This is the blog of my time in Limuru, Kenya as a volunteer with African Impact. Whilst I was in Kenya I worked with local communities, schools and orphanages. This blog explains what it's like being a volunteer, a bit about what African Impact is really all about, and telling the raw facts of poverty and deprivation in Africa.
To give you an idea where my opinions are being made I’ll briefly explain my background and previous travel history. I'm 30 and I work in marketing. I spend my time reading, doing anything outdoors, going to local gigs and adding to my extensive 80s video collection. I come from a small town in Wiltshire, UK which consists mainly of cul-de-sacs and fast food venues and where the highlight of the family social calendar is when the fair comes to town. When I was at Uni I had the classic map of the world on my wall and put drawing pins in places I wanted to visit. I've done the typical round-the-world coming of age trip, and since have started to explore the world in a more open-minded manner. Spending time in the Szechuan region of China and at the orangutan sanctuary in Borneo are two of the more exotic trips I’ve taken. I'm painfully aware that I’m very under-travelled, but you've got to start somewhere!
After a pretty rubbish summer, I became so fed up of thinking of my own problems I decided to book a trip to Africa and try to get a different perspective on life. What I hoped to achieve from this trip is a grasp of the bigger picture which would hold me in good stead for the rest of my life, as well as a bit of a break from the norm of the 9-5 job. I’m also treating it as a bit of work experience in schools, as I’ve always loved the idea of being a teacher and may even change careers in the future. I booked in September 2010 and started here in February 2011.
I arrived on the Monday morning at 7am local time, and after having no sleep at all on the plane over I was feeling very disorientated. I managed to get a visa, locate my bags and find the African Impact team waiting for me in arrivals. As soon as we left the airport I saw two giraffes running free in the bush as well as hundreds of enormous storks sat in the trees throughout the city. I was picked up with another volunteer Mark who was from Aspen, Colorado, who said that it had been snowing when he left. It was already boiling hot as we drove through the Nairobi morning traffic, what a shock the weather must have been to him! The morning Nairobi traffic was heavy and chaotic, hundreds of people were walking up the dusty streets to go to work and bus after bus passes packed full of commuters.
When we got to Brackenhurst I had some breakfast and just spent the day unpacking and snoozing. Brackenhurst reminds me of the Kellerman's lodge in Dirty Dancing – there is main building and loads of surrounding buildings all housing different activities and the place is actually quite a posh hotel for the proper guests, but we're more like the staff that sleep in quarters on the outskirts and carry watermelons, (unfortunately it's without the raucous parties). I really like this set up, it makes you instantly feel part of it and not a tourist. The place is absolutely beautiful – it's set in the middle of a tea plantation on the side of a valley and is all green and luscious. It has cute little brick cottages sporadically found throughout what could be mistaken as English country gardens, except with crickets and vibrantly coloured birds and flowers.
Later that day I had my orientation session with the project co-coordinator Charity. I met another volunteer, Robert, a police commissioner from Belgium. I find him very interesting and we're already becoming pals. One of the reasons I really enjoy travelling is because you get to meet people like Robert that you wouldn’t otherwise come across.
Charity talked us through the purpose of African Impact and the different projects they support. What was made clear is that African Impact support responsible volunteering, and they go to extreme lengths to make sure that volunteers only positively contribute to the programs. For instance, you could never come into a school with a load of donations, a better approach to resource giving would be to get to know the school, understand what they need and then if necessary give them the money to buy it for themselves locally, which also supports the local economy. Money is not offered freely to schools and communities, but money would be available if for instance someone wanted to train to be a teacher. They do run individual donation pots if there is a need for something, such as a new water pump for a school or a chicken farm so that a community is self-sustaining. Sustainability is key for everything they do, they never support short term fixes.
