During October 2010 a group of 7 leaders and Senior Boys spent 15 days in Kenya visiting St Andrew School. A busy and varied programme had been arranged in close co-operation with our Kenyan hosts, an account from one of the Senior Boys is given below.

Seven Go To Kenya

It doesn’t seem long since I and six others from the 56th were sitting in Oloolua Church listening to a service conducted mostly in Swahili.  During the service, we were surrounded by music, enrapt in the lively and energetic service and if I’m honest, trying to look interested in a sermon which I couldn’t make head nor tail of until I asked the man sitting next to me.  His name was Richard Lenana, and at the beginning of the service he was wheeled in next to me.  I leaned over and asked him what the sermon was about and immediately he tried his best to explain to me.  He told me that the reading was about Abraham and when he was about to sacrifice his only son in faith when the Lord stopped him.  He explained that this showed how we should trust the Lord in all he asks us to do and that this highlights the importance of faith.  Just like that I had made a friend.  That Sunday, I made a new friend and took part in one of the most exciting services in my life, and that was just the morning.

But, I suppose I should start at the beginning and to do this I must take you back to 2006 when my Company and three others started ‘Project Stedfast’.  The project aim was to raise funds to build a school in a far off area called Ngong in Kenya.  Everyone was behind the project for it was a nice thing to do but none of us could relate to the project; none of us really knew the full impact it would make on the community of Oloolua or the impact the built school would make on me.  A few years later the school was built.  It was called St Andrew’s after the patron saint of Scotland, and as a Company we decided that we should continue to support the school and so ’Project Harambee’ was created.  The word “harambee” means “to pull (or work) together”.   We are committed to raise funds to support a teacher for five years and are currently continuing to do so.  Our leaders also set up a trip for the senior boys and us to go to Kenya  and over the months prepared us for this trip.   We waited with great anticipation; counting the days till the 18th October.

Finally, on Monday 18th October we set off at 4 am, changed planes in Amsterdam and arrived in Nairobi Airport at 7.30 pm.  I felt fantastic but awfully tired by the time we arrived as we drove through Nairobi in a mutatu (a van fitted with 14 seats and the main on and off- road vehicle in Kenya).  We arrived at our accommodation to be welcomed by our hostess, Lucy, and quickly settled in.  I remember everything thereafter clearly and vividly, both emotions and the sights that provoked them but to save time I can only describe a few so allow me to pick those which made a big impact on me.

We started off gently into the trip by going to the Giraffe Centre in Nairobi and then later on we were driven through the Kiberia.  I looked out the window and was told by our driver Saruni that this was one of the main roads: to either side were hovels for shops and rubbish was heaped up at the side of the road.  Even now I can picture clearly the man who was searching through the rubbish with a rotten banana skin in his hand.  I remember him lifting the banana skin to his mouth and beginning to eat as we drove past.  We drove on and were told how often whole families of five or more would live in those tiny houses, crammed together in long rows.  Saruni  took us to just outside this area of Kiberia and told us of how the Kenyan Government had set up a housing scheme to provide better houses for these people.  I stood incredulous when I was told that this scheme had failed because people didn’t want to leave these awful slums.  Kiberia  is the largest slum in East Africa, housing a population of 300,000 at last count and this area cannot be controlled by the government.  They live there in cramped, squalid and horrid conditions and when it rains in Kiberia there are fatalities due to the housing being washed away.  Yet many still want to stay.

Every  time I think about that I still don’t get it but then again there must be some reason they still want to stay and I still wonder why that is. However let us move on past this, past meeting Joseph who is the co-ordinator of the projects over in Kenya and the previous pastor of Oloolua church and past Lake Naivasha and the hippo sanctuary, to our first meeting with the children of the St Andrew’s School.  We were rushing back from Lake Naivasha lake, hoping that we would be just in time to meet the children of St Andrew‘s.  We were lucky.  Some of the children had heard we were coming and waited with the teachers.  It was awkward at first introducing yourself to a bunch of children who were staring at you expectantly as if you were performing a magic trick in front of thousands.  I was totally unprepared but luckily the teachers knew what to do and so they began performing.  You couldn’t stop a huge smile coming to your face even if you wanted to as they eagerly performed praises.  Afterwards we played football with them which isn’t so much football as kick the ball and more games.  It was a fantastic afternoon and I wouldn’t have spent it any other way.

