The Kenya Programme

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE WILL NOT BE SENDING VOLUNTEERS TO KENYA IN 2008

Programme location and general information

The Kenya programme has run very successfully in Nairobi for several years. Volunteers have lived in a secure apartment complex, very comfortable with good cooking facilities. Supermarkets with western and even some kosher food are available and there is also ample vegetarian food, due to the large Indian population in Nairobi . The city can be dangerous so volunteers must be sensible and vigilant, but this need not preclude enjoying the city and having a good time! In the past, volunteers have had Swahili lessons during the programme, and at weekends and afterwards traveled around the country, going on safari in the Maasai Mara, climbing Mount Kenya, visiting the coast and the island of Lamu, Lake Naivasha to see hippos, and driving deep into the Maasai bush.

Placements

Please bear in mind that these are examples only, and we cannot guarantee that these placements will be available for future programmes. The information here is intended as a guide only.

* KICOSHEP (Kibera Community Self - Help Project)– KICOSHEP works in Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, to help young people, people with AIDS and their families, educates on health issues and carries out other work to relieve poverty. Volunteers here have worked in youth clubs and produced a manual to train educators about HIV/AIDS, made home visits to AIDS sufferers and also engaged in HIV testing and alternative therapy.

* Dagoretti Children's Centre – This is a home for children with disabilities or with AIDS, orphans and street children. Volunteers here developed a summer club to educate and entertain the children, worked to create projects for older children and worked on fundraising proposals.

* Huruma – The Huruma Children's Home cares for orphans and street children, who are given a home, food, a family and an education in the centre. Volunteers have taught in the school, developed teaching materials and designed a website for the home – www.hurumachildrenshome.org.

* Mugima – The centre provides disadvantaged Maasai girls with a basic education, health and childcare education and training in vocational skills such as dressmaking. Volunteers have taught English, dressmaking and other crafts and skills and developed fundraising proposals. They have also traveled to the remote rural regions where the girls live to meet with their parents and communities and promote the banning of FGM (female genital mutilation), as well as basic health and hygiene practices.

Volunteers

Joel Clark – Kenya 2005 (from an email sent while on placement)

Dear all, I have now started my placement in Kibera slums where I am working for an NGO called KICOSHEP (Kibera Community Self-Help Programme), which aims to ease the HIV/AIDS epidemic through testing, counselling and education. My role involves documenting the youth work which goes on in KICOSHEP's centres and helping out with other education activities. Working in the slums every day has exposed me to so much in such a short time and here again is some of what I have seen and heard over the last week or so.

27th July, Nairobi

Working in Kibera. How can I write about it? How can I put it into words without using the barrage of cliches and metaphors which have been used so many times before? Kibera is so much, it means so much, it seems to signify so much of what has gone wrong with our world. So many people. So much need. So much suffering. At the same time, an incredible resilience in so many people, a determination and a courage to fight the conditions in which they live. Just walking through the slums every day is an almost total assault on the senses. The road is a bumpy, narrow mud-track, lined on both sides by houses and shops - rusty corrugated iron shacks. Everywhere there are streams of sewage and rubbish. Plastic bags, chewed corn cobs, food wrappers, mud, faeces. Here and there, hens hobble around, nosing into these piles of rubbish. The smell is overpowering. Open sewers. Decayed food. Burning rubbish.

This is Kibera. Where children face such uncertain futures. Tiny children wandering the streets, some without shoes, jumping over puddles of vileness that I cannot describe. "Ow are you? Mzungu, 'ow are you?" they shout. They reach out to shake my hand. What do they think of me? This strange white man walking through their home, prying into their lives. These children who have so little. They wake each morning and walk with their families to the nearest tap, clutching a jerry-can and paying for a little water with which to wash their faces. There are schools in Kibera, but so many children do not go to school. They are too sick or poor to be able to go, to be able even to buy the uniform.

