Hi guys,

The last fortnight had a slow start as I was still recovering from a head cold. Bugs here seem to take ages to shake-? from the limited variety in the diet, or just from sharing a house with 20 other people. The other volunteer I´m working on my project with, Mary Alice, had a meeting with the staff at the school about their performance. As most volunteers are only here a short time, the problems with our current paid staff had gone unaddressed for a long time. For instance, the driver the school hires to pick up and drop off the girls in wheelchairs sometimes doesn´t show up, and the girls don´t attend school for several days. Job descriptions were created and explained, with time limits for improvement imposed.

2 weeks ago I was meant to complete a 2 day outreach program run by our volunteering company (NVS), however due to low numbers it was cancelled. As we had already informed the school that we would not be at placement that day, we decided to make the most of our time and asked an NVS staff member what we could see instead. He put us in touch with Sally*, a graduate of the WEEP program. WEEP, or the Women´s Empowerment and Education Program, is an 18 month long program designed to assist HIV positive women with obtaining medication, as well as teaching them sewing and beading skills that they can use after graduation to obtain an income.

Sally shared her personal journey with HIV with us, stating that upon diagnosis her husband left her, and she had to raise her children on her own. Sally fell very ill and was bed bound on death´s doorstep for 6 months. Her neigbours told her children that she was going to die, and with their mum so poorly, they were required to look after themselves. One day the children had run out of money to buy charcoal to cook porridge, and chopped down some wood instead. Unfortunately, when they lit the wood the house caught alight, and they were all lucky to escape. When Sally had stabilised on her medication she took to educating others, helping other women to be medicated, and creating places WEEP graduates can sell their products. Sally is determined to see all those she helps to succeed- an inspirational woman!

Sally also took us to the clinic where her children and herself received their HIV diagnosis, and we had the opportunity to meet with the social worker that ran the place. The clinic provides a range of sevices to over 4000 HIV positive children from 6 weeks to 17 years of age, including food baskets, access to a malnutrition centre, food supplements, emotional support, counselling and education services. The clinic also runs education sessions for the children once they reach 8 years old regarding disease transmission and treatment. The mothers can also access education seminars that discuss how to care for a HIV positive child and limit opportunistic infections and HIV related malnutrition. The teenage girls that attend the clinic live in the slums and cannot afford sanitary protection, and stay home from school during this week. These girls miss at least 3 months of school per year due to this, and so I am planning to use my donation money to provide them with a large quantity of sanitary napkins to improve school attendance.

In the afternoon we were escorted to a carwash established a year ago by an Australian volunteer who wanted to create a workplace where young ex criminals could go to start a new way of life. The volunteer provided a water tank to use, and the water is also used to offer toilet and showering services to residents of the slum for a small fee. As with the rest of Kibera, the area is covered with rubbish and dirty muddy water running over the ground. It was fascinating to meet with these young men and hear their stories. In their local area, the second biggest slum in Africa, families often have 15 children due to lack of contraception. As the houses are very small, they are forced to leave home when they are as young as 11 years old. With no way of making an income, these children are often forced to steal in order to obtain money for food and water. These are frequently armed robberies, and the police shoot to kill if they are caught in action. Many of the men had had their friends shot dead by the time they were 18 years old, and this was often the turning point in their lives.

The guys at the car wash supplement the income from the car wash with much needed rubbish collection in the slums. Recently someone broke into their poorly secured supply shed and stole their equipment. They also had a wooden sign outside advertising the car wash, however some women who cooked on the side of the road took the sign and cut it up for firewood! I´m intending to purchase replacement items with my donation money, but the only place that stocks these produts is several matatu´s (small public vans) away. I will need to recruit the NVS staff to help me as I won´t be able to haul the wheelbarrow and shovel´s on and off the rooves of the matatu´s myself as we zoom throughout Nairobi!

