Less than a day to go. Am I nervous, excited and all the emotions in between? Hell yes!
I think I'm fairly ready, I have everything I need (or at least I think I do), am being picked up by the airport shuttle at stupid o'clock, have checked-in online and have picked out the movies I'm going to watch on the plane - priorites people!
So my flight leaves Sydney at 6am, takes untold amount of hours - with a quick stop off in Bangkok - to get to Dubai and then a 2 hour layover until the next Emirates flight to Nairobi. i land at 7:30pm Kenyan time which is 5:30 NZ time and 3:30 AU time so it will be close to 24 hours travelling by the time I can say "I made it to Kenya!".
I am travelling on the same flight as a fellow volunteer from Sydney who is also doing the teaching program somewhere in the Maasi region (um, rural, somewhere, not sure where exactly. Yeah ok, so my Kenyan geography isn't completely up to scratch. Test me in a couple of months). We are going to be picked up by someone from NVS - the local volunteer organisation - and be taken to either our homestay or a temporary place for the night. I'm still not sure of where I'm going to placed yet which is a little disconcerting but I'll find out when I get there, or at least I will on orientation day which is Thursday 1 Nov.
First order of business after the orientation will be to buy a Kenyan SIM card and internet access for my laptop so I can let you all know I'm alive and kicking. After that it will be soaking everything in, wondering what the hell I've done, then realising what an amazing opportunity I have.
I'm planning on doing a safari one of the weekends. It will be a four-day trip trying to find all the fauna the Maru Masi Reserve has to offer. If I see a leopard I will die a happy woman - hopefully not too soon after! By the by, the Swahili word for lion is Simba! Nice. And friend is Rafiki and no problem is, yep, you guessed it, Hakuna Matata. That should be enough to get me through don't you think?
