Thursday 12th October - Jas

Another day of coral and permaculture + market

Nearly one week since we arrived in Kenya! We started off the day by heading to Ocean Alive’s office to help with their coral restoration project. Split into groups, half of us worked to make cement plugs for coral fragments to be glued on top of. We did this by packing sand into a tight square and tapping a peg in to make a mould for the cement. Overall a very cool process, though I doubt the ants that died in wet cement enjoyed it as much as I did. The other group got into a very intense brick making competition to create blocks for coral to grow on. After having lunch at the beach bar, a couple of us went for a swim to cool down- though the water is so insanely warm that not sure that exactly happened. An hour of handstands, splashing and attempting to practice our Swahili with a couple kids went so quickly that we were nearly late for our next task. The women of a close by village showed us their garden that I was surprised to see flourishing in the heat. We helped them shovel dirt and water the vegetables, and Jack had a chance to show off his axe skills by chopping the roots in the soil. It was very impressive to see what they had created, and I left incredibly inspired by these women. Next was a trip to the market to buy clothes for our traditional Kenyan fancy dress night tomorrow. Some peoples haggling skills were better than others, but it was definitely a success as we all left armed with kikois, clothes, and a speaker. After a lovely dinner and team meeting to recap the week, we christened the speaker by singing at the top of our lungs- the perfect end to our first week. Lots of love, Jas