Travelling to Brackenhurst from Juba was much easier this year than the previous two years when we had a 2-day drive up from Dodoma. This year, we flew out from Juba to Nairobi and the conference centre is just over an hour from the centre of Nairobi. It felt so easy to get there this time!
As ever, the 4-day conference was well worth going. Beautiful venue, fantastic kid's programme to keep our 3 entertained, great teaching and useful seminars for us grown-ups and wonderful food!
We joined in the walk to a nearby tea-farm and enjoyed the gorgeous green of the tea-farms- a world away from dusty, urban Juba!
We enjoyed hearing again about the process of how a tasty brew of tea starts out, seeing first hand the tea in its original form as bushes of bright green leaves.
From hearing how tea is harvested...
...to seeing the samples of different stages of tea production, hearing from the tea estate owner how it ends up in a tea-bag for my cuppa!
At the farm, the children were entertained by the monkeys in the tree-tops. Esther joined in the fun as she reached up with banana pieces, grabbed greedily from children's hands by the cheeky monkeys!
Following on with the theme of rural Kenya, we spent the 4 days after Brackenhurst at 8,000 feet above sea-level, at the stunning campus of St. Andrew's School in Turi. We went there to visit Andrew's sister and brother-in-law, as they teach and live at this boarding school in the highlands of Kenya. It was still the school holidays, with only a few pupils about at the school, so it felt very peaceful! The weather was perfect, the company was wonderful, the location beautiful...
On Sunday, we attended the 9:30am chapel service at the school with staff and their families and had time for morning tea on the front lawn...
Then we climbed into a taxi for our 4-hour drive back to Nairobi, where we had one overnight stay, before heading back home to Juba on Monday morning.
Our MAF plane was loaded up with medicines to be brought from Nairobi to South Sudan- and with the Parker family, all aboard for Juba!
With Captain Parker and his co-pilot at the controls, complete with the appropriate aviation maps, we jetted off into the blue African skies, for our 4-hour non-stop flight to Juba.
Once again I am amazed at the experiences of life the children are having such as the tea farm and what fun feeding those handsome monkeys. Very impressed with St Andrew's school and wondering how Esther would fare there if ever the sad day comes when she needs to go to boarding chool for secondary education �� But we won't think about that yet. Love nana x
ReplyDeleteEsther looks very proud to be co -piloting the plane. Captain Esther Parker? Maybe one day. Who knows? xx
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