Backstory: For Joyce's birthday she had asked for donations to buy pads in bulk for young Kenyan girls who couldn't afford them. For many girls getting your period means you don't go to school. Most girls use all sorts of things like old cloth, paper etc. to take care of their periods. Girls are afraid of staining their school uniforms (of which they only have one and are expensive to replace) and being teased by other classmates so they just stay at home for those days. This means that the girls miss a lot of school and can fall behind in their studies and probably leads to many of them to not continuing with their schooling. Not cool! Learn a little bit more here: BBC Africa story
Yesterday morning we met for breakfast at the lodge (yum!) and then packed into a tour car and were on our way! A Serena car was headed towards Kisii to drop off the manager for a vacation and give a few more guys rides home. We passed trough Lolgorian and Kilgoris (where the guys who work at our camp live) it was really good to see a new part of Kenya and talk with Joyce on the ride. The scenery was absolutely beautiful, lots of lush rolling hills. Kisii is known for its really fertile landscape and their banana, avacado, mango, tea and coffee crops.
We eventually arrived at a school that Joyce had gone to when she was younger but hadn't been to in 8 years. There we met and talked to the head teacher and explained what we were trying to do. They gathered all of their 6-8th grade girls for us to meet with. At the first school we went to we met with around 80 girls. Joyce is bubbly and outgoing and had no problem demonstrating how to use pads and dispose of them. Even though we were met with a lot of shy giggles it was clear the girls were really grateful to get them and even asked for more.
We met an old friend of Joyce's named Julius who walked with us to the next school and eventually accompanied us to lunch. Julius was really neat to talk to, he had spent 7 years living in the US, mostly in Texas. They decided that I needed to do some classic Kenyan things so Joyce and I bought sugar cane and she taught me how to peel away the hard exterior and get to the good stuff in the center. She also found me some Changaaa to sip which she explained was like homemade Kisii vodka. It tasted about how you would imagine that tasting.
After walking around Kisii land for awhile we met back up with our group and headed back towards Serena (our group included a live chicken in the front seat). It was such a fun day! Joyce was so great to invite me and show me around where she grew up! While living inside of the reserve is incredible for many reasons it is still nice to get out every once in awhile and actually experience real Kenyan culture.
