Volunteering - the final verdict

Alas folks, my volunteering experience is over. I still remember the moment I decided I come volunteering in Africa. I’d gone through several miserable months [in fact years] of working and knew I wanted a break to go traveling, a desire my parents vetoed, completely in awe of this unfounded wanderlust and genuinely concerned that it would be unsafe for me to do it alone. Ever the respectful daughter, I went away and tried to think of a “safer” option that would allay their fears. In said moment, I recalled a conversation I’d had with one of my favourite people one summer’s day in a friendly Nando’s restaurant in London many moons before, where we’d had a detailed, thought-provoking chat about our longer-term life goals. It was truly one of those light-bulb-lighting-in-my-head decisions - automatic, firm, pleasing to my mind and heart AND incidentally to the family. Deciding where to go and who to volunteer with took some research but were fairly straightforward decisions. The enormity and finality of it all didn’t hit me till the day I handed in my notice at work, when my boss expressed dismay and surprise at my decision. But it was short-lived. Doubt and insecurity didn’t rear their ugly heads till about the week prior to my departure, when all of a sudden, I could think of a basketful of reasons why this was an absurd, impulsive, childish pursuit of God-knows-what. I was assured that it was just last moment jitters…it didn’t feel that way, especially not when I had to say my goodbyes or when I was all checked in and watched tears gather in my mother’s eyes…all that feels like such a long time ago…

Nearly 7 months later, I can say, in a rather clichéd way, that this is one of the best things I’ve done with my life. The memories I’ve gathered and documented here will be with me forever and for my friends, brace yourselves, my stories are bound to bore you in years to come :D. Some said it would be great, I underestimated how great; some said they knew people who didn’t like their experiences, how could they not?

I’ve received several emails, comments on facebook and on some of my posts here, applauding my efforts. I’m grateful for all these and if there was ever a time I doubted myself, those encouragements obliterated that feeling. I’ve met so many wonderful people in all the countries I’ve visited who were supportive and encouraged what I was doing, which more than compensated for the few who viewed what I was doing with some scorn, prejudice or somehow thought me unqualified for the role

I’m especially grateful to my best friends and family without whose support, I probably would have buckled somewhere along the way. From the thought-provoking interactions that led to the decision to embark on this journey, to the encouragement that it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it, to the suggestions of what to name the blog, what to take on the journey, travel tid-bits, kind words, those who offered me a place to sleep, those who faithfully read and commented on the blog; words really cannot express my gratitude. I’m also thankful for my faithful battalion of blog followers; hope you’ve enjoyed reading my stories and managed to live vicariously through me! :D

Midway through my journey, I started receiving emails asking questions regarding what I’d enjoyed so far, what hadn’t worked so well, the best country I’d visited, best volunteer experience, etc. Thought I’d wait till the end of the volunteer experience to express a fair opinion on these questions. Would start with this caveat though: each experience was unique and rewarding in its own way and if I had to do the trip all over again, would definitely not exclude any of them. So, on that note here goes

Zanzibar
You’ve seen the pictures and I’m sure cannot deny that Zanzibar is beautiful by any measure! The white sandy beaches, perfect sunrises and sunsets, [usually] friendly dolphins, great snorkeling and scuba diving opportunities, just to name a few. It has to get 5 stars for aesthetics…note that this vote in my mind is marginal to Mozambique and Cape Town. The volunteering experience, while not the most challenging, was perfect for the start of the trip. It had the right level of intensity and challenge and taught me a few valuable lessons that perhaps helped enrich my other experiences

Kenya
Hands down, should receive 5 stars for the most challenging volunteer experience. I was forced to step out of my comfort zone, focus on the job at hand and more importantly, think about the best way to apply myself. Also have to say that I admire the fact that Kenyans are reaching out to their own and it was great to note that Kenyans run all the NGOs that Fadhili works with. Kenya, like many an African country, is plagued with many problems and it’s refreshing to see that some can rise above the mayhem and show love and care for others. These NGOs may not be perfectly run but their efforts are definitely a step in the right direction

Mozambique
Receives 5 stars as a holiday destination. I’m talking about the total package here: beautiful scenery, a host of activities to indulge in: horseback riding, snorkeling, scuba diving, surfing, island hopping, etc; delightful cuisine and prices that offer good value for money. Getting there by plane is expensive but for me, it was worth every penny. If you ever had to travel there, would highly recommend flying to Jo’burg and driving or busing it to Moz. I admit that my volunteer experience there was ever so slightly soured by some of my sentiment toward the management style but it was still a good experience. I think the project has a potential for expansion and could definitely be improved on a few grounds – reaching out to the medical community, more widespread HIV education, liaising with the schools for reading and art clubs, etc

Zambia
I really enjoyed my Zambia experience because it exposed me to a very wide range of things and showed me what a well-run project can achieve. I’ll give it 5 stars for breadth and impact on the community. I was always on my toes in my time there: be it teaching, building, working with the old folk, farming, etc. While I didn’t get involved in all aspects of the project, I know that the other volunteers who did get to work on the parts that I missed, had a lot of positive things to say about their experiences

St Lucia, South Africa
I shall give a 5 star rating for its HIV education efforts. It had the most structured effort and the impact of AI’s efforts here were the most far-reaching. Overall, the project was also well run and offered an abundance of good experience to all the volunteers. It was also the first project that exposed me to working with very young children, an experience I didn’t expect to find quite as enjoyable as I did

Cape Town, South Africa
I considered CT my best city experience in the whole trip. It had the amazing combination of perfect scenery and modern convenience. I’d recommend it as a stop for all you city lovers out there. While I didn’t experience any of the more negative aspects of what city life tends to offer, I’ve been told that CT can be unfriendly. Though for the more savvy amongst you, this should almost not be a problem for you. If I managed to survive unscathed, I’m sure many others can. The volunteer experience on the other hand was not as challenging though I have to give a 5 star rating to the young ones I worked with here. They were the most fun and interactive: from their fervent hugs and kisses each morning when I walked through the school gates, to their inquisitive and intelligent questions and their love for all things fun! I even learnt a thing or two from them

For the other countries I visited: Uganda gave me the opportunity to do something daring and adventurous; if anyone had told me 8 months ago that I’d try bungee jumping at any stage in my life, I would’ve laughed them in the face. Though I will not be paying anyone money to terrify myself that much again, I’m glad I tried it. Swaziland was very picturesque and exposed me to some beautiful aspects of African culture. If anyone finds themselves in SA, would definitely recommend making a stop there, if even for a couple of days, just to check it out

The trip has no doubt taught me a lot of things and to list them all here would be near impossible. But I just want to shed some light on a few of the personal and other “revelations”
o I love children and being around them. I think they represent everything that is real and beautiful in this life: innocence, the ability to give unrequited, unconditional love, unbridled trust, fearlessness [admittedly, likely backed by naiveté], being non-judgmental, the ability to forgive AND forget, youthful exuberance, the ability to experience joy in its purest form, the ability to dream and remain undeterred in the belief that they can come true, etc. In them I’ve seen ghosts of myself; shadows and memories of who I once was, now dimmed by the lull of adulthood. I’ve relished my time with them and while I have no teaching ambitions, have thoroughly enjoyed the teaching experience
o My experiences exposed me to so many issues on our dear continent that I was hitherto ignorant about. I have managed to garner a full appreciation of some of these issues and ways in which we can help. While I’ve worked hard in the last few months, there is still so much more to be done. I will certainly be attempting to brainwash my African friends [at least] to chip in their two cents of help. More than ever, my belief that the solutions to some of the problems in Africa will only emerge if we start to effect changes at a micro level, has been confirmed!
o Wanderlust is a great thing; how dull, ignorant and unimaginative life is if we don’t travel and see; experience the way of life of other people; get to appreciate what a beautiful world we live in. I have become its humble servant and will definitely be doing more traveling in the years to come, contingent on good finances and a healthy, long life of course

I’m off to Namibia and Botswana now, so you haven’t heard the last from me. I will be in touch as soon as I can with news of my experiences traveling around these countries. Can’t believe that in approximately two weeks, I will be back in England again!

