On Saturday the 8th of August the annual birthday party for the kids was held at BC-B house where the high school girls live in Ngong. Another birthday party was going on simultaneously at the Bungoma part of Brydges in the west of Kenya. When we first arrived at Brydges we were told the birthday was to be the following week, and on finding that the budget was nowhere near what they expected, some of our volunteering fundraising went to helping these kids get presents for the big day. Even that didn’t cover it though, so we wrote home to all of our amazing friends and asked if anyone could pledge $30 – we needed 20 of our friends to pledge that money to make up their budget. Overnight, we had 15 people pledging, and the final amount was 36 – so we all of our amazing friends and family went above and beyond by helping these kids get birthday presents, cake, meat, rice and vegetables for lunch, soft drinks for treats, chocolates and other sweets for a treasure hunt.

Some of the Maasai kids had their ‘guardians’ (generally blood related uncles or aunts, or relatives of their late parents) bring along a goat to be slaughtered… alas, we had already put some of the raised funds towards two goats for the Ngong house and one for the Bungoma boys, so plenty of goat had been sacrificed. At the time of writing he’s still bleating in the BC-B house with the high school girls, but we know that his days will be numbered. Every part of the goat is eaten here – waste not, want not.

The treasure hunt and presents were especially fantastic, and the singing and dancing on the day is a good example of how energetic and special these African children are. They have so much life, especially having come from so little and having such hard lives. The photos are attached, and videos will be uploaded to YouTube.

A HUGE thank you to the following people who pledged to the Brydges event:

Lucinda and Peter Gillon, Hana and Anne Patel, Lesley and James Cavill, Janne and Rob Millar, Mich n’ Dave, Dean Giosio, Rick and Elise Snell, Carly Hyland, Lisa Butler, Terese Henning, Juin Ng, Rob Meredith, Matt and Gery Muir, Marni Robinson, Steve Torley, Kurt Singline, Barry Wheeler, Seb Griffiths, Sam Perkins and Bodi Jacobs, Tim and Lucy Larby, Tim Devinney, Chris Delpero and Michael Bowen, April Waddington, Noeline Foster, Alice Knight and Mum (sorry Mrs Knight, we will add this on when I find out your first name!), Kym Fitzpatrick, Loraine Jackson, Leigh Gray, Marie-Paule Leroux and Raeline Newman. You made the birthday and even allowed for some help towards the back to school packages as well!

[View with PicLens]

12►

Before we begin our tale of the past couple of weeks, we should firstly explain that the program for our time with GAPS is different to what we had initially planned. The Women’s Handicraft Support Program is still being set up, and so our time will instead be spent in an orphanage and centre for disadvantaged children in Kenya. There is still an element of small business, with lessons in entrepreneurship ready and waiting for us in the ‘Skills Centre’ of Brydges, but more on this later. We agree that the program is more rewarding and fulfilling than either of us could possibly imagine.

But, to our first day in Kenya….

We landed to the soon-to-be familiar sight of Duncan, one of the GAPS representatives here in Kenya. He whisked us away to a café where we ordered our first Kenyan coffee (being the airport it was nothing spectacular…) and waited for Wambua, the Country Director of Kenya for GAPS. We had a fantastic bus trip from the Nairobi airport to Karen Camp, one of most popular places for travelers to stop over outside of Nairobi. Karen is a suburb dominated by the British colonial families who live in rather large estates all over the small area of Karen. There are beautiful gardens, large shopping centres and it quickly became the place where we would do our shopping and begin our search for cars. We spent one night in Karen Camp, met lots of great people and the next morning had our safety briefing on ‘Nairobbery’, or so the saying goes, by Wambua. We knew of the dangers of the city, having heard from a lot of friends that we needed to be careful. The safety briefing gave us information on how to behave, what to look for and some of the tricks that people use to steal from others, particularly tourists. We took very careful note!

Then it was off to our first experience of a matatu ride, the common form of transport just outside the city centre of Nairobi and all over Kenya. The matatu can be anything from a regular sized van to a large bus, and operates on a ‘jump on anywhere, jump off anywhere’ system. You share a van with up to 11 other people and that’s with your own seat. A few years ago the matatu system was regulated and now all drivers have to have ID, theoretically everyone has to wear seatbelts (though noone does, and most don’t even have them) and the door has to remain closed while driving (I kid you not, these people hang out of the door, with it completely open as they approach a crowd, sometimes the horn is tooted by the driver, but the ‘conductor’ can often whistle as well… so having the door shut whilst driving is a pretty big change!). Another big difference between Kenyan and Australian public transport is the matatus play really, really loud music, generally American hip hop, or R&B, so loudly that the windows shake. Every person who travels on the matatus has to put up with it – but it’s the most economical way to travel. You can pick a good matatu by how loud it’s painted on the outside, how good the music is (if you can call it good… some like it) and sometimes there are LCD screens on the backs of seats and/or overhead. All for generally under a $1 per trip, sometimes 30c. Wambua took us into Nairobi from Karen on a matatu, we bought a sim card, had some lunch and then headed off to the animal orphanage that sits just outside Nairobi National Park. It was a fantastic day, admiring all of the growing animals who had been brought to the orphanage as babies – leopards, cheetahs, lions, warthogs (pretty animals that they are!!), among others – and wandering through the park. We headed back through Karen to pick up our things and were brought to Brydges Centre, about 40 minutes out of Nairobi, and ten minutes away from Karen Camp, in the small township of Ngong.

