Catching up in London

Oh Hello. Our 6 day stopover in London was predominately about catching up with our contingent of friends living there. We also managed to catch the tube to some of London's more traditional tourist landmarks, including stopping traffic at Abbey Road and browsing at Harrods.



We particularly enjoyed celebrating our engagement with friends in person. Special thanks to Anna and Brett, who lent us their lounge, the use of their luxury air bed and cooked us a special celebratory dinner - champagne included of course. Thanks also to all those who appreciated the weakness of the New Zealand dollar vs the British Pound and shouted us a drink or two.





Our stay in London went relatively smoothly, with the exception of a certain incident on the tube. After watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace we were running late for our prearranged lunch with Anna. As we approached the tube platform, we started running as the tube was preparing to depart. Unfortunately, one of us made it on to the tube before the doors shut fully, not realising that the other hadn't and was waiting on the platform. A couple of people on the departing tube found our situation interesting, remarking that the exchange between us that followed our separation wasn't tense at all and sounded a lot like 'have a good weekend'. To add to our woes, we had jumped on to the tube going in the wrong direction. We heartily apologise to Anna for wasting half her lunchtime, although we suspect that the smile on her face as we arrived separately was testament to the fact that she found the whole situation just a tiny bit amusing.



A few blogs ago we included a paragraph detailing the different ways that we had found to save money as we backpacked around the world. We can now add the old favourite money saver of sleeping at the airport to this list: Despite the fact that we were not checking in for our flight until 5.00am, we caught the last tube out to Heathrow the night before, in order to avoid the expensive taxi ride there. While we cannot say that we had a sound sleep, the floor of the terminal wasn't too bad, particularly as we snuck through the barrier to where first class passengers checked in and used their couches and carpet.



We are now in Lima, Peru starting the South American leg of our world tour. Where has time gone? Got to go, desperately need to learn the basics of Latin American Spanish.

Cheerio
Love Kirsty and Rodney

Giving Back to Africa

Jambo! Well, after nearly 3 months of enjoying Africa we decided to give a little something back before leaving. After evaluating many worthwhile options, we decided to become Ambassadors of the Amani Children’s Home in Moshi, Tanzania and volunteer for 10 days.



The Amani Children’s Home was established on 20 August 2001 to meet the needs of the rapidly growing population of street children in Moshi and Arusha in Tanzania. The root cause of these children fleeing to the streets is complex and multi faceted but most are seeking to escape hunger, abuse and neglect. Other causes included HIV/AIDS, rising divorce rates, the lack of rights for women and children, the cost of primary education and the lack of a functioning government run social welfare system.



Amani means “peace” in Swahili and the Amani Children’s Home has brought just that to hundreds of children since its conception. Amani focuses on holistic care, education and family reunification. Amani kids have everything they need to grow; nutritious food, good medical care, counselling, plenty of play time and a happy place to call home. All Amani kids go to school until they are self supporting young adults. Education opens doors for them in a country where only half of the children make it through primary school. Amani believes that the best environment for a child is in a family. Amani social workers therefore trace each child’s relatives and if reunification is possible, equip the family with the resources they need to provide a healthy home for the child. This may include counselling, medicine and paying school expenses. If reunification is not possible Amani provides the children with loving long term care as part of the Amani family.



So what were our 10 days like? After our 6km walk to Amani from central Moshi each day, we were greeted with a smile by Pedro the security guard and grounds man of Amani. This was always closely followed by several kids with a football or skipping rope in hand, as well as members of the Amani staff who were happy to see us arrive and appreciative of our help. Unsurprisingly, with so many kids in one place our days were rather busy. Some of our activities included getting stuck in harvesting the maize on harvest day, rolling up our sleeves on spring cleaning day, assisting the cooks with food preparation, tutoring, playing lots of sport (particularly any kind of game to do with a football), art, goofing around with the kids,showing interest in what the kids were doing, organising fundraising t-shirts and supporting special education teaching staff. Although we struggled a little bit with our limited Swahili, many of the kids have a basic grasp of English; besides, you don't need to speak the same language to play football with a kid or give them a hug. As Ambassadors, we formed quite strong bonds with some of the kids and it was very hard saying good bye, particularly as they have been abandoned by other adults they have bonded with in the past. We both found it particularly heartbreaking when some of the kids ran away from us looking like they were about to cry when we went to say goodbye to them.



