INTERCULTURAL TRIPS

Venue: Naivasha (Carnelly’s camp) and Sagana (White Water Adventures)

Date: 24^th – 28^th January 2011

This trip comprised of community service in tandem with some fun. In Naivasha, we visited a snake park which was quite interesting as we learnt about different species of snake. I even got to hold one.

When we reached Sagan, there was a school that was extremely impoverished and the state of the school was not very good. This affected the learning of the students. With this in mind, my colleagues and I walked to the school from our camping site and spent almost half a day painting a classroom. We also refurbished the blackboard so that they can learn properly. After this, we had a football game against the team of the local school. Unfortunately, we lost because of the mere speed and skill of the other team.

This was a great experience because I learnt to appreciate what I have. Seeing all these underprivileged children so happy made me think why I complain about things that I do not have when these children are happy when they have almost nothing. It made me realise and set a goal to try not to insist if I do not get what I want keeping these particular children in mind. I also plan on doing this kind of activity in the future.

Venue: Watamu, Kenya

Date: 30^th January – 2^nd February 2012

This was also another school trip which I went to along with my class mates. There was quite a bit of community service involved in it as well.

The first part of this encompassed a beach clean-up where my colleagues and I walked up and down the beach and put any litter or garbage that we found into big bin bags. We did this twice during our stay there and it made me aware of protecting the environment even if we do it on a small scale.

Another part of the trip involved going to a plastic recycling plant where the local authority along with an organisation that deals with the protection of the Watamu environment pick up plastic that washes onto the beach and recycle it in a machine that chips it into small pieces. These are then either sold to factories who need this kind of material for their production process or they are turned into great works of art by the local children who then sell it to earn a living.

Another interesting part of the trip was the fact that we went to a turtle sanctuary where we saw how sick turtles were treated and some anatomy about the animal. Furthermore, we even let off two turtles into the sea and it was interesting how happy they were to get back out there. They practically ran into the sea and within seconds they were out of site. Overall, this trip was a big eye-opener in terms of the protection of the environment and instilled in me that I should do whatever I can not to pollute it.