A railway track runs through the centre of the slum and there is one high point at which you can stand for a minute to observe. If you turn your head to the right, you see the slums from above - rusty tin rooves, streams of sewage, grime and despair. And then if you turn to the left, you see none of this. A golf course. Sweeping expanses of green. Affluent Kenyans taking a day out. Another world. Just next door. This, this is Kibera.

21st July - 'Lying by the bus stop'

Poverty, of course, is not confined to the slums. It exists everywhere: I'm looking at a boy who is lying by the bus stop. It is clear he has no home. His clothes are old, torn, dusty. His hair is unkempt and his skin is dirty. He is probably no more than 14 or 15. And there he is. Lying by the bus stop. Who is he I wonder. Why is he there? Where are his parents and how did he get into this situation? Lying by the bus stop. The people standing nearby take little notice of him. The problem is too big and there are too many others like him to be concerned. But what will become of this boy? Will he still be there tomorrow? In a week, a month, a year, what will be his situation? Will he be there still, lying by the bus stop? Where will his next meal come from, this boy at the bus stop? Perhaps his life may not last much longer. Maybe he will succumb to a deadly disease. Who knows. Who cares. Who will save this young boy who is lying at the bus stop?

23rd July - Southern Kenya/Tanzania

Last weekend, we went south from Nairobi and camped in a very remote spot, driving far into Maasailand, right to the border with Tanzania: Out in the middle of the bush, sitting in a four-wheel drive. Staring out into the natural beauty of Africa. A long line of pink flamingoes are visible on the horizon between the hazy sky and the dusty ground. All that breaks up the scene are two small Maasai children. They are caked in the dust and dirt that is everywhere. They do not wear clothes, only strips of material draped over their bodies - the traditional dress of the Maasai. I give them some crumbs of bread and feel annoyed with myself for treating them almost as ducks in the park. Then two older women appear, wearing colourful dress, beaded necklaces and earrings hanging from their looped ears. They examine the vehicle I am sitting in, peering in through each window to see what is inside. They wipe the dust off the wing mirrors to look at their image. They touch me - the mzungu - and point to things they would like - a water bottle, a watch, an envelope. They talk to me in their own language, Maasai, though I show no sign of understanding. They point to my scar but I am unable to explain it to them. I show them a photo of my family and they are alarmed by the red eyes on the image. Out here, at the very southern tip of Kenya, perhaps even in Tanzania, the Maasai and the white man have met. But we are separated by so much - language, culture, dress, wealth, customs...

Shabbat Shalom and love, Joel

Leonora Weil – Kenya 2001

My first impression of Kenya is sitting at the airport late at night and pushing our taxi out of the car park to kick start the engine!

This summer, I joined the Jewish organisation Tzedek with twelve other students, to volunteer in Nairobi , Kenya . I worked with 2 other British volunteers in Dagoretti Children's Centre. Dagoretti is a school and home for approximately 250 orphans, over 50% with AIDS, which is run through the auspices of Feed the Children . The children I worked with were both mentally and physically handicapped as well as able bodied. Dagoretti is an inspiring place to work. Everything is produced on site from the food and the clothes to the wheel chairs and furniture. The atmosphere is one of community and this is borne out by the children themselves: the able bodied or the partially disabled assisting those who require it. On site is also a workshop where disabled adults make jewellery and screen prints for sale.

The work we did there was 3-fold:

1. Through establishing contacts with several Kenyan industries, we succeeded in gaining funding for the interior of the library, money towards a solar panel for hot water and a computer cluster. We also set up links for long-term donations which included furniture, clothes and food.

2. Our fundraising work branched out into a project involving the Soycow. The Soycow is a machine that has the capacity to produce about 400L of protein-rich Soyamilk each day. At Dagoretti, there is a Soycow which was successfully used as a pilot study by Feed the Children. Our aim is to raise money in the UK to establish more of these machines in Kenya . This machine would be particularly useful in the slums of Kibera (the second largest in the world) where rows of tangled houses stretch out as far as the eye can see. We have already set up a link with Kiscoshep, the charity involved with Kibera, who are keen to obtain a Soycow machine. If we are successful, there will be further possibilities for the machine, for example using it as an income generation scheme or for heating other food between milk production. We also set up a link between Dagoretti and a neighbourhood school who are now able to take advantage of the milk supply.