The journey to Mozambique

My last week in Nairobi was fairly unpleasant, putting it mildly. Amongst other things, I was battling with the flu for what seemed like the umpteenth time. By the middle of the week, I was in a fragile state and had to spend a day in bed to at least get some rest. The medication [really OVER medication] ensued but it seemed to work in a nonchalant fashion as by the weekend I was still blowing and coughing out multi-coloured “things”. Needless to say, I was ready to go!

I was up at the unfriendly hour of 3am on Monday to get ready and head to the airport. I had spent the weekend with my lovely friend, Miss T, who lives in Nairobi (and had done so for the last few weekends) so I said goodbye to her with mixed feelings (sad to leave her but jubilant to leave and hopefully be able to regain my health as this town proved rather unkind to me in that regard). I was at the airport by 5am and went through the motions of checking in, still half asleep. Of course, I was slapped right awake when they told me the charge I’d incurred for excess luggage (I didn’t go easy on the curio and gift shopping in Kenya, I confess). I negotiated and got the price down somewhat but it was still a staggering amount to pay, I felt. We were airborne by 8am and I took the opportunity to catch up on some sleep though the flight to Johannesburg was only 4 hours long and we arrived a little ahead of schedule.

The Tambo airport in Jo’Burg is rather impressive if only for its sheer vastness; it’s generously endowed with all the mod cons. The immigration procedure was very straightforward and within minutes I was done, luggage retrieved and fervently hugging my dearest friend, Miss M, with whom I was going to be spending the next 24 hours before catching my flight to Mozambique. She’d taken a day off work to spend time with me as we’d not seen each other for about 3 years and not only was a full catch up session long overdue, we were supposed to plan our road trip to Namibia and Botswana. She first drove me to her lovely home in the suburbs of Sandton. The parts of Jo’burg I saw on the way were beautiful and well developed. SA is definitely on top of its game, I was tempted to think; though I’ll save my in-depth analysis for when I see the rest of the country later this year. Miss M then announced that she’d booked me into a spa for half a day of beautification followed by an evening of comedy. I was totally unprepared for this kind and thoughtful gesture; I’d envisaged a long lunch followed by sleep. I accepted her offer with a grateful smile knowing that this was exactly what I needed after that last week in Nairobi.

After dropping off my luggage, we went for a lovely lunch accompanied by a glass of wine each and planned our trip. The spa session was splendid! I got a full body massage, a pedicure and a facial; I felt brand new. The beautician admonished me for not taking good care of my skin: “overexposure to the sun and lack of exfoliation”, she said. I was too relaxed and sleepy to explain my activities of the last 11 weeks so I just took her “advice and recommendations” quietly. It was dusk by the time we were done, so we headed to town for the comedy show. The show featured international comedians and there were 7 of them in total. I don’t remember the last time I laughed as hard as the first couple of comedians made me laugh; their names I shan’t forget: Dean Edwards -NY based comedian and Trevor Noah - a South African comedian. The rest were funny too, just not as much as those two. It was a great evening and I went to bed that night giggling and reminiscing about some of the jokes with Miss M.

I was actually very sad to be dropped off at the airport the next morning. She had made my first taste of SA sweet and I wanted to stay. Nevertheless, I checked in, said another sad goodbye and went off to kill the hour I had before the plane took off. This time there was no big deal with excess luggage; I had the presence of mind to leave some of my luggage with Miss M and travel with just the one bag for the rest of the trip, till we link up for the Namibia-Botswana leg
The airline that took us to Mozambique was a small one and there were no more than 40 people on the plane in the end (we did a stopover in Kruger, another part of South Africa, to pick up some more passengers). After 2 hours or so of flying, we arrived in the beach town of Vilanculos. The Indian ocean was in full view, even from the airport; and the weather was an excellent 24 degrees Celsius.

The volunteer program coordinators were there to pick me up, as promised. A short drive later, we were at the volunteer camp, which consists of a cluster of huts and a swimming pool (yay!) and is located a stone’s throw from the ocean (yay!). There are about 12 volunteers in total at the camp now, all European. Each hut houses 4 volunteers, each with a single bed and a set of bamboo shelves; there is also an en-suite bathroom with a shower and toilet.

I arrived just after lunch so introduced myself, hurriedly dropped off my luggage and was off to work. I later found out that there is hot water (yay!) if only in the evenings, 3 meals a day cooked by a local chef; a combination of western and local food (yay!) – okay I will stop yaying now! Unfortunately, electricity does not get as far as our camp so power is available on the camp for only 4 hours a day via a generator. Can’t really complain about that; work seems to take up the whole day and the vicinity is so beautiful so any free time should be spent enjoying the outdoors. By the end of the first day, I knew I would definitely be enjoying my time here

PS. The internet situation in Vilanculos is a tad tricky so I envisage getting in touch once a week or so. Also, things did not exactly go according to plan with the Kenya and Uganda photo and video upload, as referenced earlier. I will try to get them up as soon as is feasible and let you guys know

Kenya: the good, the bad, the f'ugly...and the interesting

As my time in Kenya draws to an end, I find myself in a reflective mood. I just wanted to summarise my perspective on this dear land that has been my home for the last 7 weeks. My list is by no means exhaustive; I’ve limited it to key observations. In spite of some of the comments I will make, I know I’ll miss being here especially because I doubt any of the upcoming countries in my trip will be anything like it

The Good
1. Kenyans are very friendly people. Their hospitality was obvious from the moment I arrived and has been consistent. If a Kenyan walks into a room full of people, it is not uncommon to find them dishing out effusive handshakes (matched with wide, pleasant grins) and in some cases adding a hug or kisses on the cheek. Now, being blessed with one of those generically African faces, I’ve had many incidents where people reel out words to me in Kiswahili, often in that friendly way that suggests an inside joke, assuming that I’m Kenyan. This warm reception is sometimes followed by a slight disappointment that I’m not one of them.
2. The landscape and scenery of this land is breathtakingly beautiful. That is also true for the other East African countries I’ve been to but I’ve found myself in awe every time I’ve driven past the great rift valley or rows and rows of hills and flat lands with acacia trees. I made a trip to a place called Hellsgate a weekend or two ago, which is located in Naivasha, a town some 2 hours away from Nairobi. I’m told it was the shooting place for one of the Indiana Jones movies as well as the first Tomb raider movie. The road to Hellsgate is littered with rocky mountains, dusty roads and hot water springs. It makes for a great bike ride and hike. Of course this is only one of many gorgeous places in Kenya; I’ve mentioned the Maasai Mara, where I went on Safari, Nakuru (with the lake and flamingoes); there’s also Mombasa (the beachfront town which I’m told is a lot like Zanzibar), just to mention a few.
3. The more developed parts of Nairobi are very developed with amenities and facilities akin to what can be found in the West. There is a shopping mall near where I live that has shops, restaurants and cafes comparable to any shopping mall in London. When I find myself at a coffee shop sipping a vanilla latte, using wireless internet and surrounded by people of all nationalities, I have to remind myself that I’m in Nairobi. Of course, this level of development in a place like Nairobi comes with its woes, but we’ll get on to that shortly

