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Latest news: The team have successfully summitted Kilimnajaro! The Team:
From: Team 1 At dawn on Thursday 29th March, Kilimanjaro Venture 1 became the first VentureCo team to summit Africa's highest peak. After a 6-day trek, much of it in a barren "kingdom above the clouds" at a height of about 4000m, the team reached reached Barafu Camp - their final camp before the summit. After a few hours sleep the group started for the summit at 1am. Led by the guides who kept a slow pace (pole pole!), to minimise the effects of the altitude, the the group zig-zagged up an increasingly steep scree slope. Moving by torchlight in the freezing dark became as much a mental challenge as a physical - this is the stage at which the highest number of people turn back. Finally as the African sun slowly rose to their right, the group made it to Stella Point on the crater's rim. From there Kilimanjaro's summit - Uhuru Peak - was visible, just a few hundred metres higher. With the worst over, the group pushed on, and 40 minutes later all of them stood proudly on the Roof of Africa.
From: Alison Hayes We left Mwansa in two 4x4 land cruisers, very excited to be back in cars, no more squeezing into Matatus! Couple of hours drive and we arrived in the Serengeti, along with torrential rain,it seems the rainy season has come early. Camping in tents surrounded by wildlife was very exciting, even heard lions roaring in the distance on the first night! It made going to the toliet in the middle of the night somewhat daunting though! After surviving the night we went on game drives for the folowing two days, we saw every type of african animal imaginable apart from the illusive leopard. After the beautiful scenery of the Serengeti, and the spectacular thunderstorms, we headed for the Ngorongoro crater. Saw hundreds of wilderbeasts and zebras of the flat grassy plains, and also drove past a pride of lions with a fresh kill,where everyone took rather a lot of photos! We were camping right on the edge of the crater, and would have had beautiful views down into the crater if it hadnt been so cloudy. Had an interesting nights sleep in the tents with gale force winds and terrential rain, luckily we pitched our tents into the wind and we all survived! Went for a game drive down in the crater where we nearly saw the entire 'BIG FIVE' except the leopards were hiding again. It was pretty exciting seeing a black rhino though! So after the Nogorongoro crater we headed off on a Masai walk, which turned out to be much more like a trek! We walked through vast valleys, with dozens of traditional Masai villages scattered around, where most of the men have about 10 wives and 50 kids! The most exciting/daunting moment was walking through a large masai village on market day, so it was jam-packed with people. We got completely surrounded by the locals especially by the women who were trying to sell jewellery. Was a little scary having so many faces looking at us (being the only Mzungus for miles around), but was an unforgettable experience nontheless! After the Masai walk we headed off to Arusha at the base of Mount Meru. The origianl plan was for us all to climb Mt Meru , beginning on a Wednesday. Unfortunately the trek didnt go to plan. On the morning we were supposed to start several of the team were unable to go due to various ailments including, sickness and the sh*ts, swollen and infected bites on ankles (making walking up a mountain rather difficult), and twisted ankles etc etc. Sooo in the end it was just Cait, Luke , and I that set off up the mountain by oursleves! Well sayin that we had a ridiculous amount of porters for the three of us, seeing as we carried all our own stuff, and it was just the food which was extra! We had a really good time, all three of us got to the top safely, and we were well fed and looked after by our lovely guides and porters! Me met up again with the rest of the group in Moshi, at the base of KILIMANJARO!!Spent the day in the infamous Coffee shop that sells the best cakes, and drinks ever. Our third project is based just outside Moshi, and we begin that on Monday! ali x x x
From: Kim Levan We travelled overnight by night ferry to reach Mwanza, our first stop in Tanzania and the setting for our second volunteering project. At first glance the town seemed big enough to be worth exploring, but not very modern. As it turned out we were to become accustomed to a very basic style of living over the next 2 weeks. We were staying in Buswelu, a remote rural village about half an hours drive out of Mwanza. Our accommodation was in one of 4 houses in a compound designated for use by volunteers. We each had our own bed but other than that there was no furniture to speak of and our thermarests were soon adapted into makeshift sofas. There were minimal cooking facilities and electricity and water were frequently unobtainable. We couldn't help asking ourselves what we were doing in such a