JIGGER DAY!! (Thursday 16th April)

We decided that there was no point in moving these little, jigger ridden feet from one house to another without addressing the problem that this family just seemed to put up with. So, we decided to treat them so that this new house would be representing a new start and new feet! Little did we know what we had started! We gathered up the children, and they were told to wash their feet, however, the clean water washed away the thick mud to reveal just how bad this problem was. Seeing hundreds of jiggers living in one foot was almost too much to stomach, how could this have got so bad. There was something so horrifically unforgettable about seeing an 8 year old boy scrubbing away at his rotting feet in fear of what we were about to do..

Tim got his surgical gloves and needle and got ready to take the jiggers out one by one. And in fairness kept his head down until every single jigger was dealt with…
Knowing it was such a painful thing, and seeing the boy with tears streaming down his face, there were times when we wanted to just stop and say it was all too much. But the evidence of the rotting feet just reminded us that it had to be done and so all you could do was hold onto a frightened, little hand and let it continue. Tim persevered to the end and deserves a medal. Even the father humbly came forward to have us help him which was a great sign.

It took a while to put right with the children what had just happened, but, they were forgiving enough and the following day greeted us with big smiles. You could already see some improvement and they had all benefited form a pain free sleep, possibly the first in years.

The children were all awarded with a new clean t-shirt which made them beam even more. As we had overlooked the Father, Tim gave him his creased paint shirt which strangely enough looked to be an improvement. It was a rewarding experience to watch him pulling up his collar and walking tall with a new sense of dignity.
The grandma told us that we had brought hope to the family again and she never thought that would happen… WOW what a pleasure to be part of all this but ‘oh my’- what a week!

House building (13-17th April)

This work felt like the proper hard graft that we had imagined we’d be doing. When we got digging deep in the blazing heat, hammering, sawing and even preparing the mud (which meant squelching in our wellie boots for hours until the mud was soft). However, it was a new and exciting work and most importantly by the end of the week we would be giving someone who desperately needed it a new home.

The family consisted of a Grandma, a Father and four children age 2,5,8 and 14. This family had a small mud house already but on many occasions the grandmother and the children would be thrown out when the Father came home drunk, forcing them to sleep outside. The closer we looked at this situation the more needy they seemed. The mother had left a few months previously as she couldn’t cope with the situation.
Also... the family were ridden with jiggers (these are horrid little tic things that get under your skin, multiply and eat away at your flesh. Not only are they really itchy they are very painful making it difficult to walk). Jiggers come from certain types of mud.. the type of mud that we were handling daily to build this house. (You can imagine there was quite a bit of paranoia on our part as we were constantly checking our feet hoping that the jiggers hadn’t decided to visit us!) It seemed clear that there was a whole lot more that this family needed than a new house.

Holiday club (6-9 April)

It feels as though we are settled in fully now, and its all starting to feel familiar and the norm. We have started to feel accustomed to the ways here - passing mud houses is just normal, as are the power cuts and hearing every child you pass ask “how are you?” However, now and again you look up and see an eagle circling above, or pass a guy on a bike carrying 8 mattresses on the back and you quickly remember how different it is to back home and how special it is to be here.

We feel a bit exhausted after the holiday club but it was well worth the work. We were in charge of organising all the games and activities for the week. The age group went from ages 4-20.. so we weren’t quite sure how it would all work! The three of us brainstormed together to come up with some new ways to have fun, use the resources we have and give the children a whole load of fun.

We decorated the headquarters with multicoloured bunting and put up balloons, we set the age groups in to teams and made a scoreboard. Monday morning at 8 am and we were ready to great all the excited children, but where were they? A few drizzled in at 9am , then at 10, ‘what time was this thing due to start?.. or had it already started?’ Finally, about 1pm, we began and it all seemed to go well from there. It all seemed very relaxed, sometimes things just didn’t happen and sometimes they just happened 4 hours late, like lunch, but you just learn to work around it and to be ready when you get the nod.

