The long trip ahead

7 more days for the odyssey, OK maybe it's not an odyssey buy is a really long trip! We are really exited, well Francisco and me because we haven't talk with Lucas this days. Anyways I'm sure he is really exited too. The trip ahead is a 12 hours and about 6500km long. In the map below we show the stops we have to do and what each represent (click the yellow pointers on the map for more info.).

Ver Getting to Kenya en un mapa más grande

In theory we have all the things we need, like our visas, plane tickets and vaccines, but you never know if you prepared yourself well enough in this kind of situations, because none of us knows Kenya or even Africa. 

More or less a month ago we started the preparation for the trip when we were sure that we were going to go to Kenya. The firs thing we did was to get our plane ticket, because the prices began to rise. After that, this is what we have done until now:

1. Vaccines: After all the excitement of the first week, in which we only google Kenya for about 500 times and watched google images for hours, the first thing we got concerned with were the vaccines. Francisco was the first to think about this and he went to the Junta de Castilla y León in Segovia, where there is an international center of vaccination. Here you can look the place:
   
   Ver mapa más grande
   This place is actually really cool and the treatment we received was great. To come here you have to make an appointment before because the first steep for the vaccination is an interview. In this interview you present all the information about your past vaccines and you tell the doctor where are you going to go, which countries and which places in those countries. The doctor checks the diseases alarms of the different places and recommends the vaccines you need. We said to the doctor that we were going to go to: Kenya, Uganda, Ethopia and Tanzania. We are not sure if we are going to go to all this places, but its better to be prepared in case we go. With this destinations and our past vaccines (which according to the expert where the normal ones) the doctor said that we needed to be prick 6 times, for yellow fiber (the most important), polio, flew, typhoid fiber, hepatitis A and meningitis. Each arm was perforated two times and each leg once in less than 20 minutes, it was an intensive vaccination. But that wasn't all, as homework we needed to drink some medicines for cholera and malaria. The last one we have to drink when we are in a place with malaria danger. As I said the most important vaccine was the yellow fiber, and that is why we received a "passport" certifying that we where protected. We were informed about other health risks of the trip and the precautions we should take. At the end of the day we were well informed, protected and with pain in arms and legs. I feel safe right now but I hope I don't need any of this things wile being in Africa. 
2. Visa: The second important issue that we had to solve quick was the visa. Almost all the countries need visa to enter Kenya, the counties that don't need are from Central Africa and some from America (like Uruguay). I suppose the visas in Kenya are like this because they have a considerable amount of tourists so they can make some money through the visas (in Spain you pay 20€ for it), is not like in US where the visas are required to avoid emigrants. So it was quite easy to get the visa, we only had to fill a form, that is in the web page of the embassy and was only one page long. Then go to the Kenyan embassy in Madrid, which is in a really nice neighborhood by the way, to deliver our passport, 20€ and the form filled. The day after we had our visas. The only problem we have now is that they gave us tourism visas, which will not cover the hole trip, they will expire 4 days before we leave. We will have to make a new ones in Kenya.
Ver mapa más grande Kenyan embassy
3. Final exams: Just before Holy Week we had our final exams and final presentations at IE. With all the work and the studying that represents, we did't have a lot of time to continue learning about Kenya and preparing ourselves for the trip and the work we have to do. We had in our minds all the time Kenya and Nairobi, but we had to concentrate in the most important thing at the moment. We knew that the most important thing were the exams, even if we didn't like the idea.
4. Prepare the project: The exams passed last Friday and the other important issue we had to settle was the execution of the idea of sharing the trip with everyone. So this last days I have been thinking ways of sharing with you guys the experience of having internships in IE with a NGO. Now we have a twitter (IEBBAfrica), a page in facebook (facebook.com/iebbaafrica) an email (ieinafrica@gmail.com) and this blog. So we have a lots of ways to communicate. Feel free to write to us, like us, twitt us, email us, blog us or just read us. 
5. Preparing the work: Because it is Holy Week it's hard to talk with the people of the NGO and even with some of IE, but Francisco and me have been trying to investigate more about what we have to do and where are we going to be working, sleeping and moving in Nairobi. Until now we know that we will work helping to develop micro companies, generate employment and giving classes to kids. We don't know how exactly we are going to do this things, specially generate employment, but we have been told that these are our duties. 

Basically that's what we have been doing this past weeks. Now that I see it, it's not a lot, this days we have to continue working in the details, but the good news is that we are really exited and we don't mind to spend a hours investigating. After we get to Nairobi I will tell you if the preparation was enough or if we were lazy idiots.

See you around guys.