Amani receives no government funding and therefore is fully reliant on support from foundations, businesses and individuals, with the majority coming from individuals. Amani is dedicated to sound management of funds and is externally audited every year. Amani is also governed by an active external Board of Trustees all of whom live in Moshi, none of whom receive any financial compensation for their role in Amani’s supervision.

Tanzania has definitely delivered in terms of well exceeding our expectations of it. Why not come to Tanzania and climb Mt Kilimanjaro, safari in the Serengeti and volunteer at Amani? If thats not you but you’ve always wanted to lend a helping hand in Africa but were unsure of the authenticity of the various organisations, how about donating to the Amani Children’s Home? We can definitely vouch for it.

www.amanikids.org/donate



We are back in Nairobi, Kenya and in a couple of days will fly out to London to catch up with everyone there before starting the South American leg of our world tour in Lima, Peru. FYI we have now finally been able to download all our Africa photos to Flickr if you are keen check them out http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodneykirsty/sets/

Bidai (Later in Swahili)

Love Rodney and Kirsty.

Engaged on the Roof of Africa

Written on 25 August 2010 and due to a lack of internet connection posted to the blog on 2 September 2010

Jambo. As mentioned in our last blog we have spent the last week endeavouring to conquer Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, which sits at a massive 5895 metres above sea level. This makes it the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free standing mountain in the world. So how did we get on?



We ascended via the Umbwe Route, also known as the Whiskey Route, due to its steep but beautiful terrain. During the 5 day trip to our base camp our guides reduced potential altitude difficulties by enforced a “pole pole” (slowly) regime opposed to the “haraka haraka” (quickly) that we normally like to walk at. Asides from helping us to acclimatise, this allowed us to enjoy the views of the Barranco Valley, Mt Meru, Lava Tower, Shera Plateau, Barranco Wall, Western Breach, Karanga Valley and Mt Mawenzi during our assent. There are no huts or facilities on the Umbwe Route so as well as our head and assistant guides we had 12 porters to carrying tents, food, water, a gas cooker, a toilet, tables and chairs etc. The reason for so many porters is because the Kilimanjaro National Park rules allow porters to only carry a maximum of 15 kilograms at one time.



Day 6 (well actually 11pm on day 5) had us dazed and wandering around base camp (4600m), preparing for our midnight assault on Uhuru Peak, the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro. Due to gale force winds pummelling our tent all evening, we started our mission without a wink of sleep but forged ahead full of adrenaline. Oddly enough, the wind actually died down as we started walking and for the first 3 hours we felt significantly overdressed. The wind returned around 3am however, which meant that as we got higher up the mountain, breathing became more difficult while we simultaneously got colder. We are sure that any of you that know us in the slightest will not be at all surprised to learn that our competitive natures shone through and we actually got within distance of the summit far too early. This meant that we were forced to shelter against rocks to try and get reprieve from the bitter cold. We started walking again to time our arrival at the summit with sunrise and to ensure that we were first to the top. While the sun was more than welcome it didn’t make a difference to the -23 degrees which berated us as we tried to take in the views from the top and have the customary photos with the sign announcing how high we had climbed. We both felt an amazing sense of achievement on reaching Uhuru Peak.



Many of you will also realise that Rodney enjoys being organised and had given our head guide the “inside word” that he may get affected by the altitude at the summit and propose to Kirsty. While Kirsty was standing by the sign admiring the views and contemplating her cold feet, Rodney got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. Kirsty may have been affected by the altitude as well, as her first reaction was to utter “seriously?” However she eventually said yes. Woohoo!!!!!!!!!! Our head guide was on hand with the camera, so we are very lucky to have photos of our very special moment. Rodney has officially decided that his proposal is proof that you don’t need flowers to be romantic. Kirsty will let you know how that goes, but in the meantime we are both feeling on top of the world. Our guide and porters were also stoked for us, so much so they organised a congratulatory cake for us at the bottom.



We are now in Moshi, Tanzania about to commence 10 days volunteer work at the Amani Children’s Home we visited earlier in our trip. We will let you know how we got on once we get to London in early September.

Kwaheri (Goodbye in Swahili)
Love Rodney and Kirsty.