An experience that I will cherish forever!!

Just over a month ago I got back from Kenya after having an unbelievable 3 months. During my time there, I taught at a school, experienced a Kenya wedding, snorkelling, a safari, experienced an athletics competition, go karting, football games against the locals and many other things!!

One of the many things I liked about this experience, is how much you immersed yourself into the community. Me and the two girls I worked at school with got invited to our Boda Boda’s house, we experienced a Kenyan wedding, we played a football game against the locals, I even watched a arsenal game in this hut/building with a tv with the locals and we also invited our friends round to the house for dinner which was really nice. The neighbours are also lovely!! The other thing I loved is the beach being a 5 minute walk from the house!! This was amazing, after school going to the beach and swimming.

On the day you leave, you meet everyone at the airport, and in our case Andrew (who is another one of the AV team) spoke to us before we carried on our journey to Kenya!! This is likely the first time you will meet everyone, which is nice to spend a couple days with people before going to school. You meet Grace at Ukunda airport, before going to your house in Mswabweni. We then had the weekend to settle in and learnt a bit of easy Swahili by Khalfan and got more of an introduction and really helpful advice by Grace and Khalfan, this helped me understand more about the place that I was going to be living for 3 months.

Working at the school was truly eye opening, learning about school life in Kenya was very interesting and the differences between the school and a typical English School. I taught Social Studies, but I would also help my friend in maths, marking and helping kids in a smaller group to help them understand!! Whilst teaching them, we also had fun!! Seeing them happy after simply having fun for 10 minutes was really rewarding. We also got on really well with our teachers, playing cards but also going to Wassini with a few of them!! We would speak and understand about different cultures in schools in England and became good friends with them.

I think something that made the experience 10/10 was the people, in which is all thanks to AV. I had the best group of people and still speak to them!! I have seen three already and are planning a reunion. We got on so well, we had too cook, clean and live together which made us very close by the end of the 3 months. On the weekends, we would most of the time go away on Friday till Sunday. We mostly went to Diani Backpackers, but also ventured out to Mombasa, Kilifi and Watamu. This was really nice, after the weekdays in the village and the school, it was nice to get away for the weekend to have fun, and most importantly do the weekly shop!!

The main thing for me which made me choose AV over the other organisations, is the support and comfort knowing you have support if you need it. I had a FaceTime with Sarah (one of AV’s team) before going, who was very nice and I felt very prepared heading to Kenya, I also got in contact with a previous person who had been to Kenya with AV. Grace (who lived in Nairobi) Khalfan (who lived a couple minutes away) lived in Kenya, Grace was there at Ukunda airport and we met Khalfan soon after. Grace (who would come every so often) and Khalfan were absolutely brilliant, especially Khalfan who would come over to check on us but equally would be here if we had any problems. Although he looked after us, he wasn’t at the house too much!! He became a very special person to us!! As a 9, we had to organise what to have for dinner, who would cook, wash up and how to keep the house clean. For someone who is going to university in September, I feel like this experience has definitely got me more prepared.

In January I did not think I was going to have as good of a time as I thought, but I had one of the best experiences of my life. Would go back to January and do it all again if it could!