Camp Tsavo continues to buzz over December with school groups from Australia and Kenya as well as families from the UK. Steve Mwasi and Peter Kai share a brief report on this little melting pot of cultures in the heart of the Tsavo ecosystem…

Camp Tsavo receives volunteers and school group from different all over the world and once the teams arrive they participate on various areas of our ongoing sustainable community and habitat conservation projects in and around Rukinga Wildlife Sanctuary. And of course what makes this place one of a kind is that everyone has a chance to spot wildlife on safari in Tsavo East National Park and just about everyday on the sanctuary where the camp is based. This month, Camp Tsavo was the meeting point for two schools from two different continents: Melbourne School from Southern Australia and Brookhouse International School from Nairobi, Kenya…

The first school to arrive was Melbourne from Camp Makongeni, a group composed of 17 pax who worked so hard in some of our youth projects in the Makongeni community in the last two days before they made their way to Camp Tsavo. After briefing, the group relaxed and enjoyed watching the stars in the evening across the beautiful Tsavo sky.

The following day the team got their hand dirty working on Elephant Dung Paper, one of our sustainable income generating projects which benefits the local community and is always a lot of fun. In the afternoon the group headed out to the bush for tracking and monitoring wildlife within the sanctuary.

The next day, we headed off to Buguta Primary School and managed to complete the floor for the new school kitchen which we started during the summer and is now successfully completed and ready for us when school opens in January! The third day was spent at Sasenyi Primary School mixing cement and ballast to lay the foundation floor of a new class which was also started earlier this year.

Brookhouse arrived a day after Melbourne and was a group of 32 pax comprised of 29 students (year 13), 2 teachers and 2 Assessors fully dedicated to Community Service. The main aim of this short trip was to complete the Presidential Service (PS) award training Gold Class (the Kenyan equivalent of the Duke of Edinburgh Award). For any participants to attain the Gold award, one has to complete 4 full days supporting sustainable environmental projects and offer services to less fortunate communities.

In addition to the solid hours of community and environmental service, Brookhouse also had a chance to participate in our basic Bushcraft skills course and of course making some paper from poop which left a lot of students smiling ear to ear. Some of the students even sang and turned the place into a  dancing floor!

On their third day, the group helped digging a drainage system which collects water in one of the most utilized elephant water holes just close to the camp. The ground was sticky and muddy due to the recent rains but this lot found their rhythm and literally stuck with it to the end.

Usually our school groups focus on their own projects and will then socialize together in the evenings around a camp fire or over dinner. It was a real pleasure to see Melbourne and Brookhouse take this one step further and decided on one day to mix project teams…

One group went to Imani Women’s Group to support the women in soil erosion control by planting vetiver grass within Imani camp compound. They also learned to how to make jewellery from beads and learn about the challenges that women face in the community. The second group went to Sasenyi primary school where they got involved in making gabions to secure the school from soil erosion. This was great a combination that has never been done before, the teams worked so well and the rate of motivation between themselves was high which led to great project impact in both teams.

A big congratulations to both schools and a big thank you from all of us at Camp Kenya. It was a real pleasure to work alongside such focused young people and feel so much more confident knowing who our future leaders will be…

Tis’ the season to be diving and Vics has just come back from leading a small team of students through their Scuba Diving adventure at our Ocean Camp. Great results and well done Peponi School!

Year 9 and 10 students from Peponi School, Nairobi have been having a fantastic underwater adventure this week. The six student and teacher stepped right out of their comfort zones when learning how to scuba dive in the beautiful Indian Ocean waters of Shimoni and neighbouring island, Wasini, just one hour from the Camp Kenya office.

Outdoor adventure sports are often associated with speed and height, however, scuba diving is quite the opposite. Diving offers a great opportunity to discover a side of the world we rarely see. The underwater world.

The incredible marine life is quite breathtaking and the Peponi students witnessed a vast array of beautifully coloured fish and coral as well as being lucky enough to swim alongside a turtle. We also saw dolphins leaping alongside our boat which was magical.

The PADI Open Water Course engages students in both theoretical and practical modules culminating in putting all their new knowledge into practice in the ocean. Once a certified Open Water Diver, you can dive all over the world alongside another diver certified to the same level or above.

It is well documented how beneficial outdoor education is for young people to gain a greater understanding of their environment and the world around them and this experience has certainly opened their eyes to issues that affect marine life and equipping them with a new skill that they can continue to develop.

Whilst staying at our ocean camp in Shimoni, the students also participated in a Flip Flop Recycling Workshop whereby they learnt how to make bracelets, keyrings and juggling balls out of discarded flip flops. They also assisted with making a life size Whale Shark out of flip flops that will be on display at the jetty in Shimoni to create awareness as to how leaving waste on the beach, such as flip flops, can negatively impact marine life.

