Grade-12 student Amber hosts this first one of the eight episodes in the Road Scholars series. She travels to Africa with other students including Martha, Mike, Sasha, Kate, Kim, Brad and Kylie, who later come to call themselves Team Lion.

They stay in the primitive Kuku Field Study Centre in southern Kenya, which is right at the edge of a game reserve in the bush, and so at night they can hear animals like hippos and hyenas.

They live in tents, with no hot water or electricity. To earn a high school credit in World Issues (Geography), they do their homework by the light of a lantern. If there is enough sunshine during the day, they also have a few hours of solar-powered lighting to depend on.

Amber gets nervous about not making any friends. She also gets nervous about making the others angry at her for having the video camera and getting everything on tape.

She gets excited at getting up early in the morning to go on her first safari. She gets even more excited to see, just a few feet away from her, a lion killing a wild beast. She gets to eat authentic Kenyan food, some of which is so excitingly hot and spicy that she has tears running down her face.

She gets to realise how some people in Kenya have so little, and how privileged she is to live in Canada, which makes her feel that she wants to start volunteering and giving back to the communities in Africa. She also gets to bond with one solid group of people on the trip, goofing around with them and having lots of good times 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

To Amber, the trip to Kenya is an incredible life-changing experience.