Helping out in Kenya
In
January my wife and I returned to Kenya to see my parents and visit my
ancestral home in Kogelo. While we were in Nairobi, my younger brother Joseph introduced me
to an organization, www.icraafrica.org,
that is doing wonderful work for children in Kenya’s slums. With the
help of the Shenzhen Youth League, UPS, AMCHAM and some friends, needed items like teaching
supplies, musical instruments, toys and stationary were bought and delivered to
these Kenyan Kids. Upon ICRA’s invitation, my wife and I drove to the shanty
town school to take a look. These are some photos and recollections from the
trip.
“There
is a pervasive sense of anxiety in my stomach as we head deeper into the slums.
It is the first time in my life I have ever ventured into the ghettos of
Nairobi. The roads get worse and eventually disappear, becoming a trail of
rubbish, pot-holes and crushed plastic items that kids throw beneath the wheels
of struggling vehicles for fun. Approximately 300,000 stragglers and hopeful
souls from the villages outside Nairobi, have ended up here, squeezed into a
maze of corrugated mabati shacks and shops, each shop front hiding about twenty
or so tiny dwellings somewhere in the rear. Our car bumps past vegetables
stands selling pumpkins covered with flies, children washing themselves from
buckets, and even a black draped door from behind which the sounds of the
latest pirated movies blast forth. The parish school is in a relatively
spacious flat of red earth, and is a refuge for about sixty children who would
otherwise be left behind by parents looking for work, left to the whim of drug
dealers, domestic abuse, and sexual assault.
Inside
the small one roomed mabati house, which also serves as the parish church,
hanging drapes of cheap cotton sheets separate the room into about five
sections. Four children look up at me in one section. They are seated at a
small rough wooden disk, a schoolbook in front of each of them. I give them a
high five, following the teachers’ example.
"How
are you? What’s your name?" I say to a small lad sitting quickly, looking at me
with big eyes.
"Richard."The boy says shyly. And leans across the table, as though to sleep, his head turned towards me.’
When
I sit down at a desk to talk to some teacher, someone hits me in the back. I
turn around. A pretty little girl looks at me,
“Look,
look!” She cartwheels and dances on the floor without coordination but lots of
energy. Whenever I turn my hand, a slap on the back inevitably interrupts me a
few seconds later. Eventually a teacher persuades her to return to the other
students.
The
school is in need of donations to pay for salaries and teaching supplies . I notice the simple curtains that separate each ‘room’ and
imagine how stiflingly hot it must be in summer. But the children smile and
laugh. I even teach them a little Chinese for :”Hello” (The Swahili equivalent is “Jambo”).
