You see africa on the television in heart breaking charity adverts and you feel a sudden urge to help others thats often quicky taken away by an advert for KFC or something along those lines and the moments gone; its not until you experience poverty first hand such as today does it actually sink in that these people need help. Today visiting the londiani boarding school was an eye opening experience; we met so many children who quite literally are living off the basics and their lack of food, clean water and parents tugged at my heart strings, yet they were possibly the happiest bunch of little faces I think ive seen. Their innocent smiles filled me with happiness followed by an overwhelming sense of guilt because it highlighted the fact that, to quote my mummas band, ‘there is no longer any valid excuse for mass poverty’ (Fat Life. 2000) and it made me feel guilty for how lucky I have been.

Their sense of community is one ive never experienced before as they pull together as a family to make the most of what they have. They are so incredibly resourceful, using everything they can to their advantage; from growing their own food/owning their own cows to reduce milk costs to mixed, overcrowded classes with understaffed teachers. All feelings of guilt and confusion aside today was a happy experience for both sides I feel and we got some good footage to use in the video. The children seemed happy and thats all that matters, electricity and clean water are things that will come with time but I am confident that they will get what they deserve; after all they are a highly rated school that more and more people want their children to attend so hopefully with the help of others they can achieve a better quality of life. Today posed a number of those life questions that I cannot answer and I think thats why I felt the way I did…. why do these people have nothing while others bathe in metaphorical gold? How is that fair? ‘it is the birth right of every man woman and child on this planet to share in the abundance of life and to be spared unnessecary suffering. We were given the garden in order that we may grow the fruit, pick the fruit and share the fruit.’ (Fat Life. 2000) so why are people still without? It nakes no sense to me. These are questions I do not have the answer to but today has urged me to help in any way I can to make the less fortunate a little less-less fortunate in any way I can and when I get back to brighton I am going to put this into practice and make use of the many volunteer programmes I have been looking at but never followed through.

As we left the lovely school and the equally as lovely and curious children we faced a lonnngggg journey ahead of us that again shocked me. I was aware we were going to be travelling along a dirt track for a lot of the journey to rongo because the road was under construction and was prepared for this; I dont get travel sick so hakuna matata….. until the coach quite literally almost tipped on its side into a ditch on several occassions. I was on the edge of my seat for a good half an hour/hour
and trying not panic! Eratic driving scares me as it is.. add some heat and a scarily close drop to the mix and youve got yourself a bag o’nerves. I reminded myself that the driver obviously must have driven that way before and therefore knew the route; this helped a lot but I still stuck to my ostrich ways and stuck my head in the sand and pretended all was fine; which it was, just nerve racking. We are still on the coach at the moment and about 45 minutes away from where were going my earwigging is correct. I am sleepy, peckish and my bums gone numb so I hope our end destination will arrive in the near future.