Christmas in Kibera

Christmas in Kenya, certainly one I'll never forget! Christmas eve we had an overdul house, people sleeping in the living room on sofas and the floor. There are usually only a few people at the house this time of year apparently. Some people arrived back from safari that day, and were keen to join us on the feeding programme Christmas day so stayed the night. Usually there would be maybe 5 or 6 programme on the tour, yesterday, 15 volunteers, plus Jack and Dan from Kibera and the pastor who had left the church service to his wife to be with us and the families. A fantastic turn out, thank you to everyone who came!

Christmas eve we got some drinks in to celebrate, and listened to Christmas songs in the house whilst I wore my recently purchased Santa outfit. The following morning, a couple of the girls cooked pancakes for us all, before heading into Kibera with the food, my Santa outfit, and lots of sweets for the kids.

Reactions throughout Kibera were mixed, the kids were excited just to be given a couple of sweets, some people expected us to have something to give to every single person, asking what we are doing to help them specifically, and some said they don't celebrate Christmas. It was positive reactions for the most part though.

We did our usual route, stopping at a viewpoint over a large area of Kibera for photos and a brief talk about what Kibera is (I left the speeches mostly to Jenny this time, a volunteer who started last week who is helping me on the programme for a couple of weeks). Then off to the disability school, although closed for Christmas, just to show people what else the money goes towards on the programme. Then the four families on Tuesday's visit.

Quinta, who I took to apply for university last week, had her computer course results, passed! And, has been accepted on her university course, starting 7th January! We also have the money now to help her mother start up a business. With Quinta moving to the university campus, this means the family can be removed from the programme as soon as the business is set up! Before leaving, we had to get a few photos of me in my outfit with her (as usual I forgot my camera, so will have to post those at a later time when I steal them from others), then headed off to the other families.

Nothing too exciting to report on the others, everyone was doing well and so happy to see us on Christmas. Got photos with some of the others too, and we also visited the pastors family. Finally, at the end of the tour, Dan took us back to his place where his wife had cooked us chapati and lentils for lunch. It was a bit tight with all of us sitting in his living room eating (as it had been in every other house too), but we managed and were very thankful to he and his wife. Finally, we headed off too the bar for a drink in Kibera, before heading back to the house for Christmas dinner, pasta, chicken, and vegetables, the hosts must have been cooking all morning to prepare that!

The rest of the day we just chilled out at the house, more music and some snacks. Overall a fantastic day, a Christmas I'll never forget and will probably never experience anything like it again!

An Overdue Update

Haven't got round to updating for a while, at first because there wasn't much to report on, then I have been too busy to write anything up. So long post incoming.

Last Monday Dan and I had our first class with the computer course, the lesson was mostly basics about how the computer works and how to find your way around it, to make sure everyone was at the same level. It's sometimes difficult to get them to understand things, but with trial and error, we're beginning to learn what works best with them.

The second lesson was due to be on Wednesday, however this was Kenya's independence day, or Jamhuri Day, so the school was closed. And Friday the school had no power, so we had to postpone the class again.

Tuesday I went along with the feeding programme in Kibera again, with another volunteer, Mac, who had just taken over from the previous volunteers running it who left last weekend. However Mac is now wanting to try something new, and switching placements today. So Thursday, I took over the programme, giving my first tour, and writing up the weekly report for the director of the programme currently in Canada.

This Tuesday, I saw one of the girls on the programme who I've not seen since the first time I went on the tour, a 20 year old girl, Quinta, with HIV, recently recovered from TB, and previous suicide attempts due to her health. The first time I saw her she looked unwell, depressed, this was the one that got to me the most. However, when I saw her yesterday, she is looking so much better! Very happy, just finished a computer course and awaiting her results and certificate, feeling pretty confident about it. And excited to be applying to go to university in January, thanks to funding through NVS. Today I was asked to join her, and one of the guys in Kibera who helps with the programme, heading into town to take her to apply. She'd not left Kibera for a while, so was a little scared with all the traffic in town, grabbing my hand as we crossed the roads.

After queueing in the bank for ages to pay Quinta's application fee, and wandering around looking for somewhere to get passport photos for her, we finally completed the application, to find that it has to go to the campus in another town. This means another trip for Jack (who came with us today) and Quinta tomorrow, though it is good for her to get out of Kibera and see something new, and I think the campus that she will be staying at for her studies.

As Christmas falls on a Tuesday, there is interest from some volunteers to join the tour on Christmas day. It wasn't yet decided whether it would be happening or moved to another day, however I've persuaded NVS and Dan in Kibera (who also joins us on the tour) to go ahead with it. This will likely mean packing the food the end of this week and taking it back to the volunteer house as the office will be closed Christmas week. After speaking to the families when on the tour yesterday, they are all going to be around Christmas day, and welcome us to visit them! Especially Sebastian, in his 70s, who is very much looking forward to receiving a photo of he and the volunteers who joined the tour yesterday. Hopefully Quinta will have received her results for her course by then too and will have good news with that.