In our planning meeting we were told they respond well to wide games (big, exciting field games) “leave those to us” we said.. it was only on day two we realised we misunderstood and they had said “word games”.. no wonder the blank faces when we explained the rules of this long and complicated wide game we had made up. However, we were soon reassured by the shrieks of laughter and the buzz of excitement that filled the playing fields. Their only play normally is organised sports. We got the same blank faces, too, from the children when we told them about their craft activities. The concept of making something from nothing was difficult to explain when we pointed to a pile of mud and told them to transform that lump into a model of themselves. Again, we got there in the end and Jo Finlay had to remind herself of the slogan on the front of her sketch book ‘creativity takes courage’ (thanks for it lins - love itx). It certainly does here when people just think you are crazy. The craft they do here is all paper craft, if not just tracing, so 3D was a lot to take on…. but the results were great. All these amazing models came out of the clay and each one seemed so pleased with what they had made. The best thing was that this activity cost them nothing, just the clay they walk on (great idea Luce), the trees and for the 7 year old newspapers that had already been paid for. Oh well, it’s all a learning curve and just reminds us that you have to persevere on these things.

Many have said what a success the holiday club was and that this time it seems new and different.

At the end of the week the winning team were each awarded with a lollipop and then we let all the children come and get a prize. The boys and girls delightedly placed their little hands in the bags to pull out a treat, a punch ball, a yoyo, a little plastic flute, but, then mayhem filled the headquarters. The children all went charging around the field with their new toys. Everyday since then we think we have heard someone somewhere blowing on their little plastic flute.

Kimilili here we are....

Well, we have completed our first week of our adventure, and so far so good.
When we arrived the grounds looked just as we had left them and it almost felt as if we had never been away (except where were the other 14 fellow Mancs that shared our previous experience?) I think it was then that it hit us that we were not going home in a few days time, but, for the next 3 months this place is now our home.

All those we had met on our previous trip remembered us and made us really welcome with their wide smiles and funny handshakes. “Karibu karibu” was the familiar cry, even from the cockerel, the noisy cow and the rowdy dogs who are still going strong. Introducing ourselves to everyone else is proving a bit tedious as the concept of a girl called Jo is confusing enough, let alone explaining that all three are called Jo… “All Jo’s - does that mean you are sisters?’’

Our first day was a Sunday and we lay low... in fact some of us did not get dressed till about 5pm, so I guess we are feeling pretty at home already!

Visiting four schools built by IcFEM was first on our agenda. The children asked us so many questions as we stood at the front of one of the classrooms:

“Are you near the equator?
“Do you know Wayne Rooney?”
“Is Polygamy allowed in Manchester?”

The rest of the week we’ve done a little of everything. Prayed and taken rice parcels, visited the local market, where we met those on the Corel loan scheme, and gone into the community. We didn’t know what ‘going into the community meant’. For us, it meant that two mins before we rolled up at a mud hut Sarah informed us that we should prepare something to preach.. (thanks for the warning!) We all shuffled through our bibles in a bit of a panic. Jo Riley rose to the challenge and was the muzungu preacher for the day speaking on god’s promise of hope. They all listened attentively and we prayed for 20 of them who came forward for prayer. Only later was it explained to us that they were standing to make a commitment!

We've arrived!!

27th March 2009.
So we have arrived in a whirl wind but, we’re here and have made the most of our journey…

As we are waiting in Nairobi for Jo no.3 to arrive, before we make our final journey all together, we thought it would be only right to see what this city holds..
So this morning we hit the town and it’s been quite a day.

During our short stay in Nairobi we've:

visited an elephant orphanage: very cute. We saw rhinos, and water hogs, tortoises, as well as the little orphan elephants.

sat in 29 degrees, with an ice-cream, soaking up the sun.

kissed a giraffe ( literally!)

designed and had made our own jewellery

ate a pizza.

shopped, haggled and lost!

hit Nairobi market where we were mobbed.

And now, sitting on our beds sipping mint tea we could feel a little bit guilty from the fact that we came here to do 3 months of honest hard graft.. when so far it’s not been too strenuous! Today has been quite different to our other experiences of Kenya, so it’s good to see more, all we’d seen before was Kimilili. Here there seems more wealth, and we guess more tourism, it’s certainly more westernised yet still keeps its Kenyan charm.

On our luxurious ride of the city we saw some amazing views from the top of the hill, the mixture of green trees and big building, across the landscape. If you half closed your eyes you could possibly see miles of brown fields, but on a closer look we realised that the brown that stretched across the landscape were thousands of sheets of rusty iron, or roofs as they are better know to the slum people that live underneath them. It really was quite shocking to see people in poverty in such masses, and within this rising city. Apparently it was a million at last count that live in Africa’s biggest slum. Despite this Nairobi has left a really good impression on us and there would still be lots more to do if we had the time.

So as we sign off for today Jo Finlay would like the world to know that giraffes have very long, strong, grey tongues that are very prickly to kiss!