The Bad
1. Unfortunately, despite the point made in “3.” above, Kenya is still classified as a developing country, which suggests that most of its people live at or below the poverty line. The disparity in income between the rich and the poor is vast and the evidence of this is blatant. Places like Kibera, one of the largest slums in the world with over a million inhabitants, is located a 20-minute walk away from the affluent shopping mall I described earlier. Its shocking to think that whilst half-eaten plates are being cleared off restaurant tables in said shopping mall, there a people just down the road who can barely rustle a square meal a day.
2. It is fairly logical that the display of affluence in the face of such poverty simply incites and outrages the poor masses. Since the government and powers that be are doing nothing to level the playing field, people take things into their own hands and deal with the situation as they see fit. Unfortunately, muggings, car jacking, armed robbery and the like are very commonplace in the country. Security [or lack thereof] is a major issue, which affects people of all races. It is unsafe to drive around at night as there is a good chance (especially if you are alone and/or female) that you will be followed home and mugged or even killed. Pickpockets operate round the clock in the city and there is sometimes nothing one can do to stop them. The car jacking is so bad that sometimes armed men raid even buses and other public transport modes. I have been very lucky (fervently knocking wood for my last few days here) that in my time here I’ve had not a single incident.
3. I may have had a whine about this issue already but have to mention it anyway: I didn’t know that Kenya (especially Nairobi) got reasonably cold in its “winter” months of July and August. After basking in the sun in Zanzibar, I came breezing in expecting similar weather only to be surprised by cold, overcast and miserable days that remind me too much of London. Of course, I was wholly unprepared and have had to wear layers of clothing each day of my time here in an attempt to keep warm. I’m one of those people who just don’t do well in cold. When winter hits in England, I wear layers of clothes plus a warm jacket, thick stockings, boots, ear muffs, wooly hats, large scarves, gloves; you name it, I’ll be clad in it. So being unable to adequately protect myself from the cold has been a tad frustrating. I’ve consequently nursed a cold from the day I arrived. It often morphs into a flu-like situation that has me sipping tonnes of ginger and lemon tea, popping pills and wearing even more layers of clothing. It of course doesn’t help that we don’t get hot showers in my host home (though I managed to work out a deal where I get a lukewarm bucket of water for splahbaths) and the house gets very cold at night because there is no heating. In fact, as I speak, I’ve been trying to shake off the flu for the last few days with a dismal amount of success. I will not be missing that side of things, that’s for sure

The F’ugly
1. Given that there has been a drought in the country for the last few months, following a pathetic rainy season, there hasn’t been enough water to go round the country for the last few weeks. There has been a water rationing system going on and most recently, electricity rationing was also introduced (power in Kenya is derived from one source: that generated from a dam, which evidently dried up with the drought). A power-rationing schedule has been issued, which of course, is never followed; they turn the power off and on as they see fit. The power is usually turned off in the day (regardless of business needs) meaning that businesses grind to a halt if they do not have alternative power sources (bear in mind that generators are very expensive to buy and run). The ruckus this causes is obvious. The water rationing is none the better; parts of the city dwell in stench as a result of it. In my house, baby wipe showers have become the order of the day (yes, that means you wipe yourself down with baby wipes to keep clean). The longest I could go for was three days before I needed water to touch my skin. Its unclear when the situation will be ameliorated; for now its indefinite
2. A few posts ago, I shared my thoughts on the existence of IDP camps in the country. I found myself at a literary festival shortly after I’d visited the first IDP camp, where conveniently, I happened upon a panel discussion of the post-elections violence and its implications on the country. For context, the audience and panelists were mostly middle class. Many positive things were said especially in relation to the IDP camps. It seemed the people present were aware of the situation and regularly discuss what needs to be done to eradicate it (unfortunately, this is not universally true of Kenyans; I’ve met some myself who do not know what IDP stands for). My frustration though was that no one seems to be actually DOING something about it. It’s all well and good to discuss other people’s woes over a bottle of beer and its something completely different to mobilize a few friends to drive out there regularly and give these people some food and supplies (since clearly the government is not going to do it on a consistent basis). The sad thing, and I’m glad someone pointed it out, is that if nothing is done NOW, the next elections will be even worse as the number of disgruntled people with nothing to lose would have multiplied. Its effectively a time bomb waiting to explode

The Interesting
1. It seems the memo issued by Angelina Jolie and Madonna on adopting black children made its first stop in Nairobi. I say so because it’s fairly common to see black children being carried around by white mothers. In fact the other day, I sighted a family of white parents with one white child, one Indian child and a black baby (bearing too much resemblance to the Pitt family). I hope these people understand what they are doing by raising these kids in the Nairobi I have described to you. If it’s just a fashion statement, then they have another think coming. I have nothing against adoption or reaching out to others in need but complicated issues can arise in families of differing races (like language, culture, etc) and the income divide mentioned previously (the white families are usually affluent, certainly by Kenyan standards) further exacerbates said complications. But that is just my view
2. A fellow volunteer and I were having a discussion the other day and she expressed her displeasure at the fact that the people she’d encountered during her time here did not express as much gratitude for her generosity (i.e. the fact that she had traveled miles from her home country to help people in need) as she’d envisaged, but rather found ways to exploit her by overcharging her for goods, asked her to buy them things or in some cases fell short of taking the very clothes on her back. I had to explain to this young lady, whose naiveté I found charming, that in a country with so much poverty and wealth that is flaunted but not made accessible, it is only natural that people become exploitative, corrupt, even violent and see dollar signs when they look at foreigners. It’s not right, simply natural. She appreciated this perspective but only in hindsight. Our discussion did make me wonder how many others there are, who come to Africa with preconceived ideas that are a tad unrealistic

Mozambique is my next stop. I’ll be there for a total of 27 days, living in the beach village/town of Vilanculos. I will be teaching basic English to adults and pre-school aged children (the lingua franca there is Portuguese so I may well pick some of that up). I am excited, if for nothing, to at least breathe fresh ocean air and enjoy the sun once again

Spare the rod and spoil the child?

