I went on holiday to a different Kenya last weekend. There were a lot of white people and open spaces. I was staying with my friend Kirsty who I went to uni with at her grandparents house in Karen. We had a delightful time eating nice things and catching up and visiting the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage and on Sunday the giraffe centre. SUCH fun and such a lovely time which felt like an actual holiday. Then it was also nice to find that after a weekend full of treats I was happy to come home on Sunday evening to Ruth and Alex, and the first Kenya I met.
After the weekend it was back to reality, although it has been a varied week! On Tuesday Angelina, Judy (VCT counsellor) and I attended a Safaricom event. Safaricom are the leading mobile phone company in Kenya, I think owned by Vodafone. I was unimpressed with them to begin with as they took a long time to sort my internet out and faffed around a lot. But this event was to launch their World of Difference program, where by they encourage their staff to apply to take a secondment to work with a charity and share their skills where they are needed the most. It was a very positive event and the staff and management seemed passionate about the whole corporate responsibility side of Safaricom. They also provided a very good lunch including a chocolate fountain. Not bad for Valentines Day. And we basically went home straight afterwards so I came home and baked treats for Alex and Ruth which they were very polite about…
On Wednesday I finally made it to the other side of the city with Sophie (I don’t think I’ve mentioned her yet, but Sophie is the director Angelina’s daughter and she has basically been looking after me, shepherding me about and laughing at me since I arrived). We were going to visit a friend of a friend who has even been to Scotland and even Bonawe and even my house! Sophy lives by Kibera with her son and beautiful baby daughter and it was so nice to meet her again. She put on a HUGE spread of food and insisted other Sophie and I ate as much as we could.
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| Sophie and I and Sophy's baby |
Finally, this morning was totally bizarre. All Angelina knew about this meeting we were attending was that everyone invited had something to do with vulnerable children. So we turned up to this very posh hotel with many other local organizations to be met by an extremely enthusiastic American lady. It turned out to be the David C Cook organization, and they were here to present their Sunday School curriculum for ages 7 - 11. I was VERY sceptical of this from the beginning due to the extreme enthusiasm of the American lady and the obvious religious focus of the session.
It was a surreal morning. We split into groups of five (they split up Angelina and I) and the crazy lady taught us some of the curriculum before handing out lessons for us to work through in our groups. Although it was very preachy the lessons themselves were pretty good and imaginative and were aimed towards children from developing countries, covering issues such as malaria, HIV and even rape. And in fact everyone seemed pretty impressed with the content and the fact that they were giving away their entire curriculum for free (it’s funded through other David C Cook divisions such as sales from music books). It was also good just to gather so many organizations together who all work with children in some capacity and lots of details were swapped.
I have particularly enjoying Skype this week and seeing pals. It really doesn’t feel like you’re that far away when you see the faces you know right in front of your nose.
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