Canadians!

Monday, July 20th

I didn’t mention enough about all of my fellow Canadians that are here at the moment. First of all, Suzanne and Marc from York University are here studying elephant diet preferences in order to help develop a corridor for wildlife migration all throughout the northern and mountain region (if I’m not wrong). This means that they are working towards reducing human-wildlife conflict so that elephants can return to their original migratory range, without tearing up peoples’ gardens etc. Suzanne was in my internship interview and made sure that I met Marc, one of her students, before I came here so that when they arrived I would know people.

A BIG thanks goes out to these two for picking up all the stuff Rudo sent me, and also bringing me more chocolate than I can shake a stick at (as well as other goodies!). On Sunday I spent the day hanging out with these two lovely peeps. They are staying at Ngiri house. It’s not a lodge for tourists that come here, but where working-visitors often stay. And in my view it’s fabulous, and it has a pool. So of course I showed up in my inappropriately teeny bikini (I would like to note here that it has become inappropriately teeny due to all the good food depicted in an earlier post), and went for a dip!

Secondly, there are a couple of teachers, named Craig and Mark, from the UCC in Toronto. UCC is a private, boys-only high school that has a connection with one of the schools that Lewa supports called Ntugi. These guys are working on a most interesting project bringing laptops and wireless internet to the Kenyan school, and creating a joint curriculum where Canadian and Kenyan high school students can chat and blog online and learn together – it’s cool!
They were staying in the tents next to me, but this week Craig has gone to live with a teacher from Ntugi, and is experiencing the local flavour outside of Lewa’s gates.
Will keep you updated!