“Spare the rod and spoil the child”, I’ve heard it said many times, usually as ample justification for disciplining [read: hitting, slapping, flogging, etc] a child or teaching them the straight ways of the world. I never adhered to this school of thought, at least not in the literal sense, and being back on the continent, where the idea seems to be fairly pervasive, I find myself asking, yet again, if it really is a good justification. Now I’ve had a fair share of floggings in my time and I’m sure many an African [black person, I dare say] of my age group would confess to suffering the same woe at some stage in their upbringing. I never did accept it and being one of those people who passionately abhor violence, never understood any of the justifications put forward by its proponents. I wanted to share my thoughts on the reasons why I hold steadfastly to this view and perhaps those who think otherwise can take a shot at convincing me

First and foremost, in my experience and as far as I’ve witnessed, adults who hit children tend to do so in a state of anger or frustration [plus, surely it takes that to raise your hand at someone]. Children will always be children, up to some trick or the other and will even sometimes be found doing things they have been categorically warned against. And while I understand the frustration and/or anger that this may sometimes inspire, I’m not so understanding of how that translates into whipping out the old belt or stick to “teach them a lesson”. Hitting someone when you are angry is wrong, period. It doesn’t matter if they are an adult or a child. It’s also ironically, incredibly childish and just the sort of behaviour that mature people do not display. The idea of resorting to violence [cause lets face it, that is really what it is] as a deterrent or solution to any problem is to my mind counter-productive. It also sends children very wrong signals: that it’s okay to hit someone to prove a point…and we don’t understand why people pick up machetes and slaughter each other when there is a disagreement of sorts. We are breeding a society of vigilantes without even seeing the wrong in it. I say this particularly in reference to the post elections violence here in Kenya (Liberia, Sierra Leone and Rwanda popped to mind as well, incidentally) and people expressing surprise at how easy it was for a seemingly peaceful country to break into complete and utter mayhem!

I had an experience with one of the teachers at the school the other day, where one of the kids, after being repeatedly scolded for distracting her classmates and just being annoyingly disruptive, she (the teacher) proceeded to scream at the child, dragged her to the back of the class, instructed her to kneel down and was about to do God-knows-what to the poor kid, when she saw my have-you-lost-your-mind? look. Her question to me then was “what do you do with a child like this?”. “You say you don’t hit children Nana, but how do you deal with this child? Tell me!” she beseeched. The reality was that singling out the child in front of her friends had embarrassed her so much that she had already burst out crying and sobbing uncontrollably. I ignored the teacher, calmed the child down and soon got her to get on with her work. It took a lot of composure to explain to this lady, a while later, that embarrassing the child in front of her friends was more than enough punishment and that hitting her would not have proved her point any more or less. This situation highlights my second issue with hitting children: that people refuse to think of alternative ways of disciplining children and it’s just unforgivable. How about we adopt an approach where hitting the child is not an option? Think, pursue all other avenues of discipline and tell me if you find absolutely nothing that works. Another incident that springs to mind is one that a housemate of mine witnessed at the orphanage/school that she works at. She happened upon one of the teachers mercilessly slapping and pulling the ears of a five year old. She actually walked out of the room because it was getting to ridiculous proportions. She later found out that the child in question was HIV positive, something he was fully aware of, and had bitten one of the other children in a fight. Somehow kicking (apparently another male teacher joined in with that act) and slapping the living daylights out of the child would deter him from ever doing that again. Did they ever consider that this was just an angry child who needed psychological help perhaps? Or even start by understanding what motivated him to do that…no, none of that, lets beat him silly and he’ll know better next time! A blatant display of intolerance for using brain cells and adults just being very lazy at dealing with the challenges that working with or raising kids present. I could give more examples but I think I’ve made my point here

There also seems to be an obsession with “putting the fear of God” in children. Smacking them silly will make them know what is acceptable and what is not. They will know not to repeat their heinous crimes if they get a good beating. While this is true, it also comes with various psychoses; I’ve seen a few of the children flinch when you come close to them and make a gesture any where near raising your hands at them. You instill fear all right, but in some cases these children become scared of their own shadows. They become timid and develop all kinds of complexes. Surely there are better ways to teach a child not to do something. Heck, sometimes they just have to learn from experience!

I’ve been told, in relation to this topic, that someday if I have kids, I’ll spoil them rotten. Well if choosing to not hit them equates to that, then so be it. Working with the children I’ve encountered so far on this trip, just strengthened my resolve to not resort to disciplining children in the “traditional” African way. So “Spare the rod and spoil the child?”, “Yup, guilty as charged!”

Unsung heroes

Morbid circumstances can be found aplenty, working in and around Kibera such that you almost get used to it, almost. But nothing quite prepared me for what I was exposed to during a visit to campsites for internally displaced people (IDPs), with some fellow volunteers last Friday.

By way of background, for those of you that can remember, in December 2007, elections held in Kenya were contested along tribal lines and soon broke down into violence with people being slaughtered with machetes, homes and property being burned down and people being forced to run away to seek refuge in other parts of the country. International bodies like the UN and Red Cross came to the rescue providing temporary camps, food and medical supplies for the refugees and displaced persons. Of course, they did not come to stay forever, so when the mayhem ended, tempers were cooled down and a new government was in place, these organisations left. Promises were made regarding these IDPs; a measly circa USD400 was given to each family as compensation from the Kenyan government for the woes that the elections brought and to this day most of these people still live in UN donated tents and in the case of the really lucky ones, partially completed houses that were first put up by the government as part of said promises. These people were mostly uneducated farmers that had their land stolen, properties burned down and were chased away from their homes without a cent to their name. The IDP camps are mostly located in remote areas where there is hardly any electricity; one has to walk at least 2km or so to BUY water from boreholes; children have to walk for hours to get to and from school, in most cases barefooted as their parents really don’t rate shoes high enough on the priority list; they are essentially a luxury and these areas are so, so dusty that you only have to walk a foot or so to get covered in dust; a gust of wind just spoils the matter completely; needless to say majority of the children have blocked noses and nasty coughs. There are so many children under the age of 4 in these camps. As one can imagine, uneducated farmers left in the middle of nowhere to fend for themselves soon run out of recreational activities so procreation becomes the new form of recreation. The average family has four to five kids. They cannot afford contraception even if it were accessible, which is really sad for how much more expensive is it to raise a child? It doesn’t exactly help that it’s the dry season so everything they plant just withers; as previously mentioned, water is another luxury so God-given rain is all they can rely on to cultivate their crops. With no education and limited skills, no one is rooting to give them jobs, which then gives them more time and energy to procreate. I was mortified as I listened to one story after another whilst we visited a few homes in the two camps we donated food to. They rely on donations from organisations like the one I work with for livelihood. The government shows up once a quarter with bags of maize and yet another litany of promises; promises that they are so tired of hearing that they are just grateful for the food they receive. The UN donated tents are falling apart in some cases so it’s not rare to see parts of the tents being held precariously together with maize sacks and such. You can only imagine how they cope when it rains and gets cold. Even in the cases where the families have brick houses provided by the government, furnishings are limited to a bed; yes, a family of as many as seven share a bed; there is a kitchen with a few utensils and they’ve been kindly provided with water cans that once-upon-a-time stored sulphuric acid, as indicated by the bold writing on said cans

Now, being an overt worrier, I’m prone to classify circumstances in my life as problems with the least provocation. My so-called problems however, usually have solutions; real ones that stare me in the face. Some of these solutions are a decision, phone call, email, text or conversation away. These “problems” I speak of are borne of inaction more than anything else. Then I hear the stories some of these families have to tell and I’m even ashamed to think I have any problems at all. I mean what do you do, when you are chased away from your farmland and home with machetes; you, your husband and your six children; you find one of these IDP camps and call it home; you soon find out you have HIV and so does your second to last born; your husband leaves on account of that saying he wants nothing to do with you; you have no education and no one will employ you; you have all of 3 sets of clothes, its none the better for each of your children who have to walk barefooted to and from school and to fetch water each day? How do you find the courage to wake up each day and face this life? How do you comfort your children and tell them all will be well? You pray that you have at least one more day to live just so they have someone with them. You wake up with a smile on your face cause you know you have to be strong for them regardless of the despair you face. You cook whatever food you have, make sure they are as full as can be before you tend to yourself. You kiss their tears away and try to indulge them with a few jokes and hugs for really what else can you do? That is just one story. There are so many others; there are presently thousands of IDPs all over Kenya who literally have no hope. Where is the government whose election brought them to this place in the first instance? Now that they have what they want, these people have been forgotten, their interests relegated very far to the background. “Where is the justice in that?”, I ask.

