Karen

Monday we had the day off so we went to the town of Karen. It was named after the cousin of the lady in the movie "Out of Africa." When Kenya belonged to Britain that's where many of the Brits lived, so it was pretty modernized.Our first stop was at the Kazuri bead factory. Kazuri means 'small & beautiful' in Swahili. All of the beads are handmade. We got a tour of the factory. It was pretty neat to watch the process. All of the jewelry is made out of clay. They start out as clay bricks and the women make them into beautiful, delicate, colorful beads or pottery. They sell the finished products all over the world to well known stores.

Most of the workers are women. They did incredible work. It was good to see that working there provided an opportunity for them overcome the circumstance they were in to improve their quality of life.

There were so many necklaces, earrings, and such to choose from. It was so overwhelming! I only had 15 minutes to shop! I could have been there for hours! This is just one side of the room, there was another several racks to the right and another room full of pottery. So beautiful!

Our next stop was at the Elephant Orphanage. All of the elephants here have lost their mothers from poachers, or natural causes. They were so fun to watch!
The elephants loved rolling around in the dirt. Since they are orphans, the keepers have to teach them things their mothers never got a chance to. Here they are shoveling dirt on them to teach them to use dirt as sunscreen.

What a cool field trip!!!

This was the youngest little elephant that had. Isn't it bitty?(at least for an elephant!)

It was a lot of fun to feed them. We would try to pet them and they would only let us if we were giving them food at the same time, otherwise we would get a head but.

Yes, I kissed a giraffe!

This is the femur of a giraffe. Huge!!! It was really heavy too. Made me glad we never got stepped on.

What a cool experience!

After visiting the giraffes, we headed to the Java House to eat some American food. It was actually started by a guy from New Jersey. Random. The food was a yummy change from our starch-only diet. They of course had coffee there, so my Kenyan addiction to espresso shakes started.

After lunch we headed to Nakumatt, the Kenyan version of Wal-Mart. It was evident that this was a town that the British live/d in because this isn't typical Kenya. The prices at the Nakumatt were actually comparable to our Wal-Mart here, so I'm sure only upper-class Kenyans shop here regularly.

This is where we bought all of our Kenyan tea and coffee to bring home. YUMMMMMM!

There is a man named Gilbert who goes around to purchase souvenirs and brings tons of them to Stu and Linda's house so we can just shop around in their house. He offers the best prices and if we see something around in our travels that we want, he goes out and gets it. How convenient is that? Then we are supporting someone we know and it makes shopping pretty painless! David also brought along some Masai bead work that his mother Agnus made. It was incredible! It was a great way to end our day off!