Day 8 - Giraffing around

Today officially marks our first week in Kenya! We have already experienced so much in our first week, but the majority of workshops around schools in Nairobi are yet to come. Speaking of that, this morning we had an opportunity to visit another school on our list - St. Ronan’s Secondary Boarding School.

The preparation for this visit was not the easiest for us, as today Kenya celebrates Independence day, which means most schools were closed, and we were originally not expecting to deliver any workshops. Luckily, the St. Ronan’s School accepted us and gave us a short time slot to present the girls with our engineering workshops. However, because attendance is not mandatory on the national holiday, we didn’t know how many girls to expect today. This meant we had to choose a project, that could have been easily done with many different numbers of children. Eventually, we chose to repeat one of Monday’s workshops - paper planes.

When we came to the classroom, around 30 girls were quietly waiting for us, curious about what we had to offer. Slowly, they were becoming more lively and competitive as they started throwing their creations as far as possible. After the workshop, some of the girls even started talking to us, asking about our studies and university life.

Our school visit ended just before noon and because we were on the south side of Nairobi, we decided to spend the afternoon in the Giraffe centre nearby. This was such a unique experience for us as we were able to feed these beautiful animals from a bridge that allowed us to be at the same level as their heads. At the same time, it was our first encounter with the Kenyan wildlife and hopefully not the last (maybe we will do a safari on one of the weekends?).

After enjoying the presence of giraffes, we entered a nature trail just across the street from the Giraffe centre. Going off the main trail and getting lost a few times, we were eventually able to find a beautiful viewpoint with a panoramic view of mountains.

On our way home, we stopped at a supermarket to buy food for dinner. Getting home, we all needed to relax after this busy day. Some of us got a nap and others read a book or watched their favourite tv show. In the evening, we all enjoyed a delicious dinner and did a little bit of planning for tomorrow’s school visit.

-Michaela