Year 6 Trip to Kilwa

Year 6 Trip to Kilwa

Our Year 6 residential trip to Kilwa Masoko and then Selous Game Reserve was a fabulous time for our students. We set off on our great adventure via three 4x4 safari vehicles to Kilwa and our most famous phrase during this first leg of the trip was the infamous, “Are we there yet?”

Needless to say, when we arrived, we were greeted by happy, friendly staff, the crystal blue ocean and a quaint beach lodge. Some highlights from Kilwa? Any one of our students will tell you that they most enjoyed the camaraderie of distributing almost 1 million shillings worth of donations as well as interacting and serving the children at Kilwa Kisiwani Primary School. They also enjoyed the tours and were surprisingly quite taken with the boat ride. In Kilwa, they got to celebrate a classmate's birthday, play team building activities and lots of tug of war! And did we mention the food? It was so yummy! We also didn’t know how so many bugs could be found at the beach along with many a hermit crab that seemed to really wake up and crawl everywhere at night.

The next leg of our journey was a 4 hour drive to Selous and what an amazing experience! The children were chuffed at the accommodations and the cooler weather and especially about the excitement of walking around the lodge with torches in the evening. They enjoyed the fantastic food, beautiful pool, yummy s’mores and friendly staff as well as some of the free games and the slightly overpriced soda that was available for purchase. We were surprised to have somewhat of an adventure on our river tour on Rufiji river and some of our students will tell you long tales about being stranded on a small stretch of land amidst many hippos where helpful tourists stopped to talk to and share a full bag of Haribo sweets with them. Did we mention that we got to run around on a 2-kilometre sand bank in the middle of the river whilst sipping hot chocolate, taking slow-mo’s and selfies as well as unfortunately, stepping into lots and lots of mud with the sunset as our backdrop? Amazing! The sights were breathtaking and the excitement of a game drive in safari vehicles with a pop-up top was such a treat for the children. We saw lots of animals such as various birds, hippos, small crocodiles, impala, a wildebeest, elephants, buffalo, vultures, warthogs, and many more.

We made many memories and are grateful for this time of bonding before the children set off on their next adventure to Secondary School.