3. Another major project that we focused on was the organisation of a summer camp for the children. Despite my previous experience with youth work, this was difficult experience because there were so many challenges to face: a very small budget, a different culture, working with an age range that spanned from 7 to 21 year olds with a range of disabilities and only the 3 of us responsible for running activities! Our first goal was to train child carers through a 2 day seminar. What began as a static assembly of old and weary 45 year old ladies became an agile group of wild and crazy women playing British Bulldogs, Red Rovers and having a lot of fun. The social worker in charge said that previously he had never even seen these ladies run!

Another difficulty we faced was assembling all the children for the morning activities because everything runs on Kenyan time. If you arrange to meet someone at 4pm , it probably means that they will not turn up until 6pm , if at all, which made it exceptionally hard to organise anything!

We planned a comprehensive 2 week camp ranging from arts and crafts, to sports and games. Overall, the camp was a success despite some minor set backs, including last minute visits from missionaries. The children's favourite activity was art, including papier-mâché and a huge banner which each child decorated to spell out ‘Dagoretti Children's Centre.' The determination of the children to overcome their difficulties was extremely inspiring. Children with no arms painted with their feet or teeth. One child who had no legs ran away from me in a game of tag using his arms and his waist as a third leg. As well as variation due the handicapped nature of the children, the cultural differences were apparent as well. Games like ‘pass the parcel' are a totally different experience to children who may never have received a present before.

Working in an area for an extended amount of time allows you to understand the culture. We participated in Swahili lessons and learnt songs, dances and recipes from the people we encountered. Weekend trips allowed us as a group to visit other parts of the country. On one of our excursions, our vehicle broke down. Our group were unable to push it out from a ditch, so some Maasai tribesmen who had been working in the nearby fields came to our assistance. One rather large Maasai lady single-handedly succeeded in lifting the vehicle when all 12 of us together had previously failed! To reach the nearby mechanic, we allowed the van to roll down the hill. It had become a pied-piper figure against the landscape, Maasai people and all of us running behind it. The people on the roadsides were both shocked and amused – I doubt that they had ever seen a muzungu (white person) run before!

From the game reserves of the Maasai Mara, the glistening water at the coast and the tall peaks of Mount Kenya , I found beauty wherever I looked. Like most visitors to Kenya , these are the sights I discovered. Had I travelled in Kenya as a tourist, my interpretation of the country and its people would have been completely different. My work with the local community gave me a completely different perspective of the country, the culture and its people. It was experience that I have grown from and which I will never forget. As for me, I've arranged a meeting 3 hours ago, so by Kenyan time, I should probably get going!

Natalie Marx – Kenya 2001:

The Kibera slums in Nairobi are home to some of Kenya 's desperate victims. Victims of the third world, desperate to sample clean water, a rooftop or some shoes... desperate to awaken from a living nightmare.

No amount of research could have prepared me for the next seven weeks. I was entering a ghetto that stretched as far as the eye could see - corrugated iron roofs, mud houses and the unbearable smell of human faeces. But this was home to 1.7 million people and I could not bring myself to watch every step I took or spend all day pinching my nose. By the end of my first day I was filthy.

I was introduced to a girl named Mercy and her small son Vincent. She was twenty one (like me), lived in the slums and worked at its small medical centre to earn enough for a bag of rice each week. I was instructed to stay with Mercy for my safety as I would no doubt be the only white person there, except for a foreign TV crew or some radio journalists.