We decided to visit our student that we have put into the car panelling apprenticeship. A 30 minute walk, a short cab ride, another 30 minute walk and a matatu later, we arrived at the car yard and spoke to the manager. The boss is happy with his progress, and so next month I will provide the rest of the money for the course. It was abolutely incredible to see one of our student´s from the special school working in something that is not only paying him money to move him out of poverty, but that is giving him a qualification- and all on donation money. Yes, this is because of YOU! As we are relatively confident that this will continue, Mary Alice met with a potential new student one of the other volunteer´s suggested and he will be starting Monday!

One of the volunteers here, Julie, had been placed in Kajiado before she came to Nairobi, and wanted to go visit one of her teacher friends before she left, and invited Mary Alice and I to tag along. We took 2 matatu´s to city centre (I still can´t get used to paying 10 cents for a bus fare!), where we directed to, and sat in, 3 different matatu´s before they confimed which one was indeed going to Kajiado- I think they were playing games with us! While we waited for the matatu to fill up we had arms popped in the window´s offering us everything from biscuits and drinks, through to pens and gold chains. After a 2 hour bus ride, we met with her friend for lunch-and had a treat of being able to eat meat for the first time in weeks!

Julie´s friend took us to see his family in a traditional Massai Menyatta house. It was awesome to see a family as they are truly are, and not some pimped up tourist version of the house. They live in mud huts, with as many as 7 to a single bed. The children were running around excitedly with my camera, snapping away shots of each other and giggling at the result (I can now consistently say that all the children we visit are happy and excited to interact with us- a stark contrast to the subdued children at my first placement...). The women thought it was incredible that in our early 20´s we weren´t married with children, and kept wanting to marry us off to the Kenyan men in the village!

Afterwards Julie wanted to visit the local orphanage and say goodbye to a woman she met there, so her friend hailed down a random car and we got a lift to the orphanage. By pure chance our visit timed with an official visiting, and they offered us to watch the show the kids were performing for him. We watched the children read poems and sing and dance for us- very sweet. The children also showed us what grades they are in and I never get used to the mixed range of ages in the classes. The official donated a range of food, and Julie distributed stickers and pens. The return trip took several hours of motorbike, bus and taxi, but it was definitely worth it.

We are continuing to slowly update the folders we have created. We have now printed pictures of the students- 1 for each of their individual folders, and some for a photo album I bought to show the tour of Kibera that comes through biweekly, as well as to boost the self esteem of the student´s as they thumb through pictures of their experiences and achievements. I have also written sections for future volunteers on how they can help as it is a bit overwhelming initially to work out how you can help, as well as a section on basic Swahilli phrases so new volunteers can communicate with our students that don´t speak English. Our nurse volunteer, Sarah, included a section on the 2 conditions our student´s have- HIV and epilepsy- as it can be quite frightening to deal with these if you have no health training.

Julie had heard about a ´´highly recommended´´ orphanage and lake in Kisumu, and we decided we would do a short 2 day trip. One of the NVS staff member´s has family there and agreed to accompany us and would let us stay with his family in the rural town. We set off at 7am- doing another 30 minute walk armed with our luggage, followed by a 1 hour bus ride into the city to meet his family and do an 8 hour car trip. En route we were stopped by police, and the driver was required to pay him to continue through. Apparently the corrupt police put their bages on backwards, or wear jumpers to hide them altogether as this means people cannot report them to the anti corruption hotline. The police ask for the license of the driver, and once they have it, won´t return it to them until they hand over money. If the driver refuses they keep the license and can then charge them with any offence they feel like.

We arrived at 5pm, and over dinner I became aquainted with the sister´s 60 yr old Dutch husband she met online. He told us the story of the first few weeks he spent with her, just 2 weeks after they spoke online. He arrived in Kenya just before the 2007 election riots, and his now wife´s brother was killed. He attended her funeral, and there was a lady from another tribe in attendance. A man there was so annoyed that she had come he intended to kill her once they returned to Nairobi. The Dutch man had to pull the lady out of the matatu before it reached its destination in order to save her life!

