Wings out of Dadaab-Scholarships for refugee students

Evening before the trip as I leave the office:

Feisal:Rahma tomorrow we leave at 6am

Rahma:Yes I'll be in office by quarter to six.good night

6 am the next morning Feisal calls and I'm not ready(me and my poor sense of time) but almost ready so I say I will be there in five minutes and rush through last minute packing.I finish in record time and run to the car pack and the vehicles to be used during the journey are not there !!!!!! and I'm thinking this guys have decided to leave me  and I quickly call Feisal and he says they've gone to pick the students from the camps and they'll pick me finally as we leave Dadaab for Garissa.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay I can finish my handover notes,float accountability and take some breakfast before they are back.At 8 am they are in Dadaab and they call and I'm ready once at the gate and we are ready to leave the driver asks where is the escort.God I forgot/didn't know we needed escort to go to Garissa.Frantic calls to the security focal point and half an hour letter we are on our way :-).

3 hours later we are at Garissa for a break and all the students are given their pocket money and shopping allowances.We eat early lunch and we are on our way to Mombasa where the 24 students will be benefiting from trainings on automotive mechanic and electrical fittings at the Mombasa industrial training.The are excited but scared of going so far away from Dadaab and for some of them it's their first journey out of the camps.

What is the name of this village?? who leaves here? how far are we from Mombasa? are we about to arrive? and so many other questions are asked and are mostly answered by the driver and their shock when they see tents somewhere on the road as they think tents are only found in the camps.

After a long time we are at Masalani and to our disappointment we can't cross the River Tana as the bridge has been carried away by the floods (serikali ya Jubilee we are counting on you to fix our infrastructure). Everyone starts complaining how tired they are.After some consultations we decide to go back to Bura and cross the river Tana at the bridge there.

After a long and really tiresome journey(the road between Bura and Garsen is one of the worst I have ever travelled on and considering I travel on very poor roads this takes the cup) we arrive at Garsen town at 11 PM and overnight in Garsen.To continue the journey to Mombasa the next day.

This trip taught me that we can always share the little we have as one of the students who had bought somali cakes shared with all of us when he realized we might not be eating any supper because of the long journey and no centers to stop over for eating at that time of the night and that they are so many good people out there like the guy from Bura who helped us by acting as a guide for the driver from Bura bridge to the Hola Junction.