7 posts tagged “nairobi”
We went by sleeper train from Nairobi to Mombasa. It was quite an awesome experience – like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. Everything seemed to be a hangover from colonial times from the Victorian-style station to the posh cutlery made in Sheffield. What was quite amusing was that several pieces had clearly been lost over the years and was just replaced with bog-standard cheap stuff. Our little cabin was very cute and we were quite taken with the quaintness of everything. The journey took us around 16 hours, but we only covered a distance of about 250 miles! Not the quickest mode of transport, but a very pleasant one. It’s really difficult to upload stuff onto the blog with slow connections, so I’m trying to put as many photos on Flickr instead.
Before we left Nairobi our hosts took us to the Langata Giraffe Centre. On the way, we drove past the farmhouse of Karen Blixen – the lady who wrote Out of Africa (see Flickr). The giraffe centre is funded by the Africa Fund for Endangered Wildlife and it is looking at preserving and increasing Rothschild’s giraffes and reintroducing them into the wild. It was amazing being able to hand-feed them. It was quite fun feeding them one pellet at a time so that they stuck out their huge, blue tongues to collect the pellet. As you can see, Ben caught some comical poses with the camera (check out Flickr). On the site of the giraffe park is Giraffe Manor – which looks so out of place here. Very surreal.
This is a fab little video that Ben put together summarising our time with the gorgeous kids that we worked with in the slum school - it made me cry, and I'd already seen it all. The originals for our videos can be found on YouTube.
All the groovy hairstyles of the women
The enterprising people who work hard at the side of the road selling things – everything from fruit and veg to parts of mobile phones, live chickens and scrap metal
The bright colours that people wear
The hustle and bustle of African city life
The many different ways that women tie their headscarves
People walking along the dust paths at the side of the road
Guys with handcarts carrying fish, fizzy drinks, boxes. The carts are so heavy and yet the guys just struggle on with them
More picks of the kids that we worked with. The one with the whole school shows the head teacher, Mary, standing at the back. The is a university graduate who felt called to work with these slum kids. She does such an amazing job.
Do check out the schools website for more information and pics:
www.tumaini.net
Before the election, we were starting to get a bit jittery. Everyone here is obsessed with Obama. You wouldn’t think that something happening thousands of miles away would be so important. As we walked down the street, people would shout “Obama, Obama” at us. People wear Obama t-shirts, there’s posters and there’s even a 30-foot high video screen in town showing campaign material. Goodness knows who pays for it all. Locals were saying that they were afraid that the troubles might restart if he lost – and it wouldn’t be a good time for white people. Now that Obama has won, everyone is talking about it and the president has even declared a public holiday tomorrow. Crazy!
You’ve all seen the starving African kids on TV with no food and little hope. Well – these kids that we’re working with are it.
To get to school each day we have a spectacular journey – squeezing onto matatus being moaned at because we aren’t quick enough in the tiny spaces with big bags of food and paper for the kids.
The Sinai slum itself is made up of mud streets lined with tin huts, which doesn’t sound so bad until you see it and smell it for yourself. Down the centre of each street is the open sewer which is exactly as you might imagine. The bits of mud suitable for walking on are made up of compacted rubbish (plastic bags, old banana skins, burnt wood etc). Although the place is fairly squalid, it was very much as we’d expected.
The school, however, wasn’t quite what we imagined – even though we were told it would be basic. There are about 70-80 kids crammed into a very small tin shed, squeezed onto small benches & desks, classes separated by wooden boards. It was so strange walking into the room with what seemed like hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at us.
We teach the kids in 3 groups. The older lot, about 13 of them, understand most of what we say. We’ve been teaching them songs, doing Bible stories and they’re filling in worksheets. The younger groups need more translation, but they’re enjoying the songs and seem to have a vague understanding about the point of the stories.
One of the most important things that the school does is feed the children. Many of the kids would get little or no food were it not for the school. We’ve all heard stories of plight in Africa, but it’s very different when those tragic stories are sitting in front of you, looking you in the eye. Many of the kids are from broken homes where parents come home drunk or “entertain” many guests all this happens in single room tin sheds. Some have electricity, some even have windows.