Charity talked us through the three current schools they support. She suggested that Robert goes to Body of Christ School because it's quite a physical challenge, and I was offered either Hope School or Mukeu School. Hope has come about in the last few years; it started with a woman who was essentially offering the community child support as she noticed many of the kids in the local tea-picking community were spending their days just sitting about the village. From there it grew and grew and now there are about 80 kids. The challenge with Hope school would be to try to help without taking over – any improvements need to be made through Mary so she can continue with them after the volunteers have gone. Mukeu is a school for the mentally disabled. In Kenya there is a stigma attached to having a child with a disability, not to mention the time and financial burden that a disabled child would place on their lives, so often the kids are dropped off at Mukeu and their parents aren’t seen again. Some have guardians such as grandparents but 38 out of the 40 live there too, so it’s also an orphanage.
The choice of school was left up to me but I wasn’t sure which to go for, they both would give me different challenges. We left it undecided but later Charity rang me and said that they'd decided that Mukeu was the right school for me as it would be more of a challenge. Charity felt that in her experience the English like order and routine, and that Hope school may be too disorganized and that also it might not be busy enough for me considering the work I’d been doing previously, so Mukeu, whilst chaotic, would at least keep me busy. What that really meant I was later to find out...
Dinner at Brackenhurst is delicious - it is quite European but with a hint of African: rice, potatoes, lamb, chicken, fish, and all cooked incredibly well. After the busy days here we really look forward to dinner - especially as lunch is a running joke because it is so bad. Everyone warned me not to go for the Cheese and Ham sandwich but I wouldn't listen. It's basically like the cheese had been dipped in sugar, and ham, if ham came from the hind of a Lizard... The other choices are peanut butter and jam, avocado and pepper, goat and mustard...
There are also running tracks here which I was very excited about - the first day I went for a run down the 1km track. I limbered up and set off only to find it so hilly that if you run down the hills you'd break your ankles, and you need to crawl up the other side with your hands. But I really enjoyed it, though I did have a bit of paranoia that an opportunistic lion was watching me the whole time and even did a little sprint at a point where a low-flying plane and my iPod mixed sounded like a lion roaring... now I’ve had sleep I’ve realized that lions don’t even live in the bush, especially not in a populated area such as Brackenhurst!
Monday night I met the rest of the volunteers. They are a range of ages and nationalities, but mainly girls and most between the ages of 18 – 25. I share a room with two lovely girls, one from the UK and the other German. They're both already becoming good friends as we bond over the madness and incredibly tough things we have to deal with every day.
Tuesday came, my first day at school. I was by myself that day as the other Mukeu volunteer had to go to Body of Christ that day to paint, so I was dropped off, introduced to the school staff and told I would be picked up at four. Words can hardly describe how I felt at that point, anxious, excited, apprehensive, hopeful, but mainly I couldn’t wait to get going, after all this was why I was here and it was about to happen! I was faced with 40 overly-friendly kids, all wanting hugs and grabbing my hands. This is not uncommon in most of the schools I’ve since visited, but as Mukeu is for the mentally disabled they are even more friendly and tactile if that’s possible. The first thing that my western eyes saw was their clothes – they were caked in filth and their clothes had holes in it, no, not just a few holes, they were essentially falling apart. The staff explained to me the order of the day – Singing, followed by math, then lunch, then some cleaning. I felt quite emotional in the first half an hour as I tried to keep my composure - I just felt so incredibly sorry for the kids and the staff who were keeping it going and clearly overwhelmed.
The kids were not all mentally disabled – they were a mix of autistic, had Down’s Syndrome, deformed body parts, ADHD, HIV+, etc, their common ground is that they aren’t fit for mainstream school so need to attend a special school for socialization and eventually, will learn a trade so that they can become members of the community and become self-sufficient. I pulled myself together and got stuck in by helping the clever kids with their math – the best kid at math is Joseph who has a deformed hand and a wonky eye (I’m sure that’s not the technical term but please forgive me!) I marked his book and I put a cross next to one of the sums, but he came back adamant that he'd got it right, and when I checked it he had - oops! That's what happens when you try to mark 5 kids’ books at the same time whilst another kid jumps on your back continually!!