So tonight, before I allow another hot tear to stain my pillow as I muse about my “problems”, I will remember these IDPs, these unsung heroes who dare to live under circumstances that I know would leave me suicidal

Little angels

I have come to enjoy being a teaching assistant at the TAPA educational centre. The school currently has two classes: baby and nursery classes. The nursery class students who passed the recent end-of-year exam will be going to the new pre-unit class in the next academic year. This will be their last class in the school before they graduate into the mainstream Kenyan school system

The kids are truly amazing especially if you consider the difficult circumstances under which some of them live and the fact that they thrive in spite of this. I want to share what I love and appreciate about each of the kids I've worked with in the nursery class. They are aged 3 - 5 and are the ones I've spent the most time with in my time at TAPA

I've tried to avoid playing favourites but I'm sure you'll detect from my tone that I do have favourites amongst these lovely gems I choose to call little angels

Dennis: very studios and takes himself quite seriously, certainly for a five year old. He prides himself in being one of the best students in the class and he sometimes rushes through tasks just to prove this point. He is also very playful and always up for running around chasing nothing in particular

Ruth: is the best student in the class. She has neat handwriting, an amazing memory and is, without doubt, a step ahead of the rest of the class. She is quite shy though and can usually be caught sneaking a smile or glance at one of the adults. She is a very sweet child

Kwamboka: wants to be the best and is not far from being exactly that. She is very competitive and is the one person in the class who will, without fail, raise her hand screaming "me! me! me! Teacher, me!" at every question that is posed to the class. Its amusing to watch her get so frustrated when she gets a piece of work wrong and has to do it all over again; she can't forgive herself. It probably doesn't help that she is the teacher's daughter and therefore presumably feels under pressure to be the best. She is blessed with a beautiful smile

Raymond: is quite mature in his looks and mannerisms. He has a quiet confidence that makes me smile. He is also a very good student and is especially good at math

Emmaculate: very quiet and likes to focus on her schoolwork. Its so cute that at tea time each day, without fail, she takes out her packed snack, splits in two and walks over to the next class to give the other half to her younger sister. I think she's adorable

Felix: great smile, easily distracted and very playful. He cries easily too, which for some reason I find endearing. He doesn't do too badly at schoolwork either though that could improve if he concentrated a bit more

Vera: very pretty girl; equally shy and introverted. She is also very bright and has the best handwriting in the class; handwriting I think is pretty rare for a four year old. She also has a beautiful smile, which she usually displays on eye contact

Walter: rarely speaks and strangely likes to play with his spittle. He can usually be found on his way to the bathroom to wash his hands. He is also easily distracted, which affects his schoolwork

Jane: the most easily distracted child in the class and also likes to distract her peers. She will usually be caught picking a fight or right in the middle of one. With assistance, she is able to complete all her schoolwork with a huge, gorgeous smile on her face

Bravin: is the youngest in the class and understandably the smallest sized. In a stampede, he is the most likely to be trampled upon but you can't stop him getting right into the middle of one. He loves thumb wars and has an infectiously naughty smile. He is very bright and at age 3.5, can count (and write) up to a hundred, add, subtract and knows the alphabet by well. He has very squeezable cheeks that i usually have to resist the urge to grab

Bruce: always comes to school wearing a girl's winter hat, which gives him a cute, innocent look that deceptively masks his naughty tendencies. We keep a close eye on that one! When he is not being naughty, he is very studios and a sweet child

David: very shy, odedient and soft-spoken. Struggles a bit with schoolwork and is very easily distracted. He has very good pictorial memory though, we discovered the other day. I also noticed that when he's alone with his friends, he is actually very animated and has a great smile

Violet: great smile and loves to play! We have winking contests; well she blinks or covers one eye with a finger and I wink. It's quite hilarious. She also likes thumb wars. She is obsessed with producing neat work and will ask for the eraser (which they disturbingly call rubber) every other minute; there aren't enough erasers so we have to share a few amongst them. She is best friends with Vera and they sit and whisper things to each other and giggle lots; I smile, shaking my head in wonder at the specifics of their chats

Faith: very quiet and easily the class loner. She has a lovely smile though and once you get her to engage, is actually a great kid. She struggles with schoolwork, which I don't think helps with her ability to socialise

Godfrey: big doleful eyes that speak before he opens his mouth. He's blessed with a toothless smile for the moment (okay its not actually toothless, he's only missing a few front teeth). He's bright and is usually in a hurry to finish his schoolwork so he can get to some quality playtime

Wycliff: is the best looking boy in the class and I'm certain sometimes that he is fully aware of it. He has intelligent brown eyes that just tug at your heart. He will break a few hearts someday, that's for sure. He's a very good student though he can be quite frisky at times

Elvin: I actually forgot about her. That is how quiet she is. Very lovely child with the most genuine and beautiful smile. You will usually find her with her head on her desk quietly watching life go on around her. I'm sure i've heard her speak no more than a handful of times. She is very bright notwithstanding all this and takes her schoolwork very seriously


School ends this week which makes me sad as I doubt I will be seeing any of them before I head to Mozambique next month. I will surely miss them

Safaris: are they really like “The Lion King”?

