It was the day of the fortnightly feeding programme. I had seen a few pictures and heard a bit about it from the other girls and understood that it was quite hard because you are essentially dishing out food parcels to the poor. There were loads of volunteers that day, about 11, so we could all take a food station - maize, rice, matches, oil, butter, tea, money, bread (I was on bread) bottles, beans, newspaper to light fires with, and salt. The whole thing is run by a local white Kenyan. She was very nice to us, but quite impatient at times and shouted at one woman who was late that if she was late again she'd get no food. She also got very agitated if the queue got out of shape. Kenyans aren't exactly known for their ability to queue and be on time... It was a strange event - all these incredibly poor people lined up with tickets round their necks, and then they passed down the line putting each item into their bag. Eventually everyone who had a ticket had passed through and collected their stuff, and there was a bit remaining. So we dished it out into 40 separate piles, and let 40 non-ticketed hopefuls who were outside come in and take a parcel. At the end of the second phase there was a little left over, So some of the girls were given this and told to "give it to the most deserving". Most of the volunteers weren't that keen on the feeding programme but we later learnt there was so much more to this situation than meets the eye.
We came back to Brackenhurst and had a 'reflection' session where we discussed the feeding programme at length. We were all asked our opinions on it, so I was honest and said I was a bit embarrassed to be there, a white person handing out food scraps to the poor black people. I don't think it agrees with African Impact's fundamental principles of sustainable projects so I wasn't sure why they were supporting it. They completely agreed, and we then got into a lengthy debate about what to do about it. Would pulling out and not offering a solution be better than continuing to help until we have a solution? What solutions could you suggest to the organizer who's so stuck in her ways? Does this give us an avenue into the community, after all it was through the programme that we got to know Hope school? How can you assess people's need for the food parcels, what makes them qualify and who are we to decide? And the beneficiaries have become dependent on the parcels so to change would be a massive upheaval for the community – how would they feel if instead of giving them 20 shillings to buy a cabbage we gave them cabbage seeds - grateful to be able to help themselves, or frustrated that they have no land to grow crops and have to wait months and work really hard on the land for the same result? It went on for an hour so I won't go into the details but I came out full of thought and definitely felt differently about the feeding programme afterwards.
The afternoon we went to Mukeu school for a bit of afternoon fun. I sat with Margaret, one of the clever kids I used to work with, and we found a rope so we tried some double skipping, then I tied her up in the rope and span her around much to the amusement of the other kids. We had to cut our visit short because one of the little boys David had fallen ill in the morning, and needed to be taken to hospital by us (we had taken the truck due to there being so many of us). So we left shortly and picked him up from a local clinic. Apparently he had a twisted intestine and in Kenya, that is life threatening because they don't have the ability/capacity to operate on such a thing. When we picked David up he seemed in good spirits, and was very excited to be on the bus. When the teacher asked him how he was feeling he said "sweet" - it brought a tear to my eye seeing him so happy just because he was on a bus, and knowing what he had ahead of him. I found it frustrating that the hospitals can't deal with something that in the UK wouldn't be life-threatening. I can tell you that David made it through the night and his intestines untwisted themselves and he's on the road to recovery.
That night Lisa and I painted some stones we collected. part of the syllabus for under 5s to get into primary school is to show they can 'sort and group' and they have no facilities at all at Hope school, so we thought we'd collect 3 sizes of stones, small medium and large, and paint them all different colours, so the kids could first sort by size, then by colour. The stones look great and the teacher Mary was really happy with them.
So it was back to Hope school on Thursday, and in my post chest-infection state I was hoping to take it a little bit easy today. Instead, the teacher Esther didn't turn up, so I had to take the entire class, by myself. If the lesson I was supposed to be teaching was 'chaotic colouring' then I should get some sort of award because my class excelled in that subject today. It was complete mayhem. The kids were banging the tables, some were on the tables jumping up and down, others wet themselves, lots started to cry or fight, if I could get one sat down with a picture and a colouring pencil they were quiet for a whole 2 minutes but I have 35 in my class so that was near impossible. Think of the scene in Kindergarden Cop when Arnie first takes the class and you'll get an idea of my morning.
Now I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "What Lydia could really of done with to help her in that class, in amongst the chaos and potentially dangerous situations, is not a Swahili translator, not some calming music perhaps, or even a qualified teacher. No. What she needs is a box of 400 chickens delivered." Well I can tell you that you thought correctly, as that is exactly what I was given that afternoon. The chicks were actually part of a project to give Hope school a sustainable income and I knew all about it and thought it was a great idea, but at that moment I was wondering where that crazy idea had come from. The chicks were very cute though...
The weekend i climbed Mount Longonot and went to a baby orphanage with Lisa - i'll write about that in the next entry. Lisa left on Sunday which was really sad, i don't know how i'm going to cope with Hope school by myself for a week but hey i'll soon find out...
Here are a couple of extra things that have happened in the previous weeks that I forgot to mention:
- The kids are obsessed with my 'Teenwolf' hairy arms. Mortifying.
- Have to be careful at the dinner buffet as they like to hide bananas in the food - disguised as the dish. So you think you may be getting battered fish, but in fact you may have just picked up a battered banana. Or, looks like curried potatoes - no. It's curried bananas.
- In the first week a small hurricane passed through the BOC playground. It was perfectly still air, then it got a bit windy, then a bit windier, and we just laughed and covered our eyes, then all of a sudden it got windier and then it got to the point that panic set in and we all scrambled for safety. It reminded me of the time my family let a firework off in the back garden and it fell over and shot toward me, my mum and brother. Natural instinct took over and we all tried to save ourselves but instead all three of us got stuck in the kitchen doorway. The wind was really quite terrifying, but it settled quite quickly. Later the driver told us that they get mini hurricanes through the area and that was one. Awesome.
- I found an entire separate section to our cottage, with another 20 beds, a kitchen and a living room, and in the lounge was a guitar! I had visions of me tuning the guitar and taking it into school to sing King of the Swingers to the kids, but after tuning it i realised that the neck was actually broken, lifting the strings about an inch from the stem so a beginner like me could never get a tune out of it. Shame.
- I made a huge mistake last week. I don't know what got into me but i ordered the cheese and ham sandwich. Suffice to say things haven't changed in that department and i was left bitterly disappointed...
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