Home sweet home/Day 9

Nakupenda wewe Kenya! (I love you Kenya!)

On our last day every one of us seemed to be a little sad because we knew that the trip would be over soon. Not everyone were thrilled of the early wake up nor the awful traffic we had to experience in the morning.

First we went to visit ICIPE, which is an abbreviation of International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology. There we met a Finnish project leader, who was very keen to tell about his work and life in Kenya. We had a very interesting slideshow presentation about climate change and projects of ICIPE in Kenya. For example, now every one of us know that the research is based on studying maize and coffee in different locations and by comparing those results.

Afterwards we were able to visit two laboratories in the centre: the other one studied coffee pests and the other one different ways to control the pests and therefore protect crops like maize.

So, after we were taught so much about coffee, we traveled to a nearby coffee farm and had another, though very short and pithy, explanation about coffee plants. We were also able to see how the coffee beans were processed and dried before roasting and packaging them.

The coffee refinery had an amazing scenery around it. We also paid a visit to a local cave, where the independence soldiers seeked shelter roughly 50 years ago. The cave was located behind a waterfall in a lush forest just nearby. After those two quick tours in Paradise Lost we headed to Nairobi airport: it was time to fly back to home, back to Finland!

The security was "a little compromising" in both Nairobi and Amsterdam airports. Anyway, the two flights were fairly pleasant. Our group was separated along the way: Maiju, Mikael, Noah and Alexander had to stay longer in Amsterdam with Jarmo because not all of us could fit on the same KLM flight.

So, it was time to leave Kenya behind for a while at least. I think most of us already miss back to Kenya: the whole trip was a very educative and life changing experience. The way of life there shocked many of us. And the weather wasn't so bad either; 40 degrees difference between Kenyan and Finnish weather. Anyway, we hope for the opportunity to visit Kenya sometime in the future and see all these amazing things again!

- Aleksanteri