Long before I arrived in Kenya, I knew I wanted to partake in the quintessential safari experience. I would have even tried it whilst in Zanzibar but the prices that were being quoted out there were far too outrageous. So of course, I was going to hop and skip at a reasonably priced option once I got here. Now, we were having a discussion at the house the other day, since some of the housemates that were here before me had already been on safari trips (I really ought to stop calling it that as “safari” is Kiswahili for “long journey” so adding the word “trip” is rather redundant). According to some of them, going on safari was like being in “The Lion King”; now that’s a comparison I hadn’t heard before. For you Disney lovers out there, you have to agree with me when I say that Lion King has to be an all time favourite. So that comparison just cemented the fact that I had to experience this adventure firsthand and decide whether or not it was a fair one. So, brimming with excitement and bright-eyed with expectation, I embarked on this adventure last weekend. I will now attempt to relay my experience to you and let you decide if it really is like “The Lion King”.
Day 1 – Friday 10th July
I left the house bright and early to head to the Fadhili office where I was to meet other enthusiastic safari chums and get on a bus to head towards Maasai Mara (essentially the safari district). By way of background, Fadhili has a safari service, which is what I signed up for. Each weekend, volunteers are driven out to the Kenyan countryside to see animals of all kinds in their natural habitat (those who sign up for it obviously). I signed up for the 4-day safari, which included a day trip to the infamous Lake Nakuru and a 3-day stay at the Maasai Mara National Reserve.
Soon after I arrived, two American ladies (also volunteers) turned up and announced that they were going on the same trip as me. We soon found out that the group going out on safari that day was going to be just the three of us; I was abit apprehensive about this as well as it turned out that they were sisters in law who were volunteering out in a remote village in Maasai-land (though we did end up getting along fairly well). The next are of concern fact was that Fadhili had outsourced our trip to another safari company as it was only 3 of us and since there is a big group going out next week, they’d decided to give the safari team a weekend off. Now, as we understood it, half the fun of the safari experience was having a fun, charismatic guide and the Fadhili guy is that and more. We had no idea who this new guide was, so we just prayed that things would work out. In any case, it was just the three of us so we planned on just telling him what we wanted to see if we thought he wasn’t delivering the goods. It turned out that not only was he uncharismatic but he also appeared stoned and soon enough started to make inappropriate comments. It was still three against one so we were not that perturbed. We commenced our drive to the countryside; the plan was to go to Lake Nakuru first, spend the night at a hotel there and head out to Maasai Mara the next day. The drive was uneventful save a stop to stretch our legs at a spot that had a splendid view of the Rift Valley. It’s possibly the largest valley view I’ve ever seen and the road we were driving on was close to the cliff below which the valley lay. We got to Lake Nakuru around late afternoon and soon made our way to the animal reserve. It wasn’t long after we drove into the park, with the roof of our van partly open that started spotting baboons (which have the most grotesque looking rears, a stark contrast to their cute faces), warthogs (with me screaming “pumbaa” in the background which of course scared them away), zebras, impalas and gazelles (both of the antelope family), giraffes, water buffalos, some lionesses with their cubs (who were so very cute; we were no more than 5 metres away from them) and white rhinos. We made our way to the lake itself where we saw far more flamingos across the water than I have ever seen in my life. It was truly picturesque; there were also some very huge pelicans amongst them (I hadn’t actually seen pelicans before) and a few other birds whose names escape me now. Dusk soon came upon us and we retired to our hotel where I had a room to myself (for the first time in 6 weeks; abit eerie actually). There was a hot shower as well, woohoo! Dinner was not particularly exciting but I hit the sheets with a smile on my face cause all in all it was a good day
Day 2 – Saturday 11th July
We had a reasonable lie-in and didn’t leave the hotel till about 9.30am. The drive to Maasai Mara was fairly long although Kenya’s countryside is beautiful so at least we had good scenery to go with it. We drove through fields and fields of acacia trees, saw several hills; villages and settlements cropped up sporadically; we drove through some small towns which were usually a cluster of shops and houses. The roads were a mixture of tarred ones and dirt (very dusty) ones. We did a stopover for lunch in a town called Narok, which was halfway to Maasai Mara from Nakuru. We arrived at our campsite in Maasai Mara around late afternoon. The tents were semi permanent, had comfortable beds and even hot showers (again! yay!); it was all very exciting. We threw our bags down and headed for the National Reserve (which was very nearby). That afternoon we saw ostriches, more water buffalos, more impalas and gazelles, hartebeests (also of the antelope family but a lot bigger than the rest), wildebeests (strange-looking things; they have faces like cows, horns like deer, manes like horses and bodies shaped like those of donkeys; they are quite unattractive. Once a year, around late June/early July they migrate from Tanzania into Kenya, where the grass is apparently greener and head back to Tanzania around September/October; we saw flocks of them throughout our time at the Mara and even though the migration is complete they still move in large groups), birds of all sorts, elephants, more zebras, more giraffes, more lionesses resting and a leopard (which our guide pronounced “layoopard”; we were quite excited about this as one hardly sees them in the Mara. Tired and in much need of grub and some rest, we headed back to campsite. We caught a great view of the sunset juxtaposed against some hills. Dinner was excellent: rice, chapatti (hurray! You guys must be sick of my chapatti rave by now), nyama choma (Kiswahili for roast meat; goat meat in this instance), vegetables and lots of tea. We retired to bed (after nice, long, hot showers) around 8.30pm but it was so worth it as we were quite tired and had a rather early start the next morning
Day 3 – 12th July
The day started with breakfast at 6.30am: sausage, toast, pancakes, eggs and lots of tea. We were hoping to see a hunt of sorts today, as we’d pretty much seen most, if not all the animals that inhabit the Mara. After driving around for about an hour, we saw a bunch of lionesses, think there were six of them in total, feasting on what used to be a wildebeest. Right next them, a lion lay majestically (he was quite a sight to behold; flawless coat and a huge, glorious mane; I was thinking this simba (Kiswahili for lion) does look the part of “king of the jungle”. Once the lionesses were done eating, he ate the leftovers (only fair as the lionesses usually do the hunting and with wildebeest aplenty after the migration, its now feasting season for them). When he was done, the vultures took over the remnants of the feast, fighting amongst themselves for the leftovers; feisty, greedy things they are! The stench of the dead beast and stale blood became strong and we headed to another part of the Mara. We soon saw some cheetahs resting in the fields, good-looking animals they are; closer to cats than lions; if only they were not so menacing! Of course with a van of women, we had to stop right in the middle of the wild for a loo break, very alert and on the lookout for lions and such; needless to say it was a hurried affair for each of us . We had lunch at a safe spot and some frisky monkeys nearby offered some amusement. Another source of amusement for me, and it had started to build up since the start of the journey, were the sisters in law who were now very comfortable around me and were taking to bickering and taking shots at each other in the way that only people with familial ties can. It did get a little nasty at times but I did well to stay out of it. They were two grown women after all. Anyway, once we were done with lunch, we were off to see the Mara river, which serves as home to some hippos (boy do they smell bad) and crocodiles (very big ones I might add). We then went over to see the border between Tanzania and Kenya; on the Tanzania side was the Serengeti and of course we were in the Mara on the Kenya side. Near the border we saw a black rhino (if only its rear; they usually live in the forest as they feed on shrubs and roots of trees). We saw more of some of the animals that we’d seen over the last few days during our drive to exit the Mara. On the way out, our guide announced that we had the option to go see a Maasai village where a donation would be required of us (we understood this to mean that we could give any amount out of the goodness of our hearts but soon found out that there was actually a “fixed” fee for seeing the village – we paid far more than any other volunteers, certainly the ones I live with, had paid before). Seeing the village was quite the experience for me: the Maasai people are very simple and live in houses (well huts really) made of mud and sticks. The men are usually cattle herdsmen (we soon found out that in families, the father decides, rather randomly, who gets to go to school and who gets to herd cattle when the boys are still young). The village grounds was covered in cow dung, which meant that there were flies everywhere, more flies than I’ve ever seen in one place. They are so used to the flies that the children’s faces and bodies are covered with them and at any one point there are at least thirty flies hovering around one person. The children traipse around in dishabille while the mothers cook, etc. Apparently the Maasai choose to live this way as it’s the way their forefathers lived many years before them and its one of the few cultures that has remained unchanged for centuries. We were welcomed into the village with song and dance, which was nice; shown around and soon ushered to the curio stand where we made some purchases. After that, there was quite an embarrassing exchange, which highlighted that the “donation” was actually fee; we made the payment and were on our way. Frankly the experience was quite disturbing for me; I couldn’t get over the kids with flies! I mean all they have to do is clear up the cow dung on the ground, burn a few leaves from the forest, which act as insect repellent and that would take care of it; why would they choose not to?? With that rather morbid end to our day and a cold and flu creeping up on me (I wasn’t sure if my new friends, who admitted that they were recovering from an infection, or excessive inhalation of dust was to blame for this), I hit the sheets soon. I didn’t sleep well cause the flu got pretty bad that night