The day progressed to singing, then to my lizard lunch, then in the afternoon, cleaning. I decided to help with the washing up – what an unbelievably back-breaking chore. What I couldn't believe is that one of the kids was crying because it was her turn to do the washing up, but another kid had jumped in and got there first, the first was crying because she wanted to do it so much! Can you imagine kids at home crying because they want to do the washing up?! We washed up industrial sized pots, sharp knives, about 100 plates and spoons and all sorts of other things, all in a pot of dirty water, with a couple of dirty rags. The kids were real troopers, after an hour I had to take a break as it was killing my back leaning over the pot but the kids just kept going. By the end I’d never been so dirty from a cleaning task! A little girl called Janet who can only be about 7 and is the sweetest thing ever, was on washing up duty and didn’t complain once, never got bored and walked away or argued with the other kids, I was so impressed. When she saw the state of my arms after the washing up she was horrified and insisted on cleaning them, it was a very humbling experience. Later I taught her some pat-a-cake games and we played around, I find her incredible. I am getting to know all the kids slowly but Joseph and Janet stuck out for me on the first day. There is also Faith who is deaf and dumb but so happy (likes to jump on my back) and Paul who has the cutest face and pretends he can do math when he cannot, but he can write well. After a while it's actually hard to spot what's wrong with them and you don’t notice anything mentally wrong with them at all, all you see if how happy and friendly they are. The day ended at three-ish and I was picked up and taken back to Brackenhurst to relax, wash, run, eat and most importantly, sleep!! (There’s no denying these days are exhausting!).
The following morning was dedicated to Body of Christ School – some of the existing volunteers had organized an activities morning and sports day. In the mornings we meet in the African Impact office and are briefed on our day. That morning I was assigned to go and pick the kids up from the school in the truck. It can only be described as a truck and not a bus as you need to climb a ladder to get into it! What I love about volunteering with African Impact is the variety of the days, I am always doing something different and it really tests my initiative and resourcefulness. Once we had 75 children, 4 teachers and 3 volunteers back on the truck we made our way back to Brackenhurst. I had a little girl sat on my lap who clearly was having the time of her life. She must have had a good view because she was screaming and pointing at everything she could see in Swahili – “Tractor! Water! DONKEY!!” Which would then excite the other kids, it was quite a task to get them to all sit down and keep safe.
The activities planned were things like face-painting, ball games and hand-printing. The volunteers spread out amongst the different activities whilst the kids broke into six small groups to make their way round the different activities. I was first on face-painting. The kids would look at me mesmerized as I painted something cute on their faces, then they would look into the mirror and I’d watch as their little faces lit up, it was fantastic. I later joined the hand-printing station, whereby we’d try and get the kids to dip their hands in the paint, and then place them on paper to make nice pictures for them to take home. They weren’t really sure what was going on to be honest, but they really enjoyed getting their hands in the paint. After activities we took them ‘quietly’ up to the top field for sports. We fed them all flapjacks and milk, and then set up different sports stations. Compared to British schools, the Kenyan schools I’ve visited could well be described as chaotic, so it was no surprise that the kids pretty much did what they wanted at this point, but we did have some fun with some donated Gymboree parachutes and balloons.
That afternoon four of us went back to Mukeu School; to me it already felt like home. We did some weaving that afternoon which was surprisingly a really good group activity, all the kids sat around and helped a little bit.
That evening we had a delicious barbecue. Bear in mind it’s February and when I left the UK it was about eight degrees and raining, so a barbecue was such a welcome treat. One of the drivers is a Masai and so he and his friends had dressed up and did a traditional Masai dance – this is the type where the men jump as high as they can (this is to impress the ladies – I’ve since heard that for the ladies to impress the men they need to have big ears, so there’s hope for us all). It was great fun to watch and many of the volunteers had a go too.
That concludes the first African Impact blog. Until next time! X
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