Saturday I went to my first Kenyan wedding, of one of the guys working for NVS. This meant orientation, which usually happens on the 1st and 15th of every month, was postponed until Monday. The wedding was interesting, 15 minute long songs of praise and worship, most of the Kenyans very enthusiastic for it, whilst all the volunteers looked a little lost. However it was still a great experience, if not a bit long. The food at the reception was good though, volunteers invited to eat first, food piled up on our plates, far more than I could possibly eat! There were many new volunteers for Monday's orientation too, so it was a good opportunity to meet some of those.

As I'm now running the feeding programme, I figured I would be wanted to speak about it at orientation, so went along to that (the lunch is also good there, so I was keen to go for that!). Having only given one tour before, I wasn't very prepared so kind of blagged it. The other volunteers insisted I didn't do too badly though! Next time I'll make sure to have something better prepared. Someone also told Joe, the head of NVS, about my pick pocket and mugging experiences, so he asked if I could do a talk about that. With only 5 minutes notice about that, it was even more of a mess than the feeding programme talk! But I guess it got the message across, don't walk at night, and be careful in the clubs and bars. Then finally, as Kush spoke about the Outreach weekend, he decided, as I was one of the most recent volunteers to go, to put me on the spot and talk a little about it! So once again I blagged another speech. I guess I'll be more prepared for all 3 speeches next time.

Due to orientation, I was unable to make it to our second computer class, though as there was something else going on at the school that day, only 5 students attended. Then again, as I was out with Quinta, I didn't make it back in time for today's class, leaving Dan with a full class, quite a struggle. Hopefully nothing else will come up for Friday, and I'll have some better progress to report on that.

Besides all that, I've been showing some the new volunteers around. With so many having left recently, I and the others who were at my orientation have become some of the most experienced current volunteers. I'll be sure to take people to the monkey park every opportunity I get!

A trip to the police station

After losing my British SIM card a few weeks back, I now find myself with no phone at all. Last night we went out for a few drinks again, visiting a bar we have not yet been to. As I walked in I felt something at my pocket, and quickly put my hand in my pocket as it seemed someone was trying to slide my phone out. Shortly after I felt a hand in my back pocket, fortunately I had nothing in that pocket but I moved away quickly anyway. After this I was trying to keep as aware as possible, but it seems I let my guard down at some point as I checked my pocket later to find my phone was gone. One of the other guys also had his wallet stolen, with a couple of thousand shillings, debit card, drivers licence and social security number, I guess I got lucky!

The bouncer on the door was quite helpful, apparently someone had reported seeing a guy run off with a wallet, a guy who had later returned, and so the bouncer called for a cab, taking us, the person accused and the person accusing to the local police station. Not really where I wanted to be at 5am. As we gave statements to the police, and they searched the guy and hit him with a stick, we began to wonder whether this really was the guy. All we had as evidence was the word of a random Kenyan girl (who we later decided was quite likely a prostitute). We told the guy if he can get our phone and wallet back, we wouldn't take it any further, but as the police continued to hit him with a stick, he showed no sign of wanting to help us get it back. Either he was innocent and this girl had something against him, or he just doesn't care and doesn't want to confess. We are kind of worried that we've really ruined someone's day, but the police and bouncer assure us this is not the first time they've had such dealings with him. I guess the main thing is we have a crime reference number and hopefully the travel insurance will cover it.

This comes just a few days after I and another volunteer were almost mugged. I say almost, I don't think they were serious muggers, more just trying their luck hoping we would get scared and give them everything with little effort on their part. They approached us, demanding 'give us something', we explained we had just come from the pub and had no money left, as we are simply poor volunteers, not rich mzungus that they seem to think all white people are. They felt my pockets, asking what was in there, I took out my wallet and showed them the few shilling coins I had, and my phone, which they made no attempt to take from me, leading me to think they weren't serious muggers. We continued talking to them for a while, explaining why we have nothing to give, they asked if we were going to try to run, I guess trying to make us feel intimidated. Eventually they asked what we do as volunteers, teach in Kibera. 'Oh we live in Kibera, you are helping us!' They then shook our hands and somehow we became best of friends.

Hopefully that and the pick pocketing is the worst we'll experience in our time here, else I'll be beginning to wonder whether extending my trip was a good idea!

Disability School Party

Yesterday the term finished for the disability school, and so to celebrate, we had an end of year party, inviting the parents/families of the students along too. NVS put some money towards it, and so we had hot dogs, biscuits, juice and balloons, as well as some bits for the families to take home.