All in all, a great time was had by all and Karaan Dave, a year 10 pupil, summed his experience up perfectly “It was surreal. I felt like I was in a whole new world. It felt peaceful and calm, it was the best experience of my life.”

Peter Kai and the Camp Makongeni team are on a roll right now…

All eyes are now on Melbourne school from Southern Australia. The 17 pax comprised of 15 boys and 2 Teachers (Year 11 and 12) arrived in Kenya on 3rd December on their first school trip abroad with the aim of supporting sustainable and community development programs through Camp Kenya. Being the first school from Australia to visit Kenya through Camps International, the Makongeni community gave a special warm welcome to the team. Women and Youth groups who work closely with Camp Kenya created a good bond from the first day which made the group feel accepted in the community.

The team seemed to be so excited to participate in every single activity to support the community. In the first four days they have been working hard on the mangrove conservation projects with the Baraka Conservation group, and have been involved in harvesting mangrove seeds and potting for reforestation.

They have also completed reinforcing three fish pond walls and replanted 50 Mangrove seedlings within degraded areas as well as learnt a thing or two about local sustainable fishing methods!

Starting from 8th until 10th they will be working with one of the youth groups on their poultry project. Over the last couple of years, Camp Kenya has been putting a lot of emphasis on assisting youth and women groups with income generating projects. The Makongeni Youth Group are a dynamic and determined group of boys from the area who we have helped set up a small poultry project as well helping them set up a small kerosene business (fuel used for lighting lamps) and more recently thanks to Matt, the group is learning more basic business skills such as book keeping, business development planning and basic business principals.

It’s a privilege to have Melbourne School with us. They have an insatiable appetite for work, so much interest in our country and people and we hope they have found a second home in Kenya. They are still around for a week so more updates coming from Camp Tsavo…

(Report by Peter Kai)

Apologies, this is going to be a wordy and long blog, but we have reached a milestone and we’ve got some things to say -  we’re a year old. It is difficult to say exactly when our birthday is: 25th July 2011 we arrived to set up the business, 11th November 2011 is the official [...]

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Thank you Klaire Dale…

“Well I’m home and hating it! Can’t adjust to being back in gloomy England. Was great to see you (albeit briefly,) at Camp Imani and when we popped into the Diani office. Just wanted to say a huge thank you really. Genuinely. It was an incredible month…tough, but incredible. I’m an Ethics teacher – I spend every day trying to get students to think inside a stuffy classroom with damp creeping up the walls and an exam agenda to stick too. Never before in my whole career have I seen my students learning so actively and intensely as I did in Kenya. And not just learning the facts by rote, but processing information, feeling it, and forming their own opinions or modifying their worldview.

I teach Buddhism mostly and drone on and on about ‘enlightenment’ … occasionally in the classroom you get that lightbulb moment when a student suddenly gets something…but in Kenya it happened virtually every day. Someone would feel something, spontaneously, and it would be written all over their faces; sometimes a smile, sometimes a whole face sagging in despair, sometimes tears (real unplanned, unforced, ugly tears,) but everyday there was an enlightenment of some kind. I love my students, I want to shelter them from despair if at all possible, but I learnt that occasionally the curtain has to be lifted and they have to suffer through those bittersweet revelations that life is often terrible…and sometimes the terrible is beautiful and empowering too.

Anyway, I’m waffling. I just wanted to honestly state that what you do is life altering and the Camps teams in Kenya have sincerely changed the lives of 19 South Wirral/Devizes/Oaks Parks students and a small Wiltshire based Ethics teacher. It was a privilege to be out there and to spend time with some truly courageous individuals (Mama Mercy being a prime example,) and if you’re ever in need of a UK teacher then for goodness sake please shout. I would join you out there in a heartbeat.

Please pass on my sincerest thanks to all the Camp managers (Gladys, Mama M and Sammy K especially) and all the project managers and staff that were involved. I’m not the same teacher I was before I left, and I have all of you to thank for that, both professionally and personally.”

Klaire.x

Kennedy Kariuki our Marine Program Coordinator finally has a chance to sit back, reflect and share a bit about our new Ocean Camp at Shimoni. We have had a great season and a lot of new and interesting challenges ahead to think about…

As we all sit down at the restaurant, waves hitting on the coral in a systematic motion as though to create musical tunes and everyone evidently inundated with nostalgia from the serene silence in the camp now that all the school teams have left, I can clearly see it on their faces that the people are replaying scenes of their favorite moments of the season at the back of their minds. However, it’s time to break the camp down though with the gratification that it’s been a very exciting season for everyone at Ocean Camp, Shimoni and this means a chance for me to be able to let the world know what we’ve been up to at the Shimoni archipelago which is where we’ve been for the past one month doing some very exciting and worthwhile activities.