Day 4 – 13th July
Yet another early start today: 6.30am with no breakfast, we headed straight to the reserve. I did well to take more medication before heading out as what was a sore throat last night was now turning into a cough that came with a nice headache. Anyway, not long after we drove through the gates of the reserve, we spotted a lion and lioness that seemed hungry. We (and a host of other people) hovered in our vans waiting for them to attack a bunch of wildebeest, which they appeared to have been eyeing for a while. After about a 20-minute wait, they charged at the wildebeest (it was really exciting to watch) though they did not get there in time to attack any of them. It was worth it though. Now after seeing some of the animals umpteen times, we were over it! So we drove back to the campsite, had some breakfast and got in the van to drive home. I was pleased at what I’d seen during the 4 days; the illness kind of put a dent on things towards the end but at least I got to sleep most of the way back home. By mid afternoon we were back in Nairobi. I had enough energy to run a few errands but soon found my bed and called it a day

All in all, safari was fun for me! I will leave you to decide if it was deserving of the comparison my housemates made to “The Lion King”

Getting busy

As promised, I want to give some colour on the work I’m involved in out here in Nairobi. It is worth clarifying that I signed up for volunteer work in Nairobi via an organisation called International Volunteers Headquarters (IVHQ). This organisation affiliates with NGOs and charities on the ground in several countries. One of such NGOs is the Fadhili organisation, which I may have already mentioned in previous posts. Fadhili runs its own projects in Nairobi but also affiliates with sister NGOs who do not have direct links to organisations such as IVHQ, usually because they are too small. IVHQ essentially recruits the volunteers and Fadhili places them on various projects in the city and provides accommodation and other services.
Transform a person Africa (TAPA) is one of the Fadhili-affiliated NGOs and the main one I’m working with during my time in Nairobi. As the name suggests, its broad aim is to transform the lives of some of the folks who live in good old Kibera by providing education for disadvantaged children (some of whose parents are living with HIV and AIDS), sustainable sources of income for disadvantaged adults (mostly women) and for said sources of income to simultaneously help the NGO become self-sufficient

The TAPA educational centre is where most of our work is done. It’s situated right on the outskirts of Kibera and consists of a couple of offices (with the necessary mod cons) and a school building. The school is a nursery for 1 – 5 year olds who have been orphaned or considered vulnerable by virtue of their living circumstances (orphaned and vulnerable children – OVC, they’ve been labelled). Extensive research is done to ascertain whether or not one qualifies to be classified as an OVC. The school has about 40 kids attending for now, with plans to expand. Expansion is most likely going to happen through a combination of recruiting more OVCs and opening the school up to non OVCs who will be charged higher fees (apparently this is a model that has worked well for other NGOs but which can only be successful if the school maintains a high quality of education and cleanliness to attract the non-OVCs; for now there are only a couple of non OVC kids at TAPA). The children are taught basic Maths and English to a level where they will be considered fit to join the mainstream education system when they turn 6. They are fed 2 meals, have a couple of hours of sleep and have ample time for playing each day. For some of the children, the food eaten at the educational centre is all they will have for the day and they usually don’t take home any homework. The day starts for them at 8.30am and ends at 4.30pm. The children are an absolutely delightful bunch and I thoroughly enjoy working with them; most of them understand when spoken to in English though they don’t speak very much of it. The teachers teach in Swahili and English and for all intents and purposes, the volunteers act as teaching assistants so don’t usually have to control the class (vastly different from my experience in Zanzibar). Most of the kids are reasonably bright for their age and pretty much pick up whatever they are taught straight away; so as teaching assistants, we (the volunteers) try to spend a reasonable amount of time with those that require more attention, which hopefully means that each kid gets more out of their classroom experience. We also help to feed them at meal times, play with them and help in keeping the school surroundings clean. I have spent the bulk of my first week here working with the children

The project manager and founder of TAPA is a Kenyan chap who has spent most of his life working in the private sector and gave up that life to set up this NGO. He has an ebullient disposition, is passionate about the work and is very open to ideas and constructive criticism. His income generating ideas under implementation (and in some cases still work-in-progress) so far include the following:
1.Hand-made cards designed with authentic Kenyan curios, which get sold at hotels, churches and any other retail outlet that is willing to sell them. They are of reasonably high quality and produced by young women (mostly aged late teens to early twenties) from the slum. We (the volunteers) assist with the card production process, a process which taps our creative abilities to an extent
2.Sewing and hawking children’s school uniforms in and around Kibera – this idea is still yet to be fully launched though as I understand it, most of the equipment needed is being purchased and it should be rolled out fairly soon. The plan would be to train a handful of women in the sewing trade and start them off.
3.Subsistence farming for vegetables and other basic foods – this is a good way to help some of the families to afford a decent, well-balanced diet. TAPA provides the seedlings and other required farming gear. In fact some of the food prepared at the school for the kids come from this farming initiative
4.A micro-finance initiative to help some of the women with small businesses; essentially, they each have to contribute a small amount of money on a weekly basis from the earnings they make. They then have access to these funds should they need short term loans for their business ventures (said loans are given at reasonable interest rates). The businesses in question include: street food vending, hawking second-hand clothes, providing cleaning services (mostly for homes), hairdressing salons, etc

Most of these initiatives seem to be working very well and the families that are involved are seeing some improvement in their living conditions – at the very least most of them can now afford decent meals and are not looking to be kicked out of their homes any time soon. With adequate funding, perhaps more ideas could be implemented and some of these initiatives expanded to touch more lives. Of course, having self-sufficiency as one of its aims, TAPA should be able to get there either way

TAPA also affiliates with other organisations that do other forms of direct work regarding HIV and AIDS patients. As one can imagine, the disease is pretty rampant in the slum and one sad aspect of things is that given the lack of education and pervasive ignorance, HIV and AIDS patients are often stigmatised and even ostracised. They have to grapple with that in addition to poverty, mal-nutrition, unhygienic environs and the plethora of misfortunes that come with slum life. Some of these organisations therefore set out to help by providing counselling to those individuals who have been tested and have come forward to seek help. Unfortunately the stigma aspect of HIV and AIDS, as mentioned above, is one of the biggest factors why some people don’t even get tested. Not nearly enough people get tested, not to mention those that opt to seek help once they find out. Its even more sad to note that HIV testing AND anti-retroviral drugs are free in Kenya so there is actually nothing standing in one’s way of getting full medical assistance when afflicted with the disease. One obvious next step is to start widespread education on the disease in the slums so that these negative perceptions fall away and hopefully this will mean that less people will contract the disease henceforth

