So today is Thursday and on Sunday I am flying from Glasgow to Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam to Nairobi overnight. Then I'm coming home.
Well, in August.
For those who don't know (and those that didn't pay attention when I told them first time) I'm popping off to Kenya for six months to volunteer for a small Kenyan organisation called Single Mothers Association Kenya (yes, that's SMAK for short).
SMAK was established in 1991 to work with disadvantaged youth (focusing on young girls) and provide them with education, vocational training and development counselling. The aim of the organisation is to empower girls and women and enable them to find a job or start their own business to support themselves and their families.
Their main areas of work are:
Well, in August.
For those who don't know (and those that didn't pay attention when I told them first time) I'm popping off to Kenya for six months to volunteer for a small Kenyan organisation called Single Mothers Association Kenya (yes, that's SMAK for short).
SMAK was established in 1991 to work with disadvantaged youth (focusing on young girls) and provide them with education, vocational training and development counselling. The aim of the organisation is to empower girls and women and enable them to find a job or start their own business to support themselves and their families.
Their main areas of work are:
- HIV/AIDS awareness
- Skills training: vocational training, computer classes
- Home care for people living with HIV/AIDS
- Children's care: during their training the children of low income mothers are looked after by SMAK's carers
- Mentoring: support groups for vulnerable people, life skills projects and human rights awareness
I will be working with SMAK to develop their project in Western Kenya, which is currently very small (their main project is in Nairobi). To do this I will be working from Nairobi most of the time, as their rural office is slightly lacking in facilities (i.e. they don't actually have electricity or internet access). I'll not go into the details of what i'll be doing yet as they are likely to change/I'm not entirely sure yet(!!)
I'll use this blog to keep everyone at home up to date with how I'm doing and to show off about the weather. When I say show off, I probably mean complain about not coping very well in the heat. I'll try and add some snaps too.
The aim is to try not to let this blog get too cheesy and gap yaah in Africa cliched, but needless to say I will stray. There is a Kenyan writer called Binyaganva Wainaina who wrote an article called 'How to write about Africa' which basically lists all the cliched ways Western writers tend to write about African countries. My aim is not to tick too many off his list. I've just noticed I've already crossed one off by having Africa in the title of this page, but I think that that is fair enough and am going to leave it at that for now.
Fingers crossed the next post will be from actual Kenya!
