Outreach

I went on "outreach" with some of the other volunteers from my orientation group. For outreach, we left early Thursday morning and spent the day volunteering at 2 different places. We went to KCC school and slum which is located near Naivasha and is about 2 hours from Nairobi. 

KCC the school stands for Kitendo Children's Charity (http://kccprogramme.org) KCC serves children in the KCC slum. They accept 25 students per year to start in the "baby class" at age 3. Parents have to apply and go through a rigorous interview process before the child is admitted into the school. Tephra would lie to accept more students, but in their current space and with their current staff they cannot. KCC T also provides free/low cost health care for any child enrolled in the program and a hot lunch daily. Each morning, the students at the school receive a multivitamin and they are given deworming medication a few times a year. The school understands that education is only effective if it treats and educates the whole child. 

I was blown away by the school. It's small, but seems to be well run. They have 3 preschool/kindergarten rooms. After the students leave KCC they go on to the local primary school. KCC would like to expand to include classes 1-3 as well. 

They employ one cook for the school and have 3 full time teachers. The school founder is the only non-Kenyan still working for the project. He began the project after volunteering in Kenya. He started the project in 2009 and it is still growing.  They also have a lot of local volunteers who come to help out. I met Moses while I was there. He's in his early twenties and lives in the KCC slum with his mother and whenever he doesn't have work, he comes over to the school to help out. The day I was there, he was helping in the kitchen. Since small children aren't my favorite, I also helped in the kitchen. I prepared the sukuma wiki (kale) leaves and sorted beans.

What I liked most about KCC school, is its focus on the whole child and its involvement of the local community. I pore irate that it isn't just a westerner coming in to "save" the people but rather a person using his skills to empower local people to make lasting sustainable change in their own community. Change that is dictated by what they want and not what others think they should want. 

We walked to the KCC slum. The name KCC came from the old creamery that is in town. Many of the people living in the slum, are employed by the creamery, but far fewer than used to work there. The creamery has moved most of its operations out of the area. We toured the slum. The homes were similar to many near where I am staying - a whole family living a a single room about 10 feet x 10 feet or smaller. They use blankets hanging from the ceiling to divide the room into a sleeping area and a living room/kitchen area. 

At the back of the slum, are the pit toilets. There is 1 toilet per 100 people. Unfortunately, the toilet area isn't safe at night, especially for women and girls. Rape is all too common in the slum. This leads to the use of "flying toilets" - people using the toilet in a plastic bag and tossing to the back of the slum in the morning. There are so many issues with this. Obviously the safety and wellbeing of the
female population of the slum but also this practice leads to the contamination of the drinking water. Most of the residents get their water from the river near by which is often contaminated with human excrement, animal excrement, and many disease causing organisms. This leads to illness, diarrheal diseases, and malnutrition.

After KCC we drove to an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp. These camp were set up after the violence that erupted after the 2007 elections. Many people were forced to leave their homes or their homes were destroyed. IDP camps were set up a temporary place for these people to live. Most of the people have been relocated with government assistance. However, there are still several families still in the camps. The government has promised to resettle them, however, it has been 8 years. In the camp we visited, there are still 51 families living in the camp. 

First we visited the school. NVS used funds from outreach weekend to build a school. The school is again a preschool/kindergarten. NVS has since been able to hire a few teachers. The school is doing really well and the students are able to successfully go on to the local primary schools. The teacher we met, Joyce, teaches the oldest group of 5 year olds. She is a fabulous teacher. You can tell that she
has such a love for teaching and for all of the students. She also live in the camp with her youngest children. She has 6 total. One is in university, 2 in high school, 2 in primary school, and 1 in the camp school where she teaches.

We played lots of games with the children (we got there after school was done for the day). My favorite was similar to duck, duck, goose. Only less competitive, which I really like for this age group. It was called "I've lost my handkerchief." If I still taught PE at home, I would definitely integrate this game into my classes. 

After the school, we visited the camp itself. It's so far removed from any towns that people have to walk long distances to get to the market to buy food. Some of the residents work manual labor jobs in the rock quarry near by, but many are unemployed. They live in tents. They are about 8x12 feet. Again, whole families live in these tents. Often the children sleep on the dirt floor. These tents aren't water proof and often flood when it rains. A volunteer last year paid to have roofs put on 41 tents. She used a lottery system to determine which tents got roofs. A roof costs about $70. This makes the tent slightly more water tight but the sides are still plastic and floor still dirt.

I am definitely curious as to how the government plans to help these families find permeant homes. I'm sure there many layers to this story. The people in this camp are so positive and even though their lives are hard, they are hopeful and helpful to each other.