Living in Nairobi, working in Kibera: 23 July, 2011

Living in Nairobi, working in Kibera: 23 July, 2011: "Working with young people Before I come to my reflections on my time here, I have to write about today. Today was an amazing day for ..."

23 July, 2011

Working with young people

Before I come to my reflections on my time here, I have to write about today.  Today was an amazing day for me.  Working with children is always such a joy (even for those of us who like to give them back!).  The organisation I work with IDEWES, runs an OVC (orphans and vulnerable children) programme.  Within this programme, we have a psychosocial session for children under 18 which involves occasionally bringing them together on a Saturday and involving them in activities.  Besides creating space for them to be children the session also helps the organisation identify any cases relating to violation of children’s rights.  Since my work began here in April, there has not been one psychosocial event due to lack of resources to run it.  So I decided to fund one psychosocial event to take place today.  And if I have the time to do it again before I leave, I most certainly will!  

First, I arrived at the office at about 1.15pm today, together with 2 other members of staff, and the Director Julie, to prepare for the arrival of children at about 2pm.  I printed off some drawings for the younger ones to paint and colour with crayons and I cut up some flipcharts for them to draw on.  Lillian proceeded to wash cups for refreshments.  At the excitement of seeing children arrive and gather round the registration table, I dashed outside to take photos.  Here’s where my ‘children are amazing to work with’ feeling starts.  I proceeded to take random photos of them. They noticed this and start to pay more attention to their facial expressions and poses.  I got one cracking photograph of two girls about 10 or 11 I’d say when I encouraged them to smile – in the end I get a laugh from them – great photo!  I show another girl of about 8 or 9 a photo I’ve just taken of her. She is so excited to see herself on my not so sophisticated digital camera and giggles away.  I think - the simple things that put a smile on a child’s face.  They all want their photographs taken.

Chora shule! Cheka!

Once we have registered a good number of children, we group them into three – the younger ones, about 7 and under, and the older boys from the girls.  The younger ones stay indoors while the older ones go outside to play with skipping ropes and footballs provided by the organisation.   Later, I give them a Frisbee disc and show them how to throw it.  Now, there’s a short story behind the Frisbee disc.  My flatmate back in London is a keen ultimate Frisbee sportsman.  He donated one of his very special Frisbee discs to the children to play with and requested that I take photos too, which I have done.  I hope he won’t be disappointed when he realises from the photos that given the small space they were playing in, coupled with the fact that my Kiswahili is limited to a few words and no sentences, their ultimate Frisbee sport closely resembled rugby!  The important thing though is that they loved it.  

In our small office, the younger ones sit on the floor and are given drawings and crayon to colour.  It’s a joy to see children colour, choose different coloured crayons, and draw things that are familiar to them.  When each one of them was done with colouring a photograph they would come to me with it, as if to say ‘see what I’ve done – isn’t it amazing?’  I gave them more to colour and plain paper to draw on, and I learned a few more words ‘chora’ (draw) ‘chora shule’ (draw your school), etc and when taking photos ‘cheka’ (smile).  Finally when they are all done I get them to hold up their drawings and I take several photos of them.  It is rather amusing and the photos are a bit of a mess as they keep crowding round me in a bid to make sure that their drawings are captured by the camera!

Behind the smiles...

I also take photos of the older girls skipping, and the boys playing football and rugby (both with a football), and Frisbee.   After about 2 hours, it’s time for refreshments.   Juice concentrate and biscuits for all.  They love it as all kids do.  They queue for their refreshments, after which we bring the afternoon to a close.  But not before Lillian has identified a case of a child who says that her mother beats her until she bruises.  Behind the ‘cheka’ of these children, there is always a story that pulls at one’s heartstrings.  The staff are trained paralegals, so Lillian will follow up on this next week.  

Pulling at my heartstrings and the results

In all 83+ children went away with smiles on their faces and happy tummies.  That certainly put a smile on my face.  The two staff who led on this also have done a fantastic job too. They were so well organised and complemented each other very well.  

