Time to start making some posts about my extraordinary month of October! I survived all the travel and made lots of memories in Kenya and at Zion National Park.
First a big shout out to Kenya Keys Team October 2019! Such a fun and talented group of people with whom to work and travel.
Bill and Linda Allen - Linda is a fellow Kenya Keys Board member and both she and, her recently retired husband , Bill were terrific. We got lots of laughs at Bill's expense with our theme of "Bill can do it" which covered anything from teaching sex education at the secondary schools to teaching the macarena to a Primary school audience. And we'll never forget Linda's automatic 'foreign language' response of 'Si' when she was bombarded with Swahili!
Dynamic mother/daughter duo of Alisa Herbert and Alayna Herbert Crane were enthusiastic teachers of life skills to secondary students and math facts to primary schools. It was easy to find where they were teaching....just follow the laughter and cheers! Biggest problem with Alayna, she wanted to touch and feed every animal! No Alayna, you can't get out of the van on safari to take a better photo nor feed the monkeys! You have to love her enthusiasm and admire her fantastic photographs!
My roommate the famous "Kadzo" which means 'Beautiful lady' in Duruma. She's known in the US as Michelle McMurray but greeted with love by school children yelling, "Kadzo, Kadzo" at every school we visited. She isn't just another pretty face either, as she gave a top notch speech at the Girl's Conference, kept our inventory organized, and learned more Swahili every day!
And our two fearless leaders - Mark Friess and Brent Hayes. Brent and his wife Rinda are the founders of Kenya Keys and Mark is the newly appointed US Executive Director. Can't ask for more capable, talented leadership...or a better soccer star than Mark or a crazier dancer than Brent!!!
Of course when talking about leadership, I can't forget Kenyan Executive Director, Joseph Mwengea, a brilliant man who works so many hours on behalf of the students sponsored by Kenya Keys! He and his wife Mwaka also are the perfect host and hostess to every American ambassador who comes to their home.
Clemence, Alex and Stephen, the rest of the Kenyan Staff, who do all kinds of little things to assure that our visit is productive and that we all get to do all the things we have planned. Couldn't do it without them!
Last but certainly not least, Joseph and Kelvin our 'pilots' who keep us safe in the crazy traffic, lead our safari and answer tons of questions on subjects from politics to agriculture to construction to bird identification! They are simply the best guides in all of Kenya!
What a fantastic trip with such a capable, fun team!
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