The following day we went to visit the NOSIM Women Organisation, a charity based in Kajaida district, working with the local Maasai tribes to improve the quality of life by doing simple things such as teaching the tribes to build toilets.  Again I should tell you that their toilets are basically enclosed pits which have been covered up except for a slit.  Another scheme they were working on was encouraging community talking.  This involves the whole Maasai village gathering together and talking about problems and coming up with solutions for these by themselves which will give long term improvements because it is teaching them a way of thinking and working together.  However one of the main purposes of NOSIM is to further women rights in these tribes particularly for the next generation.  In the Maasai tribes girls are deemed to be women at around 11 to 13 years old and are married off.  This prevents them from having an education thus denying them some of their basic human rights.  While visiting this charity we were taken to a Maasai village where we met a 15 years old girl who had four children by this point.  I was taken aback by this as it finally dawned on me the work of what NOSIM had been briefing us about.

As we wandered around the Maasai village we saw how they lived and what they lived in.  Their houses are the equivalent of our medium sized toilet, as around 5’ high and containing the bedroom, kitchen, a place for a child or children to sleep and lastly a place to tie up the young livestock up if necessary.  The most recent addition to the village was actually quite big: roughly the size of two medium sized bedroom containing the same however it takes six months to build.  To earn their living they raise livestock and sell their wares and stuff they have made themselves.  You look at what they have and see it is very little and yet whenever you see their children or the adults they are completely content and happy with what they have.  This attitude seems very strange to us but I can’t help but wonder whether it is us who are so weird, placing so much value on materialistic things.  The visit to NOSIM and the Maasai village was an eye-opener and humbling experience which will stick with me forever and for this I am thankful.

On the Saturday of the first week we spent the day with members of the Oloolua Boys’ and Girls’ Brigade at a scout camp in Nairobi.  Initially it was awkward as we went to the field to have lunch but we soon began to mingle once we started playing games in a circle and then we went into the swimming pool.  There we saw just how big a number didn’t know how to swim.  Out of the 30 or so member in the Brigade, one could swim in the deep end of the pool.  Yet they didn’t let that stop them from having a good time as they began all sorts of chaos in the shallow end of the pool.  It was great fun.  Once out of the pool I remember suddenly realising that it was quite late in the afternoon and so our time left with them was short.  We went back to the field to play a quick game of football before we left; the Boys against us and the girls.  We lost two one and let me stress that this was not because I was in goals and managed to miss the two shots taken at me in the entire game.  Then, sadly, it was time to leave.

The first week went by swiftly and on the Monday we began the first of two days painting a classroom at the School.  We worked hard and were glad to do it for the children but in the end we still didn‘t manage to finish in time to have some spare time with the children.  Do not misunderstand me, it was great painting the classroom to help the children but I don‘t think any of us could honestly say that we would rather paint than play with the children.  However over those two days at the school I realised through the noise and life in the school just how big an impact the School was having on the community and watching them play made me happy to be there.

In the afternoon we visited the “A Seed Of Hope” project ran by a charity called Vision Africa.  Vision Africa work with the teenage girls in Nairobi to try and help them set up their own businesses and give them a better education. On the Wednesday, we said bye to the children  by playing games and singing with them and in a way that is where I want to end this: my favourite memory of this amazing trip, is the memory of thirty to forty children and us standing in a circle doing the Hokey Cokey.  Not on the wondrous animals we saw on safari, nor on the fantastic church services on the Sundays and neither on our lively sending off party at Joseph’s house on the final afternoon of our trip, but on the smiles of 40 children eagerly joining in the chorus of the “Hokey Cokey”.  It is certainly a trip that I will remember for the rest of my life.