Merry Christmas from Kenya!

Today our vision of taking Christmas to Kenya was fulfilled, and we celebrated Christmas today, together in Kenya, in between finishing everything off before we travel to Nairoboi tomorrow.....

Today we woke up with high spirits after a late night celebrating and church adventure. It was Delta’s day to run activities and the first of these was tie dying t-shirts, despite the lack of dye we managed to improvise, Kenyan style (permanent marker and water). We then sat and made Christmas cards together and particularly enjoyed the use of glitter glue. Meanwhile foxtrot were painting their mural of a London bus with kenyan animals in the windows. Team Echo changed their main project again which consisted of building a new store room for the centre but as the builders did not turn up so we helped out around camp and painted the swings.

Charlie finished their gate and is now revitalised and like new, they also finished the new sign for the camp site. We have also exchanged secret Santa presents and opened presents from our presents (some of us got socks J which was lucky considering all our feet smell) the kenyans also had a visit from santa where they all received their own individual stockings and clothes from all the donations. 
 

During the day we had a sermon which was led by Alf we sang songs and listen to a christmas poem, we also received a holly each to wear so that we remembered the serman about holly being prickly and that everyone has a ‘prickely’ day but everyone still get on well.  At the end of the day we had a massive christmas meal where the kenyan Scouts and the GLSE Unit sat in a large circle and ate dinner together. 

To close the camp in a special way, when the darkness drew, the Units patrols joined forced with a Kenyan Patrol and released a chines latern in the sky. Within no time at all, the sky was full of the latterns, which we all attached our wishes to for the coming year. A truly special way to finish the camp.

Written by Ben and Summer from delta and echo with help from Emmanuel (a ten year old kenyan Scout).

 

As we unfortunately did not get a chance to write the blog yesterday, here is a brief summary..
Yesterday was Alphas Project Day and for this we did First Aid and communication. We started the day by showing the Kenyan Patrols what skills they would need in order to get the English first aid level 2 badge.

This included:

·        the importance of wearing gloves while dealing with an incident

·         showing them how to deal with minor bleeding (which involves using a Biro to draw a minor cut rubbing it clean with an antiseptic wipe and covering it with a plaster)

·         major bleeding (showing them  how to attach a bandage properly and then putting the in pairs and getting the to put them on each other, which ended in them mainly wrapped around their heads, which was quite amusing)

·         checking that a casualty is breathing, recovery position (and checking the scene) and dealing with burns ans scalds.

Before giving each of them their badge, we did a First Aid relay, to see how much of that we had told them they remembered.  Each one answered their questions correctly and ended in each Alpha member looking ridiculous covered in bandages and looking like mummies!

After receiving their badges, we played a few games in which to improve their communication. The first was pairs football, normal football but with two people linking arms and working together. Although this is not how it went; it started with them all in pairs and after a few minutes they had all  separated and were playing normal football. The other game we played was Chinese whispers. Starting in patrols with single words, and working our way up into a massive game including all Kenyan Patrols.

Written by Alpha (Hannah, Naomi, Jack and Sam)