During the night we all came down with stomach bugs. We displayed perfect guest ettiquette- alternating between fevering sweat onto the linen, throwing up outside on the grass of their gorgeous acreage property, and sprinting to the drop toilet, where we would balance precariously in pitch black with our flashlight. When things became too urgent to make the 500m dash, we would take turns guarding each other from the wildlife with a torch while the other was on the ground. A truly classy spectacle!

We were due to depart at 7am in order to have time to fit in the orphanage and the lake and make it to our 1pm bus back to Nairobi, however we had a flat tyre. The changing of the tyre happened on ´´Kenyan time´´, and we left 2 hours late. When we had almost reached the main road the tyre blew out completely, and we had to get out and walk. It had rained the previous day and the road had turned into muddy slush. I had stupidly worn flats, and with each step I took they got stuck firmly into the sticky ground. I would have to balance on one foot, and use both hands to tug my shoe free. Julie was in hysterics, and was snapping pictures of me amongst her laughter.

When we reached the main road we got motorbikes, then a matatu (that was so full I had to sit on a plank of wood placed between two seats), and then hitchhike to the orphanage. The car that drove us, once we had alighted, had 9 passengers in a 5 seater car. 4 were in the backseat, I was lying across the laps of my friends, 2 were in the front seat and 2 were in the DRIVER´s SEAT, with the 9th in the boot. Ironically, while we were driving in the pot hole filled road, with an overcrowded car, and all the warning lights on the dashboard, there was a segment on the radio about car fatalities in Kenya and the common reasons they occur! The driver had to also pay off corrupt police officer- who turned a blind eye to our overcrowded car.

Once we were dropped off at the road, we had another 20 minute hike in the hot sun, armed with our luggage. We were all still feeling pretty average, and had run out of drinking water. Trudging up the road we certainly made a sorry looking party! When we arrived we were told that if we wanted to make the bus home, we didn´t have time to see the project as planned, and instead could only meet one of the heads. She told us the program cares for over 4000 orphans, and provides accommmodation, schools, scholarship programs and community education. She then gave us a lift into town, and said if the matatu is fast we should be fine. The matatu ended up taking an hour rather than 30 mins, and we missed our bus home. The bus was nasty for 3 people recovering from gastro- crowded, long, bumpy and hot. Julie and I were squished against the engine on the front and kept squirming about to try and stop the engine from burning our skin. The man next to us had a black chicken on his lap, who was chirping in protest to the heat! Only in Kenya..

When we reached the town, we had another long, hot walk to the bus station to see if there was any way to avoid the only alternative home we had been told of, a night bus at 9pm. We left the NVS staff member to sort it out, and went in search of much needed water . By this point I was so dehydrated the supemarket aisles were swaying in front of me. Luckily we were able to tack onto a 2pm bus, and started our 8 hour return trip. In the cab ride home it was pitch black and the bag of snacks I had bought tipped over . The cereal balls rolled out of the bag one by one and rolled throughout the cab, with the others landing in my shoes, or sticking to the mud on my flats and encasing my shoes in a cereal halo. Julie and I were crying from laughing so hard- the only thing we could do after such a ridiculous trip. We managed to miss out on seeing both the orphanage project AND the lake, and the only experience we did share involved vomiting!

Once we had munched our way through gastro antibiotics we returned to full health, and I was able to go back to school and drop off the mop, bucket and disinfectant that I had bought so they can actually clean the floor when the student´s have an accident, and hopefully avoid the smell of urine for the next few days.

My next project, apart from finishing the folder, acquiring and dropping off the pads and wheelbarrows, is to make a structure that can stablise the toilet. Currently there is a ceramic bowl sitting loosely over a pipe, completely unconnected, and propped up with a brick. Toileting our 80 kilogram, wheelchair bound, intellectually challenged students is difficult, to say the least! We enquired about an over toilet aide, however have been told there are none in Kenya and haven´t been in 6 months. We thought about adapting a walker, but since we need a structure to also stablise the toilet, we are thinking of recruiting one of our volunteers who is adept at carpentary.

This is long and the second time I´ve had to type this - at 2 hours each time, I´m tuckered. Love to you all! Will be home in a few weeks.