Everyone is back home and have many stories to share about their experience helping to improve living conditions for members of a village in Kenya. See the note we received from the Dow Innovators, sponsors of the program.
Jambo Loved ones!
We are so excited to fill you in on our last few updates, from here forward we are going to get to show you pictures and add all our little details for our Maasai Mara adventures.
Friday morning we started our day at our final build at the Mwangaza kitchen. We organized and worked hard to get as much as we could done. By the end of the build we are all confident in the foundation of the contributed too. Hopefully one day in the future we will be able to see what Mwangaza school grows into. In the afternoon we went back to the school to say our final goodbyes. Already feeling emotional we were met by students who organized a goofey ceremony filled with singing, dancing, and poetry. Following the ceremony we played some soccer, netball, hang man, and a new version of duck duck goose. Our afternoon with the community was filled with love and we appreciate our fortune to have been greeted with so much love these past few days at Mwangaza community.
Our day ended with weapons training!!! Richard and Felix showed us some traditional Maasai weapons and we 
took to a challenge with Conga throwing and the bows and arrows. The day ended as we walked back to camp looking at the sun sneaking behind the rain clouds, that creeped over the hills. After dinner Richard and Felix continued to share parts of their culture by the camp fire. They answered our questions and were vulnerable with such amazing story telling.
Saturday morning we were awake before the sun as it was Safari day!!! At 4am we were awaken by Christina and Feker at the sound of the “In the jungle, the Mighty Jungle” song and made our way out to 5am we were on our way. It was a day filled with lions, cheetahs, wildebeest, warthogs, hyenas, giraffes, and so much more. Our vehicles were filled with laughter and wonder as we shared this amazing day together. It was the longest day we shared together so far and it ended with dancing and more laughter. Over 12 hours awake and together and we still had stuff to laugh about.
Sunday morning started with an activity on “design thinking”. We spent the morning actively thinking how empathy and communication are key to the effective sustainable application of our innovations. By 10am we were back at the build site, but this time we were at WE College with our other Dow group. The engineering faculty building was under construction and we got to make our contributions. On our way back to camp we got a fast tour of the history of the college and were surprised by a pop up visit from Craig Kielburger (one of the founders of the WE movement). We introduced ourselves and got a few pictures before he returned to his work and we parted ways with some of our own who headed back to Nairobi for an early flight Monday afternoon.
Then we had our final drive back to camp. Monday morning we would depart from camp and not return. It was an emotional ride for many of us. Sunday night we ended our final night together telling our funniest stories over dinner (we have a lot of them so be sure to ask us when we get back home!!). It was a night of reminiscing on our amazing opportunity. We all learned so much from each other these past few days. As darkness filled the sky we ended our day laying in the grass watching the stars as we shared our last stories. It was a day of embracing the amazing atmosphere our camp staff, Maasai guides, facilitators and we created for ourselves.
Thanks for keeping up with our adventure. When we get back we will have so many more stories to share with you.
The Dow Innovators, Feker, Christina, Richard and Felix