My relationship with Mercy quickly stumbled as she straight away begged me for money. She needed clothes for Vincent and said they had not eaten for three days. For my own safety I had to refuse and deny that I was carrying any money. She was desperate and her appeal highly emotional. Mercy said that she had to beg to survive and that when this failed she was forced to steal. She was uneducated, barely literate and if I reported her she would face the sack and starvation. Her pleas were impossible to ignore.

I gave her what emotional support I could and offered her literacy lessons.

I was working in one of the slum's two medical centres. This ‘centre' is one room with a curtain dividing the treatment area from the reception. Slum residents can work here after taking a short course which enables them to carry out the important AIDS test. The struggle to emphasise the importance of an AIDS test is a battle in itself, so those that did come to the centre were often in the later stages of the disease.

I took the course and began the testing. The test is quick, low-tech and cheap. Blood drawn from the forefinger is tested for the HIV virus and results are available in 15 minutes. But the test is only 67% reliable and, despite repeating the test, sceptical patients would sometimes leave unconvinced that they had the HIV virus. The centre issued me with a sheet of paper that had five check points to discuss about essential precautions patients were to take if the test result was positive.

There was a treatment, given free of charge, for positive patients. They were given a drug called Tai Bow - donated by the USA , being trialled for two years in Kenya to determine its effectiveness. It was the only medicine they could take as the anti retro viral drugs were prohibitively expensive. But Tai Bow has serious side effects including severe diarrhoea, loss of appetite, terrible itching all over the body and aching joints.

But many of the centre's patients were too sick to leave their homes. Mine and Mercy's afternoons involved four or five home visits treating the infected and affected. While the morning testing was challenging, my afternoons were shocking.

Navigating our way through the filth and faeces deep into the slum we met Miriam. There she beckoned us to enter her windowless, corrugated roofed, four by four mud room. In the dark I could make out a frail figure shifting uneasily to a cardboard box in order to offer me her only chair. Mercy interpreted and explained for me. Miriam was a member of PLWA - People Living With AIDS - those that had publicly admitted to having AIDS. Mercy told me that this was rare as most wanted to keep their status quiet, fearing the community's ignorance and prejudice.

Despite Miriam's coughing and itching, she told us of her experience. She had had seven children, her husband died a year ago and three of her children had AIDS. None of her children attended school as it was too expensive and her main worry was how she was going to pay the rent.

Miriam had a small business. She sat at the busiest stretch of track in the slums and sold corn. Her children collected corn in the morning and Miriam roasted it with a home made coal burning stove. But her business was suffering. Ever since she joined PLWA the community had stopped buying from her - falsely believing they could catch the virus this way.

Miriam had enough tea for breakfast and dinner, but only if her children missed lunch, and not enough for the rest of the week. She begged me for a solution. She told Mercy that ‘white girl must help, l am so very worried'.

I was grateful for the dark as tears welled up in my eyes. Miriam told us of her eldest daughter. She was deaf and dumb and had AIDS. She had just run away. Miriam was worried for her daughter and for the people she might be infecting. I tried to compose my self; attempted to console Miriam and realised that any effort to comfort her would not help. I massaged her aching joints, kindly declined the scarce tea she insisted I share and told her of my admiration for such an exceptional person placed in such desolate and devastating circumstances. We left Miriam and went to the next home to talk, listen, share tea and witness another unforgettable nightmare. For some we were the only visitors for days.

You might wonder why anyone would choose to work in such a living night mare. How could my lack of experience, training or money make any difference to the desperate poverty and disease in Kibera?

This is what Tzedek believes in, that every little bit counts. I may have taught forty youngsters about safe sex, spoken to a handful of expectant women concerning AIDS and breastfeeding, helped a dying man live for an extra week. Each of these counts.

For every one of the lives I was able to touch, there were hundreds more who taught me so much. Perhaps this experience was in part a selfish one - because the images I have and lessons learnt, are ones that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

In every single victim I met was an unbelievable fight, a faith in God and a determination to live. I would counsel everyone that can to do as I have - give to, and learn from, all those whom I was so privileged to have met. They should not have to continue their struggle alone.

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