It’s so easy to put a smile on children’s faces.  My best moment of today has to be when this little guy – about 5 years old – came to me and confidently demanded that I take a photo of him.  I was so impressed and taken by his attitude that I made a whole show of readying up my camera to take a photo of him.  I was rewarded with a cheeky smile and a pose which I recognised to be a ‘peace’ sign but I was told was a ‘chill’ sign. Nice.  I loved it – I took a couple of photos of him, which he loved.  And then he asked if he could take a photo with my camera.  Unfortunately, I could not give in to that for many different reasons, and I felt rather bad about it, but it certainly brought an idea to mind – a photography session! Now that’s an idea for next time!

Living in Nairobi, working in Kibera: 20 July, 2011

Living in Nairobi, working in Kibera: 20 July, 2011: "My fourth month – looking back It has been almost two months now since I last updated my blog. In this time I have learnt that I miss w..."

20 July, 2011

My fourth month – looking back

It has been almost two months now since I last updated my blog.  In this time I have learnt that I miss writing and I love writing and it is very exciting to be writing again, but, finding the time to write is a huge challenge!  So, here’s my attempt to address this challenge, bring you up to speed with where I am now, what’s happened and how I’m spending my last few weeks.  

Incredibly, my time’s simply raced along but it’s been my most amazing journey, and I would not trade it for anything else in the world.  In this time I have also thought about why I’m here, why I chose to volunteer here, and how to capture this in a cohesive way in my blog.  With some help from an old journalist friend, I’ve also revisited (mentally anyway) why I started writing this blog in the first place.  I have been genuinely impressed with, and appreciative of, all those who have dedicated time to read them.  But I’ll come to these thoughts later.  

Seeing results – organisation profile and leaflet ...

First, I want to bring you up to speed with where I left off in May.  If I recall correctly, I fell rather ill (for the second time!) in the last week or so of May and found myself on antibiotics.  But that was the only downside.  With my work at IDEWES, there were three key achievements which I was immensely proud of, not due to my efforts alone but also due to the staff’s hard work, and in relation to these specific outputs the international volunteers Eyrun and Eli.  Thanks to these two, the organisational leaflet was completed and approved by some members of the board.  I finally sent it off for printing to a benevolent friend (whom I’m very grateful to) in London who offered to make 400 copies of in-house prints for us which we received via post three weeks later.   I also completed the organisational profile, and after a lot of pressure on my part the website is also finally up and running.  Thanks to both these outputs, I felt ready to approach funders with promotional materials.  

...and the biggest achievement – the filing system!

Finally, one of the biggest tasks - Eyrun completed work on the filing system as per the five week work plan we had put together.  All files were in place, folders weeded, renamed, sub-folders created, and a file map created and saved on the office PC.  Bearing in mind that staff are not particularly familiar with the PC and do not use it often, we made sure to print a hardcopy of the file map, organised alphabetically to make it easy for staff to locate files.  In addition, I guided Eyrun to develop training for staff on the use of the filing system and designated one local member of staff to be responsible for it.  I’ve mentioned before that Eyrun’s Icelandic, (only) 19 but very mature.  As we were developing the training, she confessed that she’d never done any ‘teaching’ or ‘spoken in front of people’ and that she was nervous delivering training.  I appreciated her honesty, and it also reminded me that she was really 19.  I helped her through it and she pulled it off pretty well!  The local staff were very receptive to it and seemed to grasp it quickly, and the person designated to be responsible for it is currently doing a remarkable job, one I’m very impressed with.  

To top it all off, the training took place on Eyrun’s last day at work. She was going off travelling around East Africa for a month and then heading back home to Iceland just in time for her sister’s wedding in July.  We threw a small party for her at work – there was a lot to eat and drink.  It was quite emotional, and reading her report which comprised of her achievements at work and her time at the organisation, I shed a tear or two.  I would miss her – she had been great support for me, a great work colleague, and a wonderful young friend to hang out with occasionally.  I was glad Eli would be here for another month at least, so I still had someone to hang out with.  In June, I would take a short holiday to the coast with Eli and I was really looking forward to it.  What with falling ill, et al, my body seemed to be screaming out to me that it could do with a break.  

All in all I felt I had ended the month with some key outputs – just in time to head off on a much deserved holiday in Mombasa and surrounding areas.