Fortunately all 5 students were able to make it, unlike the previous 2 days where we only had 1 person due to a broken wheelchair, seizure and the weather making it difficult for this in wheelchairs to get to school. The school now has a teacher, who started about 2 weeks ago, up until then, the students were taught by volunteers only, which is quite challenging as they are not all good with English. The party was the first opportunity the parents had to meet the teacher, so there were a lot of introductions to be done, volunteers and NVS staff included.

There were plenty of hot dogs to go around, and even some to go to the kids playing outside the school. Unfortunately I managed to forget my camera yet again, so I've only got a couple of pictures from my phone, though I have a load of pictures from the day before, when Collins got hold of my camera.

Given the chance, Martin would have probably eaten all the hot dogs in front of him. He had his fair share though! Wouldn't even stop to answer us when we asked if the food was good:

Gertrude and Elizabeth listening to Jack's speech before we eat:

The kids playing outside the school:

Group photo of the staff, volunteers, students and families (stolen from Josh's Facebook, thanks!):

After the party, we helped to clear up, as the school would be closed for a month. Then one of the staff, Dan, invited us back to his home in Kibera for a drink - nonalcoholic on this occasion, but we aagreed we'll be back for a proper drink soon.

On another topic, my new favourite place to get a burger is Steers. Recommended by a former volunteer a few weeks ago, I finally got round to going. Unfortunately, as with most places, it lacks bacon. I guess I'll have to find some and take my own when I go to get a burger!

Monkey Park Round 2

Yesterday I finally got to go to the monkey park again! No thanks the matatu conductor trying to charge us double price, despite having a sign outside the matatu when we got on, clearly listing the price. Fortunately, we reached the park whilst arguing with her, so in the end she had no choice but to accept the price we were willing to pay, telling us to never get on her matatu again. Deal, we'd rather not travel with people trying to rip us off.

The monkeys were trying harder this time to steal the bags of peanuts. Unfortunately one managed to bite through the bag I had, causing them to spill, but there were still plenty more to go around. Managed to get 3 climbing on me this time! Link to photos below, think I managed to make the album public so should work.

Monkey Photos

And I will of course aim to head back there as soon as possible, next time with bananas :D

New Teaching Programme

After discussing with another volunteer, Dan, plans for the rest of our time here, we found we were both interested in trying something new. Both of us have an interest in computing, and due to lack of funds, it is something not many students get the opportunity to do here. We decided we'd like to try setting something up to introduce more students to some basic computing skills that would help to extend their future job possibilities.

I was aware of a couple of schools having computers, so knew of a couple of options of places we might be able to set something up, we just needed permission to do so. Dan spoke with Maggie at NVS about the idea yesterday, who seemed quite keen on it, and contacted Pastor Regina (who's house I stayed at on my very first night in Kenya) who works at a school with some recently acquired computers. She also seemed keen on the idea, as despite having the computers, only her and one other teacher are able to teach, but do not have the time for it amongst everything else. We went to visit Regina at the school this morning to discuss the idea and look at what we have available on the computers, and were surprised to find they were brand new with up to date software installed, perfect for what we had planned (we expected some old out dated systems donated to the school).

We hoped to teach a couple of children per computer (10 computers so 20 students per class), however, due to the size of the room, this probably wouldn't work well. Instead, we have asked Regina to provide us with a class of 10 students, for Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, if there are enough interested (she seems confident there would be more than enough eager students). First we'll need to try to bring them all to around the same level being able to use a computer in each class, then we can move on to teaching them some more advanced stuff. Ideally we'd like to have some sort of 'course', a lesson plan for each week, over the course of so many weeks, then roll over to a new class. With something like this in place, it would be easy for other volunteers to come in and take over from the previous week, and hopefully keep this as an ongoing project after Dan and I leave in January. As long as NVS can help to get more volunteers involved, it should be possible.

It may take us a while to get some structure to the programme, but hopefully we'll have it running smoothly by the time we leave. We have almost a week to prepare for the first classes, which will likely be just assessing abilities and teaching the very basics of using a computer, giving us a couple of weeks to get together some lesson plans using Word, Excel etc.

Too Many Goodbyes

Over the past 5 weeks I've seen a lot of people come and go. Some I only know for a few days, some only a few hours. But some I've known and lived with since my first couple of days in Kenya and so have gotten to know quite well. Several people are leaving this week, strangely I kind of miss them more than I do home. That's not to say I don't miss home, just that I know I'll be going back to everything there in a couple of months, whereas these people I'll probably never see again.

No doubt there'll be plenty more people to meet over the next fee weeks, and many more sad goodbyes, but it's been great meeting every single person I have here, and hopefully at least stay in touch with them.