Brydges Centre is made up of a number of buildings in three main areas in Kenya – the main house with the under 13s, another with high school girls and the Skills Centre for older girls is based in Ngong, a drop in centre is based in the slums of Dandora, outside Nairobi and the high school boys are based in Bungoma in Western Kenya. We are staying in the main area in Ngong, with the under 13s and we’ve made some amazing friends with these children and the staff. The staff – Auntys Mary, Knight, Everlyn and Hellen, and Uncles Frank, Ben, David and Joe the driver – have all looked after us like royalty. We are served hot Kenyan tea, that’s warmed and spiced in a pot on the stove and poured into flasks that hold their heat for up to 12 hours, and we’re greeted with this up to four times every day. The food has been amazing!! The kids are fed on mass and although their food is very basic – generally maize and ugali, or kidney beans – they are all receiving the nutrients that they need and are healthy little kids. They have porridge in the mornings, and we treat them with snacks sometimes too. Our food has been amazing. Breakfast could be as much bread as we want with peanut butter, or it could be an eggs, or what Aunty Knight calls ‘chapati chai’ – small chapatti but a little sweeter to go with our tea in the morning. Lunch is served with big chapatti and if often a vegetarian stew, made up of potatoes, tomatoes, French beans (the long green beans we have in our supermarkets), lentils, and a number of other ingredients. We’re not sure we’ve ever eaten so much, but the food is strong and simple and we are feeling more fit and healthy than we have in a long time! Dinner is often with rice, and a different type of stew, and sometimes we’ll have meat – chicken or goat, or mince – and it is all heartwarming and sturdy. Tea follows every meal, and we both look forward to the sight of the orange flasks that mean we have three or four cups of their brew ahead of us. Sadly, a lot of the Kenyan tea is sent away to England to be repackaged and then is sold back to the Kenyans at a drastically higher price – we’ve had many a conversation on this!

Since we’ve arrived we’ve been involved in a few different areas. Ben has been putting his web design skills into play and is creating the Brydges Centre website. We’re hoping, as well as the director of the orphanage and others, that this will help give the Centre a bit more exposure and so the unsponsored children that we have been spending our days with, will get the chance to have their school fees paid the way the sponsored children do. At the moment, it’s a relatively informal process, with well wishers and other volunteers who pass through deciding to sponsor school fees and/or food and board for some children. While this has worked for a long time, a lot of the time, school fees have to be found in infinite places, and at the very last minute. We really want our time here to help increase the sustainability of these kids. While Ben has been coding and writing up the website, Kate has played teacher and takes taking the ‘Skills’ girls for their entrepreneurship class. The ‘Skills’ girls are not necessarily orphans or abused like many of the others in the younger years, though that may be the case for some of them. These girls have gone through an assessment program and come from the poorest and most disadvantaged families in Kenya. Of course, there are never enough places, but the 20 girls each year who attend this ‘exit program’ take classes in tailoring, computing, entrepreneurship and then can choose between catering or beauty and hair training. They’re being taught some very simple skills, but it has become fantastic training. It’s not an accredited education program, but nonetheless, it has an 85% employment rate on completion. If it were accredited, the girls would not be able to enroll, as most haven’t been able to finish high school, or even primary school in some cases. This program really gives them a chance and we’ve been so grateful to be a part of it. Another part of our work here has been to help with developing a sponsorship strategy, to try and make sure there is constant sponsorship that other, larger orphanages are able to develop. We just hope that what we do allows others to see the benefit in contributing to these kid’s school fees!!  Of course, if anyone wants more information you can contact Ben or Kate, make a comment on this update or eagerly await the launch of the new Brydges website.

Our job is not finished here yet! We officially finish our GAPS experience on Friday the 14th of August. We then head off on safari for 5 days to the Maasai Mara and Hells Gate National Parks and come back to our adopted home at Brydges for more time. Then it’s off to attempt Mt Kenya, and again, back to Brydges before we visit the western boy’s home in Bungoma and over the border to Uganda.

[View with PicLens]

123►