Shimoni AKA Shimtown is a Swahili word that translates to ‘land of the caves’ as the whole place is believed to be covered with caves underneath though it’s more like the land of the big fat baobab trees!!  It is a peninsula about 73 km South of Mombasa with a total land area of approximately 105 km2 at low tide. The area encompassed extends from Ramisi River on the North to Umba river estuary on the South. Near shore habitats include sandbanks, mudflats and mangrove areas. The mainland consists of about 10 km2 coastal “coral-rag” forest, several seasonal freshwater pools, high grassland, agricultural land, several small communities and scrub. Some of the main species here include the patches of tropical Mangrove forests all along the seafront that get submerged to almost half height at high tide, popularly known as Mikoko by the local people. The mangroves play a very important role in maintaining and preserving Shimoni coastal habitat and as breeding grounds for fish.

There is also about all of the seven species of dolphins found at the Western Indian Ocean of which we were lucky to spot three species namely: the bottlenose dolphins which are the most common around here. We also saw some humpback dolphins and Spinner dolphins which make the most spectacular acrobatic displays as they spin along their longitudinal axis as they leap through the air in their ‘salmon leaps’ and peduncle dives. Also worth mentioning was the one Green turtle believed to have been the same one people were seeing during different dives, as well not forgetting the humpback whales. The fish population in Shimoni is also very impressive as we saw loads of fish during the dives including; 12 inch sea horses, trumpet fish, spotted sting rays, moray eels, cattle fish, puffer fish, star fish, Angel fish, butterfly fish, the list is endless.

At Camp Ocean Shimoni, our small way of contributing to the well-being of the Species biodiversity in the area was by organizing copious beach cleanup sessions where we cleaned the beach of plastics, flip flops and various other non-biodegradables. Marine debris is one major conservation disaster that has been ignored for a while; it would surprise everyone to find out that the ratio of plastic to plankton in the world ocean cover is more than 10:1 as found out by a recent research.

We also have the Shimoni Slave Caves which is basically the other main tourist attraction site in Shimoni apart from the Marine Park and a monument of ancient brutality. The caves are believed to have been formed millions of years ago, by tiny coral polyps, under the sea. There are several caves, once joined together and reputed to extend some 7 kilometers inland. It is hard to imagine a more secure refuge! In the 18th and 19th centuries, at the height of the infamous slave trade, the big slaving dhows from Arabia came down on the monsoon winds to east coast of Africa, returning with their miserable human slaves. It is almost certain that these caves were used by the Arabs as a slave pen, where the slaves were held pending the arrival of the ship to take them to Zanzibar. Old rusted pieces of chain were found in the caves.

The caves are run by the Shimoni community and proceeds help to buy medicine for the dispensary, books for schools and hopefully in the future better water supply and pay Madrasa teachers who are teachers who teach the little children of the area about their Muslim faith among various other community development projects around Shimtown.

With that, we as the crew from Camp Ocean Shimoni are grateful to everyone who made the 2012 team season a success. We thank the office and administration team for all the supplies reaching us on time, effective communication and for giving us another chance to meet all those beautiful and inspiring people from all those teams we had who were also very kind, co-operative and understanding to us. We’d also like to acknowledge Mr. Harm, for his kind assistance in everything as well as the whole diving crew, the propitious Shimoni folks, the ‘Jambo kids’ and everyone who made this a success.

May all have a blessed time for the rest of the year in all that they get into…

Kennedy Kariuki (Marine Program Coordinator)

Jordey Logan is travelling to Tanzania in the summer of 2013 and began his fundraising in November last year. Since then he has managed to raise all the money for his expedition and is continuing to fundraise to help the other members of his team reach their goal too…

So far I have done a couple fundraising events, some with my school and other students going on the trip, such as a carwash which we in total managed to raise £200 earning me about £30, a year 7 stay awake raising about £400, raising me about £100. Things like this are a good idea as you don’t have to do it on your own and it will provide you with some money. But doing an event by myself has allowed me to raise a lot more money for my trip.

The first thing I did by myself was a sponsored head shave since I had been growing my hair for about 6 years, all the way through secondary school , changing it from big curly hair into dreadlocks. Resulting in most of my friends to have never seen me with short hair, helping me raise a total of £450, as so many people where determined to see me with short hair.

The best way of drumming up a considerable amount of money which I realised, are events that include the following two things; something that nobody else has done or something not many do, and things that make people question if you are able to complete it or not.

One event that I have recently done which included both of these things is something called the Everest Challenge, which involved me climbing 997 feet (304m) from Lynmouth to the highest point of Countisbury hill, 29 (and a bit) times continuously to make up the 29028 feet (8848m) to the summit of Everest, which I managed to complete in 26hours 47minutes. And as this event was something nobody has ever done, I managed to raise £3521.51. Meaning I have practically raised all the money required for my trip to Tanzania in 2013.

