Is in Africa and still can't believe it...

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Hello all!

I am back at Agape with Linn, another volunteer and Laura who volunteered here before and is back to visit for a week. The name of the place where I am is Dagoretti, Wythaka. They have internet here which is amazing! I can check my email often and keep updating things here.

Excuse me if I repeat anything, I can’t really remember how far along I updated before!

All in all, working at the school was amazing. I felt really sad to leave there… there were quite a few kids there that I grew really attached to, like Alan and Brando. Alan has the cutest laugh, it is really deep and just a grunt really. Whenever he laughed it brightened my whole day… there is nothing that would make you happier than seeing this little boy smiling. I also met this adorable girl named Daisy who was just such a sweetheart. A couple days before I left this young boy named Nicholas started hanging out with me on breaks. He was beautiful, but had such a sad looking face and eyes. He would always come and wrap my arms around me and tickle my arms in the cutest way. He was a real sweetheart. Erin brought bubbles to school one day and it was so incredible. I don’t think a lot of the kids had seen bubbles before… it was total chaos! They went mental, running around screaming and laughing and going completely nuts over these bubbles. There was probably around 50 kids chasing after the couple bubbles we could blow at a time. It made me so happy to know that just a few bubbles can still make kids happy… that kids don’t need huge expensive toys in this world to laugh and have fun.

Teaching was quite difficult at times, I think one of the reasons being the language barrier. I was switched over to older kids, but still some of them had a small vocabulary in English so it was so hard to talk to them and explain things. It was really hard not to get frustrated with the lessons. It was hard to be creative as well, because all I was given was this really boring text book to work out of. There wasn’t much material to work with, and the problems with English made it even harder. But looking back on it I really feel like I helped, like I was able to teach the kids something in the end. After a long day at school we would come home completely exhausted, and I loved that. Really putting our all into things and feeling accomplished because of our efforts. The kids were so funny, they were so well behaved in class and so shy, but then out in the field when we would play with them they were wild and would cling on to us! We would have probably ten or so kids holding our hands and just staring up at us. It was such a change from class room to playground.

The headmasters name is Francis, and he was so funny. His main catch phrase was “And now…. You are free!” which just made us laugh. Everyone has such a hard time with my name here. When I say “Ingrid” they give me the strangest looks! Then they just end up calling me “England”. It’s quite funny.

Erik - I remember you telling me that the kids would love to touch my hair and it is SO true. Every time I would sit down for a second tons of kids would crowd around and touch my hair, just amazed by it. They all wear braids and their hair is much rougher than ours so I guess the softness of our hair is so cool to them. It’s just so funny to me that they love to touch my hair so much and think it is the nicest thing in the world, when at home my hair is just… hair!

At the school, Erin, Martin and I all chipped in to build them a new classroom. It went up in a couple days and it looked really good! They built it out of wood and iron sheets.

A young boy named Lucky walked us to school everyday. He was so cute and nice! He goes to bed at midnight everynight and gets up at 4:30 to study. He wants to pass standard 7 so badly so he can finish standard 8. His family lives in Mombasa which is a day worth of traveling away from here. He is only 15 and is one of the strongest boys I have met, because he is living without his family. They are having a really rough time because the hotel his father worked in burnt down so they are out of work and the family is going hungry. Martin gave him 1000 ksh to send home to them for food.

We walked Martin down to Ngong Road because he was catching a matatu out to the Massai Land. The area we walked through was the worst I have seen so far… the road was literally lined with huge piles of garbage and the trenches at the side of the road were filled with brown and green water. There were tiny shacks on the sides of the road that I could hardly believe people were living in. Kids wearing dirty clothes with huge, sad eyes stared at us out of dark doorways. I felt so terrible even walking there because of my clean clothes and the fact that I am white gives the impression that I am very rich, which I am in comparison to these people. It was just truly shocking and horrifying. I can’t believe that people actually live like this, for their whole lives. It is so hard to wrap my head around it. The weirdest thing is, is that you will go from one street that is so wealthy and beautiful with huge trees and big brick houses, and literally the next street over is like the one I explained above - stricken by poverty and people living with just barely the basics. This isn’t even the worst slum, which I haven’t been to yet. It’s called Kibera and I have only heard how bad it is there… I think we will go soon to see what it’s like there.

