The project has been closed since the holiday clubs so I’ve not had anything interesting to report for a while unless you are interested in figuring out how Microsoft Access works. Dull. But yesterday we took Benedictor, Relina and Syombua back to Daraja Academy secondary school up near Mount Kenya. It’s AMAZING! God is so flippin good, this school is ace.
The campus was built by some Americans who originally brought poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks, much like Ryan in the OC, to Kenya to sort their lives out. They made a film about it called ‘The Boys of Baraka’ which looks really interesting. Anyway, this means that the campus was built to a standard that American kids could deal with which means it is super nice.
The school we take the kids to for summer camps is a big step up from Kibera for the kids but to the UK team it feels like slumming it. It’s fairly basic, clean enough but not exactly comfortable. Daraja is beautiful, there’s a fireplace in the dining room that wouldn’t look out of place in a safari lodge, there is a lounge connected to the dorms with comfy sofas, there’s a library filled with new and interesting books.
The environment is stunning, it’s in the bush close to Mount Kenya and elephants, zebra and giraffe all roam about. I also noticed several squirrels, haven’t seen a good squirrel in a while. We walked down to the river which is filled with water from the snow on Mount Kenya, we played about a bit and Relina learnt how to skim stones. In Kibera the ‘rivers’ are just streams of sewage, you wouldn’t want to skim stones on that for fear of what the splashback could contain, plus you would have to bounce the stones around the rubbish floating in the sludge. Finally the girls are living in the environment they deserve, being told that they are amazing, getting a great education, there’s all sorts of empowerment going on. Maybe these girls might actually make it out of the slum.
God is so amazing, the couple who set up the school are not Christians, I don’t know if they have ever prayed about their school, but I wonder how many prayers are being and will be answered through them, their work and all their staff. I’m thanking God so much for them. God works in all things for the good of those who love Him.
Sunday 26 April 2009
Wednesday 15 April 2009
Karibu tena
I arrived back in Kenya at the beginning of April and my first few days involved cutting out frogs and other things for craft activities for the easter holiday clubs. I didn’t quite factor in the fact that usually there is a team of nine of us preparing for holiday camps in the summer and that’s why it only takes an afternoon to prepare everything. It seems to take a lot longer when it is only one person, I didn’t think of that when I turned down Jo’s help. Luckily I enlisted some help from some unsuspecting friends who thought they were just coming over to watch movies.
So last week was a full on week of easter clubs, usually we spread it over two weeks and just do it in the mornings but for some reason we did it all in one week doing full days which was absolutely knackering. It was a shame for the older kids who came in the afternoons because we were all flagging by that time so they didn’t have quite as much fun as the little ones who came in the morning.
What was cool though was the helpers I had to run the club. Jo and Jon weren’t around so firstly a volunteer called Jackie, a Kenyan who comes to our church came to help which was brilliant. She has a lot of experience of working with kids in the refugee camps on the Somali border, Pastor Shadrack was sick all week so she offered to help Pastor David with some of the teaching which she did excellently. She is much more interactive with the kids than our two Pastor’s style. The kids engage a bit more that way so hopefully David got some tips from her, he was certainly very impressed.
Equally exciting was having Hussein help with the leading, Hussein has been one of the TP kids for ages and has now started secondary school so is getting a bit old to come to clubs. I put him in charge of drama as he has such a flair for it himself, he did a great job and took all sorts of initiative stepping up and asking to sort out other bits and bobs. It was really cool to see him step up, he had a bit of a hard time in the afternoons with the older kids complaining because they are mostly his friends and were convinced he was rigging the points, which he was not, he is a man of integrity and he stood his ground really well.
The project is closed now for Easter holidays until the start of May so I’m doing joyful office things when there is power and when there is not, I nap.
So last week was a full on week of easter clubs, usually we spread it over two weeks and just do it in the mornings but for some reason we did it all in one week doing full days which was absolutely knackering. It was a shame for the older kids who came in the afternoons because we were all flagging by that time so they didn’t have quite as much fun as the little ones who came in the morning.
What was cool though was the helpers I had to run the club. Jo and Jon weren’t around so firstly a volunteer called Jackie, a Kenyan who comes to our church came to help which was brilliant. She has a lot of experience of working with kids in the refugee camps on the Somali border, Pastor Shadrack was sick all week so she offered to help Pastor David with some of the teaching which she did excellently. She is much more interactive with the kids than our two Pastor’s style. The kids engage a bit more that way so hopefully David got some tips from her, he was certainly very impressed.
Equally exciting was having Hussein help with the leading, Hussein has been one of the TP kids for ages and has now started secondary school so is getting a bit old to come to clubs. I put him in charge of drama as he has such a flair for it himself, he did a great job and took all sorts of initiative stepping up and asking to sort out other bits and bobs. It was really cool to see him step up, he had a bit of a hard time in the afternoons with the older kids complaining because they are mostly his friends and were convinced he was rigging the points, which he was not, he is a man of integrity and he stood his ground really well.
The project is closed now for Easter holidays until the start of May so I’m doing joyful office things when there is power and when there is not, I nap.
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