So it has been another memorable and overwhelmingly enjoyable packed week in East Africa. This past week our group headed to Nairobi Kenya where we met up with OWU graduate Ben Wallingford who has been living in Nairobi for the past six months, working as a micro financing intern. We also met up with Scott Bellows, another OWU graduate, who is the CEO of Mercy Corps in Nairobi Kenya. Our group got to experience a true Kenyan slum, where we visited the Kawangware slum outside Nairobi. We were lucky and were able to have met up with women living in Kawangware who are working with a micro financing company called Maono, who is trying to help these women save their money and eventually help them by increasing their individual businesses. It was a an experience that I don't think any of us will ever forget. The children were as beautiful and innocent as they could be, screaming hello after us everywhere we went in the streets. Some even followed us screaming "mzungus!" (meaning white people). The women we met were as welcoming and grateful to us as we could have ever imagined. The women's strength, courage and determination have left a mark on us all and it was very motivational and empowering for us all to have experienced.

Later that day we visited the Great Rift Valley, seeing the beautiful and majestical mountains and hillsides of where human civilization was first found. We also got to visit an elephant orphanage where we met 12 orphan elephants who ranged from a few moths old to a few years old. Later that day we then visited the Giraffe Centre where all six of us got to experience what it feels like to kiss a giraffe. It's an interesting feeling that makes you chuckle. Luckily giraffes salvia is anti-septic, so we will survive from the multiple lovable kisses from the giraffes. Overall it was an education packed trip to Nairobi that none of us will ever forget.

We are back in Arusha Tanzania now and tomorrow we are off to start our five day safari!!! More fun packed experiences for us all to come in the future. Stay tuned!

So we arrived in Arusha Tanzania on Tuesday January 17th at 9pm and are staying at Pete and Charlotte O'Neal's United African Alliance Community Center (who both left the U.S. in 1970 after Pete, who was a member and a leader of the Black Panthers Party, left the country after allegedly crossing the state border of Kansas with a rusty shot gun and was sentenced to 4 years in jail but instead fled to Africa and has been doing 42 years of great generosity and good to the Tanzanian people). We have had such welcoming and humble hosts and staff, including Bullet the horse and Jimbo the German Shepherd that likes to follow us everywhere we go. We have had a great first two days, filled with a long walk around the community center visiting the University of Arusha and farmers. We have visited downtown Arusha multiple times and we have also gone to visit the United Nations International Criminal Court where the prosecutions of the Rwanda genocide in 1994 took place. We got a tour of the courts and library and got a great visit with one of the head communications facilitator where we discussed the tragic and inhumane genocide and the other world wide genocides that have benefited from the International Criminal Court. We also got a great tour of St. Jude's high school, which is a very prestigious school and was developed for the purposes of educating under privileged youths who would normally not have had the opportunity of a higher education. The school is funded by two Ohio Wesleyan University graduates Gordon and Helen Smith, who are both on the Board of Trustees at OWU as well. We have also had the great pleasure of being able to interact with the 22 orphans that live at the O'Neal's community center. They are all very welcoming and just as excited as we are too meet them and interact with them as much as possible.

Overall it has been a great past two days and is only a taste of what lies ahead for this excited and enthusiastic group!