The kids of Kenya!

I love kids. I love small they are and how happy they are and how they can laugh at anything. I love how they think and their curiosity and their capacity to learn. They are unique individual masterpieces its fascinating! The kids here are awesome.

Its funny, when I’m with the babies at In His Image it doesn’t make me sad because they are so cute and amazing! Though if you think about it and look at say Daniel (in the pic), the most delicious little toddler and think that his mum got to the state where she just dumped him it is incredibly sad. Most they get when they are babies but Daniel they got a few months ago when he was aout 1. Nicole was wondering the other day how much these babies mum’s think about them. To dump your baby can’t be easy, to be so desperate that you do that must be horrible. I also wonder how it must affect the babies having not one constant mum but about 6 or 7 different ladies. It must affect them somehow?

And the other day we were at Limuru Childrens Centre and the director was telling us some of the kids stories. One boys was found trying to pull his drunk naked mother off the streets, another watched his father kill his mum, 2 other girls live their because their mum is a drunkard. And it’s weird to think, looking at these smiling kids, what must be underneath. What do they think? How can they comprehend it? The smallest girl there is having a court case at the moment and Patrick, the director said last time they came home from court she was so upset because her mum hadn’t been there and all she wanted was to see her mum.

Yesterday I taught my first lesson at LCC-K, the pre-school branch of Limuru Childrens Centre. I think it is primarily to feed to kids but obviously they need to be educated too. They took about half an hour to draw 4 lines on a piece of paper with a ruler to split it into 9 parts. They just have so little resources they just sit and copy teacher, its so different to england where kids are painting and cutting and sticking and have so many toys. They are so much fun though, it’s amazing how much you can play with a kid without needing to say anything. You just chuck one up in the air and they all come running wanting the same! They all drink ‘Uje’ (some kind of porridge) mid morning and then all clammer for seconds. I looked at it and thought im not sure I would want seconds of that, it looks pretty disgusting. But then it came to me that this is their breakfast and these are growing kids and I felt rather... something to have thought that. What a western thought!
It gives you a lot to think about though, being here and seeing things first hand. In the slums especially it seems such a contrast, the beautiful children and the pitiful surroundings. I wander what they see, what they think about it. Or are some of them too young and they’re just kids playing like kids, making the best out of what they have.

4 weeks down, 12 to go!

So another week has flown by and I’m still loving it here in Kenya! I was just on my email and somehow the weather in Reading was showing up and it said highs of 4 degrees and I thought wow it’s good to be here! The sun is still shining, though its been a bit more cloudy the past few days.
So what have I been up to? I was ill Monday and Tuesday, the funny tummy finally caught up with me but it could have been a lot worse so it’s ok, got it out the way! On Wednesday we went to Kibera to the Woman’s group again. We visited a couple of the ladies homes and it is exactly as people tell you, like 5 people living in a shack that’s only about twice as wide as a double bed and a couple of feet longer. They literally just had half there house as the bed, in which all 5 sleep and the other half as the living area. the ladies were telling us how they'd been able to buy furniture through money from the Power Woman's Group. The slums are crazy, a million people packed in to these tiny houses, living on top of each other with the sewage running down the middle of the street, though you can't really call it a street, it's more an alley between houses. the how place is pretty much built on a rubbish dump.
Once again (after going to buy lunch, 3 of us ate for the equivalent of 3.50 and Debora was saying that café was expensive!) we did a bible study, and once again the ladies all hugged us and thanked us greatly for being there.

On Friday morning we visited LCC-K which is another pre-school. Me and Moon are going to be going there this week and hopefully start doing some teaching. The kids are awesome, they come and grab you and talk to you and you wish you could speak Swahili!
On Saturday morning we went to Jikaze to do another food relief and after all the bagging up stuff was done we were talking to some girls that were there. One of them was 12 and had such good English! There was another with her baby sister on her back, she was only 7 and had to look after her. (she is in the pic on the right, the girl on the far right, the white lump is the baby on her back! And that's me moon and Nicole) They were asking how old we were and i think they thought Nicole and I said 80 becuase they were like 'wow!'. Actually they said 'guy' which I assume means like 'man' or 'gosh' or the equivalent, from the contexts in which i've heard it. Several little girls came along tooand decided they liked me so I spent a happy half hour or so having my hands fought over and chucking them in the air and tickling them. They were so gorgeous! Carmen, Moon and Nicole ( she is another volunteer who came on Friday night, she’s from Canada) left but I decided to stay a bit longer and got whisked off with the kids miles through the camp to where they were having a kids program thing, run by Grace – the lady who comes to translate at the woman’s group. They sang some songs, which was cool! (They sang that Jabulani Africa song, for those who know what that is - Han do you remember our crazy dancing!) And then went outside to play games. I was just sitting being jumped on by the little girls who were too small to play when Phil and Megan came to find me because we had to go. Hopefully I can go back and stay all day one time though. It was just so amazing, being there with this awesome scenery all around and these awesome kids playing with you!
As we were driving down into the Rift Valley on the way to Jikaze, looking at the vast view over the valley with mount Longonot in the distance Phil said to me ‘once Africa gets in your veins you can never get it out again.' I said ‘I’m good with that!’ I can feel it seeping in and I love it!