Kenya: Week Two and Three

Jambo! Habari ya hasabuhi? (Hello! How is your morning?)
Mzuri sana, nawawa? (Very Good, and you?)

Week two in the beautiful Maasai Mara of Kenya. During this week we had the usual adventures of the build site, chances to play with the kids, and visits to our Me to We Duka ("store") as well as other Me to We projects and experiences.

My biggest highlight from the second week in Kenya was definitely the Duka day. We got up early and traveled to our leadership center which houses our Duka. While there, we were able to purchase Me to We Artisan items. I got various gifts for my family as well as a couple things for myself. I got myself a "warrior package" which includes a shuka (to always remember Peter), a warrior bracelet that has the Maasai symbol (to always remember the Maasai), and a rungu because of its significance with leadership. The Duka had beautiful items like Maasai wedding necklaces and jewelry, as well as items like congos and Me to Bee honey. After we finished our adventure in the Duka we headed out to visit our tree nursery and get weapons training by Peter. We each got the chance to learn how to throw a conga which was pretty exciting! Finally, we ended the day at a tour of the Baraka Health Clinic and with a talk from Robin. It felt so good to see Robin again and hear her story all over. She truly is an inspiration to me and I feel so privileged to be able to call her a friend because she is just a very strong, motivated, and determined woman.

The week also consisted of various days for our participants to play with the kids after school. It was refreshing to watch them let loose and play different childhood games. It is incredible how easily kids can teach you games with such a language barrier... goes to show a little something we can learn from kids.

The last part of this week that I'll touch on was our "Community Day". The night before community day, we handed out family profiles to groups of participants. These profiles told them their family name, size, who the members were (ex. 1 mama, 1 baba, 4 kids, grandparent, etc), their assets (ex. goats, cows, maize), and their expenses for the week (ex. kids need their head shaved, medicine for sick family member, fixing a roof, school book, etc). We then read them out the average prices of these expenses and had them subtract theirs from the "average" $500 schillings ($5 US) a Kenyan family will have to spend a week. Their task was to bring that much money to the market the next day. The next day, we woke up the boys at dawn (about 6 a.m.) as the mamas for the day and they had to go fetch water. Once they returned, we had them doing everyone's laundry, cleaning the tents, doing the dishes... all the tasks a mama would do in the morning. While they were doing that, we woke up the girls and they were the "boys" for the day. They spent their morning being served breakfast and having "school" and Swahili lessons with Peter. The breakfast was a traditional Kenyan breakfast - Ugi, which is like a cream of wheat porridge. We then headed out to Mulot Market where the participants took the limited money they had (some had $80 schillings, some had $300 schillings - aka 80 US cents and $3 US) and bought the food they needed for the week for their family. When we returned to Osenetoi, we had a traditional Kenyan dinner of Ugali (ground up maize mixed with water to make a solid consistency) and cabbage.

One challenge I found with community day was dinner... Before we ate, Sally addressed the group and reminded us of the drought and famine happening in eastern Africa. She said, "you may not all like this meal and that's okay, but we are asking that you take a little bit to try then come up for more if you like it... we want to make sure we are doing our part by not wasting food". Everyone agreed... as we are eating our dinner, we see one of our participants walk up and throw out an entire plate of cabbage. I started to tear up and Sally was visibly angry as well. I stood up and addressed our frustration and disappointment to the group (without singling out the participant). We reminded them of the current situation and that this drought and famine were affecting people on the other side of the fence from us. It was just really hard for me that some of the youth didn't seem to care/understand (not sure which one since we addressed it so much) about the local issues affecting the community. It was definitely a struggle for me all trip.

Finally, part of community day was a visit to Kisaruni, Free The Children's first all girl high school in Kenya! The facilities were beautiful and it was so wonderful to hear the teachers talk about the students' commitment to their education. The girls would come for a full day with limited breaks and study ten subjects! As soon as you walk into the main building, you see pictures of all the girls that have won FTC scholarships to attend Kisaruni - it was incredible.

Week Three:

The end of the trip was packed with more leadership skills, lots of action planning, and safari day!

The safari was a long, but beautiful, day. We woke up at 5 a.m. so we could be awake with the animals, had a small breakfast, and were in the lorry ready to go. I can honestly say, if I don't sit in a lorry for a long time, I'll be very happy :) man is that thing bumpy! Anyways, we traveled for a few hours until we reached the game reserve and were greeted by lots of zebras and gazelles! Throughout the course of the day, we saw zebras, gazelles, buffaloes, water buffaloes, giraffes, monkeys, and various birds. Unfortunately, the lions and elephants must have been asleep that day because they were MIA. For me, I was happy with the zebras... Anyone that knows me knows that as a kid I wanted to be a zookeeper so I could play with zebras all day. It was beautiful and exhilarating to see these animals in their natural habitat.

We ended the trip with a few days of action planning. We introduced the idea of "Passion + Issue = Change" to encourage them to think of ways they could do what they love and raise awareness/money for various causes. At the end of the week, the group had incredible plans! Some included sports tournaments to raise money for sports equipment to be sent to communities in Kenya, water walks to raise money for clean water, and giving presentations at their schools to raise awareness of global issues. The passions ranged from skateboarding to soccer to public speaking; the issues ranged from clean water to sex trafficking to animal rights... Action planning is my favorite part of any academy/trip/workshop because it is the tangible part that gives youth the confidence to know they can actually do something about these issues. It reminds me why I do my job day in and day out.