Dear Bowen Island friends and Neighbours, including Outside 45 and BICS students:
We hope you are all well and that summer has cometo Bowen Island. We are well, and settling into Nairobi where the weather is lovely and usually warm, though we do have power failures and sometimes have no electricity for a while. Nairobi is an interesting place to live, but you can't imagine how bad the traffic is. There are plenty of drivers here who would be kicked off Bowen in no time at all.
We've been busy getting used to Nairobi and a new school (Braeburn Garden Estate - the boys say they like both BICS and Braeburn and would have trouble picking one over the other), making new friends, missing old friends in Canada but also visiting old friends in Tanzania, snorkling and scuba diving on the Tanzanian coast and doing safaris where you can see lions, elephants, giraffes and all kinds of other animals running free.
Today was Labour Day in Nairobi and we went to visit Barsalinga and Kibo at the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage (those in Outside 45 and Grade 3 at BICS will know who we mean), which is just on the outskirts of Nairobi in Nairobi National Park. Kibo is well, but we didn't get to see him as he now lives in one of the orphanage camps in Tsavo National Park and is beginning to get ready to go back to the wild - which is exactly where he belongs. Kibo should find new friends and be able to live his life as an elephant in a park, protected, we hope, from poachers.
Barsalinga is still at the orphanage and the elephant keepers say he is doing great. He's now 3 or 4, so may start getting ready to return to the national parks soon too.
Last week we went to a giraffe centre, and Declan made very good friends with one of them.
We miss Bowen, but are enjoying life in this part of the world. Karibu! (The Swahili word for “welcome”) to any who are heading this way.
Take care all,
Alexander, Declan, Madeleine and Dave
The Morris-Schwarz family departed for Kenya from Bowen in late 2013.