We went to a football game (or soccer) to see some of the kids from the school play. It was in this huge field and in the far back corner we could see people from the Massai Tribe practicing their jumping. They are known for how high they can jump - it is amazing! It used to be a real part of their culture, but now they only do it for tourism to make money, which is quite sad that they have to do that. On the way back we walked through the slum again and this huge herd of cows came around a corner and was following us. It was so funny, I thought they were going to trample us.

I went to church with Erin and Sharron. This was my first time going to church ever! It was really interesting and I enjoyed it a lot.

The famine is really bad here - so many people are dying as they haven’t eaten in days and days… it is so terrible. I feel extremely lucky to be eating everyday here because I see so many people who are constantly going hungry. There was a teachers’ strike on for almost two weeks! I was watching the news and it was shocking - they were protesting so actively and verging on violently. Having huge protests with signs and burning things and screaming and shouting. I can’t imagine this ever happening at home. People here are extremely passionate about things, it’s so inspiring. If they want something done, they get off their butts and fight so hard for it.

Erin and I went to pick up some new volunteers at the airport. It was so weird to be on the other side of things, being the one there picking up a new nervous and excited volunteer instead of being the one getting off the plane. Time is working in such a weird way for me here… it feels like time has flown by and I have only been here for a couple days, yet at the same time it feels like I have been here forever… I know that probably doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to explain. I guess because It’s such a different world so home feels so far away and in such a completely different life that it feels like I have just been here for so long. But time is flying by, it’s been half a month already!!

I am reading my journal as a write this to remind me of things and here is one thing I wrote last Tuesday:
“In class today I really looked around me, I mean I was just truly in the moment and it blew my mind. I was sitting in a small classroom with beautiful children working around me. The only light source was the light shining through the window and door, illuminating the dust floating the air. My feet were on the ground… the earth of Kenya, of Africa, of such a meaningful place. A place with such potential for learning and teaching. A place that I am growing more and more attached to every single day. ‘Read this and say to yourself: I am going to make a difference.’ Anna wrote this in here… I am going to make a difference. I already am. It is such a feeling of purpose, being here. I am living, truly I am. I am in Africa… I am here… I am home. I feel that I am at home. Not necessarily at Sharron’s, or at Margaret and Oliver’s, but at home in this country. I feel as if I have returned back here, even though I have never been before… The land and the earth are so welscoming. Priorities seem to be so much more in order here. There is no focus on material things, none at all. They focus on eating and making it through the day, on loving each other and making sure everyone has a place to go home to, on appreciating what they’ve got and not needing anything else to make them happy. Children are completely content if you smile at them and give them a hug or hold their hand. They do not care if you give them anything they can physically see, it’s only your love and openness they are after. It is completely and entirely refreshing…”

I am so excited to come home and share what I learn here. It is so hard to really describe things in writing, to truly give a real picture of what life is life here. I can’t wait to get back and actually talk with everyone, not over a staticy broken connection or email. I just want to share this experience so badly… so I can hardly wait for that.

I think that’s all for now, thank you everyone for the support. It gets me through the day knowing that I am coming home to such a huge network of people. I love you all so much…

Please leave a note if you are reading my blog, I would love to know who is following my stories… you can also subscribe and it will send you an email whenever I update.

Also, I went to the monkey park today and had monkeys climb all over my shoulders and head. It was one of my childhood dreams come true.



So much love and an overwhelming missing for you all,

Inki

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Comments

[Charlotte Kennedy]

Hello from charlotte in the patch!
Dearest Ingrid, Thank you so much for your writings about your work, the people, the camels and monkeys, all the sadness and joy that you are feeling and feeling for. The beauty of the children, how basic are the real human needs, not wants. Walking on an ancient earth like you are now in Africa, that sense of connectedness to the most ancient times and peoples - how I felt that in India so long ago, walking on the ancient earth and feeling how many soles and souls had stepped along this very path in an old city or muddy cowpath. And the way everything is out there to be seen, the illness, the rage, the sadness, the hunger, and also the sharing, the laughter, the melee of being human. I hope the language challenge becomes less so in the next while. Creative sign language and pointing and pictures might fill in the gaps! Well, dear young friend, I've subscribed to your blog and look forward to your missives from far away. With love, Charlotte