So from all of the events that I have done so far, I have managed to raise around £4101.51, meaning that I have raised over my target amount of £4000, £3840 for the trip and £160 for anything I require e.g. jabs. But as I still have just under a year left till my trip, I’m going to help as many of my friends going on the trip as best I can to make raising the money required that little bit easier.

One of the main reasons to how I managed to raise such a considerable amount wasn’t just because it was a remarkable challenge, but because of how well I advertised it/let people know what I was doing. A good way of doing this is to create a Facebook page, even though creating a website looks good, nearly everybody will check Facebook regularly unlike a website. Another good way is to put a write up about the event in your local paper and place posters and fliers around where you live. Anything that grabs someone’s attention while informing them what’s happening.

In case you are thinking that you wouldn’t be able to easily go up to people asking for sponsorship, or going into places and asking for them to put up posters and possible sponsor you. Don’t be ashamed as that was my biggest problem while fundraising, but what allowed me to overcome that problem was since I was determined to raise the money for my trip, even if it resulted in my going out of my comfort zone to achieve it. But I promise you now that even if the first time is hard it does get easier the more times you try.

The best advice I can give to anyone is; don’t set challenges which you know you can’t complete, make sure you let as many people as possible know what you’re doing (not just the event/challenge but what the money’s for and what you’ll be doing during your trip). Last thing I will say, which many people have told me, is that you won’t succeed if you don’t try.

I wish everyone else who is fundraising for a trip all the best and hope what I have said helps.

After a week at Camp Muhaka, the Whitchwood Crew (Whitchurch & Arnewood Schools) are sad to say goodbye to Eustace and the team. We have had a great time and the project work has been challenging yet very rewarding. We worked on building a new training centre for the young people of Muhaka consisting of a tailoring room and computer room including a safe storage area. This building is one of the few in Kenya that is being built almost entirely using cement and recycled plastic bottles.

It has been great to see the team make such a difference in just a few short days.

Everyone has really pulled together to help the community here and made some real friends in the village. The local tailor knows everyone by name now after sooo many visits and the local football team will now be training harder after we beat them in the last 2 matches! A few of the team learnt to paint amazing canvases by a local artist; we emptied the village of Dairy Milk and also enjoyed a spot of Yoga..

R&R awaits the team now after working so hard. So we are off for some shopping and the beach.

Thank you Muhaka Camp for the best food in Kenya! Oh… and Ellie is a Legend!

Asante sana and kwaheri!!

Lou and the Stongehenge team are on their last few days at Camp Tsavo and by the sounds of it have had an amazing trip and still have the energy for more…

Sooo, since the last Stonehenge update, we’ve been really busy! We left Ocean camp for the fantastic Camp Kaya, where in the words of Charlie and co…”this is what we came for!!”. We were surrounded by monkeys, pumped around a 1000 litres of water a day from the local water pump (see pic!) and did our bit for the environment by planting lots of trees!

We then trekked down to Muhaka, where we settled in and really felt at home with the staff and the locals.  We played football nearly every night (and even won…once!!).  Here, team Stonehenge made a huge impact with their dedication and hardwork.  They managed to build the Trust house for IT and tailoring from barely foundations to window height in less than a week, using local methods and tools!!  What an achievement!

The group didn’t stop there! After visiting the bush doctor, watching an elderly man run up a coconut tree and chasing monkeys and cockerels around…we then helped to build a house for Mama, built her a bed and bought her a mattress! It was both incredible and tear-jerking.

After saying goodbye to the wonderful staff at Muhaka, we made the last and longest leg of our journey to Tsavo.  “T.I.A” This is Africa said the group! Since being at Tsavo, we have seen hundreds of elephants and fall asleep each night to the sounds of animals playing at the local watering hole. The safari was incredible and the students have learnt valuable skills including, how to make paper from poo, animal tracking and bush survival skills.

Today we went to Buguta Primary School where we helped to build a much needed kitchen and spent an unforgettable time teaching and talking with the local students. We have only 2 more days left and cant believe this experience is nearly over.  The children we’ve met, the staff here and the memories will make it very hard to leave!

Asante Sana Camp Kenya!!

Lou and the Stonehenge Kenya 2012 Expedition…

We are quite proud of our new status as Garbage Warriors in Kenya. Discarded Flipflops, bottles and tyres have become an integral part of our programs providing materials for buildings and a source of income for the growing flipflop artisan community of Diani. Here’s a little slice into the trash treasures…

The Trust House Community Tailoring Center going up with bottles:

Our Permaculture Farm Tree Nursery going down with bottles (for waterproofing)

And at Kaya Muhaka Forest Tree Nursery, we are using them for terracing and soil erosion control:

Meanwhile our first greenhouse walls went up with old tyres and bottles…

And of course our flipflop artwork is getting better and better with our latest sculptures done with Benson Gitari and team and commissioned by Amani Tiwi Beach Hotel almost ready..