place in the middle of no-where. But that soon changed when we visted the project site -Hasani orphanage. The orphanage is home to 39 children of varying ages and our task was to assist 3 builders (or 'fundis' as they're known in Swahili) to build a wall around the premises. It was not as glamorous a job as perhaps we would have liked and we could only look on as other volunteers taught the children their times tables and sang songs whilst we worked up a sweat carrying bricks and mixing cement. Despite the hard work and constant jaunts from the builders who regarded us as nothing more than lazy, rich white people (an impression which is unfortunately ingrained into the minds of many of the people here) we were determined to prove them wrong. The children were fantastic and the management were very supportive, making our time there surprisingly enjoyable and rewarding. We were able to make use of our time practicing the Swahili we had learnt in Uganda, even though our vocuabularly mainly consists of phrases such as 'unataka ongeza udongo?' - 'would you like some more cement?'. In the evenings there was little to do and ipods regrettably became an invaluable commodity. Mwanza has little to offer in the way of entertainment but fortunately there are a few good places to eat and we became very regular customers of one pizzeria in particular. We were also delighted to discover not 1 but 2 ice cream parlours and also a supermarket with a room dedicated solely to chocolate, a rarity from our experince of Africa so far. Such things became very important when the staple traditional meal is rice and beans, everyday without fail. It actually tastes pretty good but does get a bit monotonous. We also took much pleasure in the porridge (or 'uji') which was offered to us daily by the orphanage. It helped make up for our own feeble cooking attempts which usually consisted of bread and peanut butter with biscuits for most meals. By the end of our stay we had got to know some of the children pretty well and it was sad when we had to say goodbye. The wall was completed on 2 sides but lack of further funds has prevented it from being completed for the time being. All in all we carried about 3000 bricks between us which we hope has put us in good stead for climbing Mount Meru and Kilimanjaro! We were also able to paint a section of the wall on the last day. We made a map of the world and drew a picture of the sun with our names which we hope will be something for the children to remember us by. As a farewell to each other everyone in our group was forced to lose their inhibitions by dancing African style to the beat of a drum in a big circle with all the orphans. I'm sure we must have looked ridiculous, but it was a great way to end the project.
From: Alex Ward This project, located about 50 minutes drive outside Jinja, was our first taste of voluntary work organised by VentureCo, so, before we started, we didn't entirely know what to expect … When we arrived on the first day the specifics were revealed. The situation is this; there is a steady stream of chimps that are seized by the authorities from the illegal "Pet Trade". This is where wild chimps are taken from their natural home and sold to local people as pets. When the chimps are rescued, they are too used to humans and can't be returned to the wild, where they'd either starve to death or be killed by other chimps. So the chimp rescue people started a sanctuary on an island 30 miles off shore in Lake Victoria. Sadly, it's now pretty full and there are two warring clans of chimps, so an alternative home has to be found for one clan. The perfect site for this new colony has been found, on a large but mostly untouched, forested island in the River Nile, which is about 2 miles wide at this point. The main problem is reforesting the island that has been stripped of primary vegetation by local farmers. This is where volunteer help is needed: one of our two tasks is to build an enclosed tree nursery to grow the trees before transportation to the island. Our other task was the oh-so glamorous job of building compost loos on the west bank to be used both by white-water rafters, who descend the Nile rapids and take out here, when they finish for the day, and visitors to the new chimp sanctuary. We are also assured that a visitor's centre will one day definitely be built on the bank, so that our toilet will be vital for the use of tourists visiting the chimpanzee sanctuary. The first stage of our work was to clear the site of undergrowth. We worked with machete and hoes and although it was quite hard work in the hot African sun we managed to finish (mostly) in a couple of days. We scraped the weeds, grass and scrub trees into piles and the other construction workers collected it in the night. The next stage was much harder physical work. For the toilet we dug the foundations. This was much easier then we all expected, as the trench we dug only needed to be 30cms deep and even less