Nairobi: First Impressions

The two-hour flight to Kenya was uneventful, save the breathtaking view of Mount Kenya from the skies. I even arrived at the Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi ahead of schedule and breezed through immigration and customs. I sauntered out of the airport, all smiles, expecting to be met by a representative of the organisation I was going to be working for – Fadhili (email traffic from the previous week assured me that this would be the case) and after a careful scan of the crowd at the airport, I was sure that there was no one there to meet me. Unpanicked and pushing my trolley full of suit cases (those of you who know me well know that travelling light is just not my style; I mean I try but just end up packing a lot of stuff; well this trip is no different though I do have every intention of, and I’ve already started, giving most of the stuff away before returning to the UK), I equipped myself with the necessary phone gear and made some phone calls which thankfully, revealed the fact that the rep was running late. I took the opportunity to check out some of the shops at the airport; it’s a medium sized airport and there were a few book and curio shops to keep me occupied in the 45 minutes I ended up waiting for. The rep arrives and announces that we have to wait another 3 hours or so for the other 16 volunteers that are due to arrive the same day before dropping us all off at different host homes (just for the one night as we had a day of orientation the next day). I wasn’t particularly tired from the trip and though I didn’t mind the wait, it would have been nice to be told beforehand that this was to be the sequence of events on arrival.
Anyway, everyone shows up and we finally leave the airport nearly 4 hours after I touched down. We left the airport and must say, that I was very unprepared for the cold weather outside. It must have been no more than 10 degrees Celsius and there I was in a polyester blouse still coasting off the lovely warm weather in Zanzibar. My wardrobe is not equipped with very much for this sort of weather and I’m told July is the coldest month of the year; shame I didn’t find out before. Driving through the city, we got to see a bit of it in the night-light; it was pretty late at night at this stage, close to 11 I think. We drove through what must be the industrial section of Nairobi; it had a lot of factories and warehouses, so not particularly exciting. It was interesting to note that most of the petrol stations had fast food joints, mini markets and pharmacies attached to them (things are not this fancy in Accra, I’m thinking). All in all, it looked pretty well developed. Some of the other volunteers had been on long flights from North America, Europe and New Zealand and after my 4-hour wait at the airport I was beginning to feel some of their tiredness. I was placed with another girl in a host home for the night. Now, remember my Nungwi cockroach encounter? Well I think that happened to stand me in good stead for my experience on this night for as soon as I was shown my bed, there was one cheeky little cockroach in the middle of it staring me in the face. Of course I killed it and got on with my sleep but it was not a nice way to end my first evening
The next day proved better. Orientation was geared at getting us all familiar with the dos and don’ts in this hectic city; introducing us to some of the work/ projects we’d be working on and also providing an opportunity to meet the Fadhili staff and other volunteers. There are 48 volunteers in total (apparently the largest number to arrive in one month) mostly aged 18 – 21, majority of who are female. The project manager was quite entertaining and fed us with one anecdote after the other as we went through the agenda for the day. The rest of the staff was very friendly too, making us all feel right at home. Lunch was pretty good: chapatti/roti (yay! :)), beef stew, rice and vegetables. We also did a short walk around the vicinity, visited a rather fancy mall called Nakumatt (I’m told there’s a couple of these around town) and got to see a bit more of the city. Like any other busy metropolis, it was buzzing with traffic and pedestrians. There were different kinds of buses that one could take to various places. In the centre most part of the Nairobi dwells the Central Business District (CBD) where all the corporates and state houses live; its quite impressive: high rise buildings, good roads and the infamous Uhuru Park (a large public park). There are special buses that take you to and from the CBD, think they are called Citi Hoppas; they basically look like coach buses. Then there are the Matatus (equivalent of dala-dalas in Zanzibar), which look like mini buses but are fully blinged out: painted with flamboyant colours and covered with pictures of celebrities from across the world; they have no respect for traffic rules and whizz across the streets of Nairobi serving also as offices for pick-pockets. I’m yet to enjoy a ride on one of them and look forward to it :)
That evening, we were all driven to what will be our permanent homes for our stay in Nairobi. Mine was a house in a suburb of Nairobi called Jamhuri (pronounced: jamhuuree) and a stone throw away from Kibera (pronounced: keebayrah). Kibera, as some of you may know, is Africa’s biggest slum; those of you that have seen the film “the constant gardener” would have seen it in all its glory; I will have to furnish the rest of you with photos at some point. Anyway, I digress, there will be more talk of the work I’m involved in here and Kibera in general in my next post. So about the house: it has 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a living and dining area and a kitchen. There are 10 volunteers in total living there as well as our lovely host, her 10 mth old son, her 12 yr old nephew and a lovely young lady who cooks and cleans the house and does laundry. As was the case in Zanzibar, we sleep in bunk beds and share bathrooms but get to have 2 warm showers a week (to keep our host’s electricity bill at a reasonable level). Remember what I said about the cold weather? Well, you can guess what that means for the cold showers! Its no wonder then that some of the volunteers don’t shower often, I’m convinced that one girl hasn’t showered since I got here; I plan on showering once a day at least and I’m keeping to that schedule so far but lets see how long that lasts! We also have to hand wash our clothes, something I spent a good chunk of my years growing up doing and so am comfortable taking it up again; most of the other volunteers pay a small price for someone to do it for them as doing it themselves proves to be quite the challenge. I watched one girl give it a try and she gave up after washing one pair of pants; granted, its pretty hard work!
The project I’ve been assigned to work on is based just on the outskirts of Kibera and my first impressions of it have been good and I’m looking forward to the next 5.5 weeks for that reason. I’ll be in touch soon with more details on the project.

Kwaheri Zanzibar, Jambo Kenya!

Saying Goodbye (Kwaheri in Swahili) isn’t usually fun for me so I try to avoid it as often as I can. Leaving Zanzibar is not exception; instead I’ll say: “see you later” because I think I will be back someday. I have thoroughly enjoyed my stay on this island, even the “worst” parts of it. I think its set a pretty high bar for the rest of my trip and I will miss it!

I will miss the white sandy beaches; the beautifully turquoise ocean; the brilliantly starlit nights (especially those nights when the moon shone bright and cast its light across the ocean); the exquisite sunrises and sunsets; I will miss the bike rides (oh I will miss the bike rides and all the bruises and scrapes that came with it), the befuddled stares of the villagers that soon turned into welcoming smiles, the students at JTTI (especially the ones that kept me well humoured), the kids at the nursery schools (especially the devilish ones that were usually up to no good but still laughed and wriggled around when you tickled them); I will miss being covered in paint and the fun discoveries that came with it (like learning that insect repellent is a great paint remover!); I will miss the food, though I should be able to live on chapatti and spicy rice in Kenya but then again it might not be the same

That said, I’m pretty excited about Kenya. I think one month of village life has had me craving for a bit of a more city-like experience and Nairobi is just perfect for that. I’ve heard a lot about it and just can’t wait to see it for myself. I’m excited about the placement I’ll be doing out there as well. This time round I will be working in an orphanage for 6 weeks. The setup for accommodation will also be different; I’m ditching the big brother-esque experience for a live-in with a local family which I think could be quite fun. I’m hoping that it will prove better at least on the food front. I also happen to have a few friends in Kenya so will be a good opportunity to catch up and get good advice on the dos and don’ts.

So my flight is all confirmed and I head out tomorrow afternoon. Once I’m settled in, I will be in touch to let you guys know how it’s all panning out. I’m crossing all the crossable parts of my body, praying that the internet situation will be as good as I expect so I can finally, finally post some photos.

And on that note, I say Jambo (Hello in Swahili) Kenya, hope you are as ready for me as I am for you!