Shule [school]

Hello everyone!  I don't have much time at the moment, but I wanted to check in and let you all know what's going on!  We're camping lakeside at Lake Naivasha right now, and I am neighbors with a hippo.  A real live hippo!  Don't worry, he seems kind of nice.  Not too hungry-hungry.  There are also monkeys EVERYWHERE on the campsite.  It's quite distracting when we have lectures.

So basically, our "risk management" warnings for this week were:
1. Don't shine your flashlight directly in the eye of the hippo.
2. Don't leave food in your tents, or else monkeys will rob you.

Pretty awesome, right?  This is school.

This campsite is much different from our last one.  We were staying at Elangata Wuas before, where was incredibly hot and dusty.  38 degrees Celsius!  How do you feel about that, Montreal folks?  Enjoying your -40 weather?

While in Elangata Wuas, we each spent a night at a traditional Maasai homestead.  We stayed in little tiny mud huts, and I slept on a cowhide bed with three other people (pictures to come soon!).  We were shoulder to shoulder the entire night...It was a bit more than a tight squeeze.  Our youth guide, Hellen, was so sweet and taught us so much about Maasai culture.  All in all, it was an amazing experience, and so interesting to see the different lifestyles that people live!

(And I got to milk a goat.)

My class for this session is Ethnobotany, Health, and Nutrition.  We're learning about all sorts of local plants, and the traditional uses for them (like as traditional medicine, food, or even for household uses).  We've been visiting various types of farm.  First we went to a commercial vegetable farm.  Then we went to a flower farm where they breed roses to ship off to other countries.  Today, we visited a local farmer in Naivasha, who is in between subsistence farming and commercial farming... He had really impressive fish ponds.  And adorable sheep!

Tomorrow we're hiking Mount Longonot, and in a few days from now, we'll be packing up our tents and heading to Maasai Mara!