With training finalised and everybody bonding we were separated into our teams of fellows and entrepreneurs.
The fellows i was paired with were York based: ‘Rosalie’ and London based: ‘Mayur’. I was happy with the decision and excited to hear the entrepreneurs and their start up or existing businesses. We were informed that there were 6 entrepreneurs in our team,
Lucy / Start up / Fast Food
Mary / Existing / Mutumba
Emmy / Existing / Convenience Store
Stephen / Start up / Pool tables
Patrick / Start up / Photography
Gladys / Start up / Dairy Selling Business
When reading this we also discovered their team name, this was: The Committed Worriers… we found this hilarious and thought it was an ironic twist, we then realised this was a slight language barrier and our team name was in fact: The Committed Warriors; much more fitting due to the evidence throughout the following weeks
The weekend followed
Another fellow ‘Ivy’ within the Balloon Kenya Programme is a fun and bubbly Kenyan whom kindly invited the whole group of 20 fellows for a hike in her home town ‘Nandi Hills’, where we bumped into some of the local children, enjoyed a beautifully scenic picnic, previous to our amazingly delicious lunch with a selection of meats and flavourful fish. We learnt about the Kalenjin tribe and how the detailed created calabash’s Gourd are used to store milk and mala Ivys grandmas was even kind enough to give one of the calabash’s as a gift to one of the fellows whom took a high interest in the designs. Once lunch had been devoured we made our way through Ivy’s family home’s garden, where they grown mangos, grapes, guava, passion fruit and sugar cane (which we had a go at chopping down with a machete!) when we thought the fun was over, Ivy’s grandfather led us to the Siret Tea Factory, what a privilege to walk around restricted areas to understand each step of tea leave production, with our fancy white cloaks and hats we wandered round asking questions and finished the day with a spot of tea testing!!! slightly bitter without milk although very enjoyable all in all 🙂
Not quite the usual ‘go to friends for lunch’ day!
Brilliant.
lauraballoonkenya 