across. For the tree nursery it was the beginning of the prison-labour style volunteer work. First came the hoeing. British farmers in their top of the range tractors have NO right to complain. Not even a whimper. If you gave one of them a hoe, set them down in Africa and told them to plough the sun-baked African soil the way it used to be done, in the heat of the day, I'm pretty sure they'd be lost. We certainly were. First the sun burnt our skin (especially the ones on poxy doxycyclyn!!) and then our skin fell of our hands and was replaced by giant weeping sores. After we finally finished turning over the soil for the entire field, days later, we were told that the mud was in the wrong place and that we had to move the soil into large mounds that ran the length of the field with paths in between. Moving all that soil was, needless to say, quite a challenge and took several days. I should also mention that throughout the building work we had to deal with the added challenge of equipment that was delivered according to "Africa time"! Meanwhile work on the toilet continued as rotated group members helped brick-laying and fetching water while the rest toiled in the field. I have to admit it was very satisfying to see our mighty completed mounds, but soon afterwards the news was broken to us that now we have to construct a shelter for the nursery and that would mean digging holes with hoe and pick-axe for the rest of the project so the posts could be inserted that would eventually hold up the roof. This stage of the project felt very familiar for a reason I couldn't place until I realised it was the plot of a book I once read. "Holes" is about an innocent guy who's sent to a youth labour camp and is forced to dig a hole every day in the heat of the sun. I think the main character would be very surprised there are people crazy enough to actually volunteer for such a thing! Moaning aside, it was for a good cause, and also it was such hard work it was very satisfying to see what we achieved. Though the immediate use of one of our creations appeared to be for rich white fat sunburnt tourists to have somewhere to crap, in fact the composting toilets solved a major problem faced by small communities subject to large numbers of visitors. The toilets will ensure the area remains unspoiled by tourists, whilst their generous deposits will ultimately be used for manure by local farmers. And anyway, we made that loo and nothing can take that sense of achievement away from us. Despite the pain endured creating the nursery, I am sincerely glad that we did help out with a conservation project I genuinely believe is worthwhile.
From: Caitlin Morgan Arrived in Nairobi at about 6 in the morning on the 3rd Jan and successfully managed to spend half the day sleeping. It didn't take us long to sample the delights of Kenyan nightlife at the aptly named "Carnivore's". Dance moves, tequila and the Lion King were all involved - so needless to say the journey to Mount Kenya in the morning was a bit of a struggle. Most of us spent the first day of the trek either adjusting to the changing altitude or imagining we were, and after a tiring first day we reached our camp, Likii North. There we were introduced to the Rock Hyrax, a fury mountain resident of the mountain, who bizzarely became known as Uncle Sam. Very hospitable - he and his friends joined us on trips to the loo and munched on banana skins during dinner. The second day was less tiring as we made our way up to Shipton's camp from which we would tackle the summit the next morning. Uncle Sam followed us up there to share in the discovery of the smelliest loos we'd encountered on the trip so far and Frances, our guide, made sure we knew exactly how scary the summit route was before we went to bed. Also at Shipton's we met various rodents who befriended Vicky on the loo - cousins of Uncle Sam, Jessica and Simon. We got up at 3am on the 8th Jan and made our slow, slippery way up the last part of Mount Kenya, definitely noticing how cold it got when our water bottles froze. We all reached the summit just after dawn - just under 5000m high - and we were all chuffed to bits - Kendal mint cake was eaten (need I say more!). We started our decent at around 7 and slid all the way down and spent the rest of the day sleeping and teasing Uncle Sam. Little did we know we had a nasty 25km surprise on the last day to reach our final camp "Old Moses"; everyone's feet fell off and games such as eye spy suddenly became very appealing! We later (sensibly) decided after a few beers to visit the local watering hole a short walk down the road. Here we met Bruce, the wild, 'crazy' African elephant. Talk about wildlife in close-up! Prudence was the order of the day, so we all legged it back to camp! Next morning we said a sad farewell to Frances and drove to Samburu National Park for some well earned animal spotting, this time from the security of Land Rovers.
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