Kericho Kenya - Balloon Ventures project

'Be Your Brother's Keeper' This van sums up my feelings towards Kenyan road travel. Having been instructed to arrive 4 hours early for my flight from Heathrow, I had ample time to enjoy a farewell coffee with Mina who dropped me off. She is very much ‘over’ me going away these days having cried when I went away for Camp America just 3 years ago. Clearly I’m too big and ugly to be fussed over. As people filtered in, the remaining time provided a great opportunity to get to know the other UK volunteers, most of whom I had met before. Either at the initial assessment stage or the pre-placement training that I completed in late Feb. The team’s travel was split over two flights with mine stopping in Amsterdam, the others flying direct to Nairobi. Initially I coveted the quicker direct flight; however, we soon received frantic messages from the other team informing us that a baggage truck had crashed into their plane, denting it. A tense hour ensued as engineers ...

Dear all, Welcome to my blog where I will be sharing my experience of micro-finance in Kericho. I will post here each week to give an outline of what work I have been doing and the effects that it appears to be having. Through this record I want to assess the work that we will be doing and show where value is created through the businesses that we will work with. Furthermore, it should be possible to share more of how Balloon Ventures as a larger organisation works internationally. On top of that this will be a place for me to share my personal experiences with the highs and lows of overseas volunteer work. I will try to make this as interesting as possible, and stay tuned as this may be my first place to vent whilst abroad! Thank you again for reading and to anyone who donated money. Hamish