adults without clothes, food and shelter. We are going to do our best to help them where we can. Only yesterday 3rd Aug 2010 we came across one young man with teeth so bad that he is in constant pain. It only takes 150 Kenya shillings (approx 2 dollars) to pull them out, so to ease the pain. A dentist was set up here by some German people to help the poor. When you get young children asking for food not money it makes you think about how we live, how lucky we are in the UK to have things to hand. It is not cheap in Kenya there is a massive divide here and lots of corruption. In Mombasa it is mostly all inclusive holiday places, very plush away from the poorer side, but you cannot ignore it. It is not like India or Thailand where there are things to do at night, very little and it mostly goes on in these patrolled fancy complexes. Food is a little under the same price at home at most restaurants and you have to search for a good priced meal within our budget. Some of the really smaller places we would not really go into possibly because of health and safety. We have found only 2 places at the moment which you can get a curry and rice, chapatti and soft drink for around 10 quid very reasonable. They do not seem to have street vendors here but rely mostly on selling fruit, veg and carvings and pictures for homes.

To get around we should really get a car or a bike at some stage there are these little buses about 14 seater which stop along the dusty (very dusty) roads to pick up folk. They are very slow and stop so many times to pick up that it takes quite a while to get anywhere, very cheap though at about 20p each one way. After 10pm everywhere is like a ghost town as the tourists stay in their hotel complexes. We have only met one American couple so far similar to us and they are leaving this week and live further away from us.

We have landed a nice place after much hastle, dirty but getting there. We have Victor who cleans the floors and stuff and we have a pool that we have not been in yet! We have been to the sea only once and not been in that either! What with getting food, trying to see where to get it from, and settling in all a bit hetic. There are supermarkets but because of the import a lot of items are more exspensive then back home but we have found the market and everything should sort itself out. We also have been telling locals we are here to help and we will be going to see a few people over the next few days. Everything has been like a whirlwind and we are now starting to try and unwind.

The first 10days of out trip had not been easy and in Western Kenya where we decided to go after we landed in Nairobi was not a good move. Unfortunetaly we did not feel very safe in Nairobi, Kisumu or Nakuru. You cannot walk around after dark and there are security guards outside banks with guns and security guards outside your hotel. People were not rude to us but in places we did not feel welcome and there were hardly any tourists around. It is funny the accomodation is very poor and dirty a lot of the time but price wise charges are higher for what they are. We decided to go on a few safaris one in Lake Nakuru and the other on the Masai Mara. Again there are no mid range offers either basic or top end. So we decided to do days trips instead and they worked out well. Both Lake Nakuru and the Mara were amazing we will put photos on blog. The plains on the Mara are like someone has painted the sky into the ochre landscape with a fine brush, it goes on for miles and so peaceful you feel in touch with the earth completely. We have had the bus ride from hell, 23 people shoved in a 14 seater bus, raining, wheels spinning on dirt tracks, potholes and mud. After 4 hours you arrive bruised and battered but safe and that is all we wanted in the end, so we have paid a few times now for a driver to take us places which is a safer option. We have seen and stayed at one of the very many ramshackle towns namely Narok which has made both of us so extremely grateful for our lives back home in the UK. This dusty old town one and a half hours outside the Masai Mara is full of people with very little and there is not a western face to be seen on our arrival. On our second day when we left we saw a couple arriving, a bit like us trying to do the safaris on a budget, which we proved can be done but i would not recommend. Still these areas have to be seen so changes can take place, but if is very hard as money does not get filtered down to the lower classes and corruption is here in a big way. We have been told by a Kenya girl here in Mombasa to not trust anyone but you cannot live your life like that but only learn.

We will keep you posted in the future by a short version now on our blog and hope all of you are fit and well back in blighty. Asante Sana (thank you) for taking the time to read our Blog x