Enrich Kibera

When I first came to Kenya I wondered if I really would last my entire stay here. It was so different from anything I had ever been accustomed to. The transition was definitely difficult, I became sick very easily over here, and felt alienated at times, but a couple weeks into my stay I feel very comfortable and am having a great time. This past week I moved into the volunteer hostel, which is similar to an apartment except it is only a three bedroom place that has over 12 different beds. The weekends can be crazy here, when over 15 people could be staying here at once from all over the world.

I moved here to work in the Enrich Kibera Program. It was started by a volunteer named Thomas over 6 months ago, and has been passed down to different people to run it at various times. Kibera is the largest garbage slum in all of Africa, and trying to describe it over a blog post would be an injustice, as it would hardly capture the scenes someone would see on a daily basis living there. Thomas started a program that was first aimed at providing food for eight families in Kibera, and has progressed to now helping empower these families as well so one day then can support themselves without our assistance.

In the program we give tourists/volunteers a tour of Kibera. We charge each person roughly $20 USD to walk around and experience this small city filled with trash. We then use the money we collect from the tours to help support the families we work with. They are provided with beans and flour to feed them through the week, and we work with them in other aspects of their lives so they can eventually earn an income to support themselves. This includes paying the children's school fees, keeping up with doctors appointments/medications, and getting the adults job training. Thomas even built a sewing school in the area so that some of the ladies could learn sewing as a means of bringing in money for their families. I forgot to mention, Thomas did all this in six months, and he's only 21.

Right now an American named Morgan has been running the program and she does it very well. She's extremely loud, unhinged, and very fun. People may get lost in her very strong personality, but she's very ambitious and has been a blast to live with and work under this week. She will be moving to Mombasa though this weekend because she wants to live near the beach while in Kenya, so it'll be my job to run the program and lead the tours/finances next week. I'm merely a stop gap as I can only do it for one week before I leave and another volunteer returns afterwards to run it long-term. It's a great program, and am glad that I've been able to take part in it.

This past weekend a lot of the volunteers left including Rima who I was living with in my previous placement. A total of 32 new volunteers came in as well though, 27 of which are females which has made things a bit interesting this past week. The new volunteers come from all over whether it's Ireland to Switzerland or Saudi Arabia. They've been great, and this past Wednesday night we even went Karaoke singing in the city, of course I was horrendous. I'm pretty sure the only songs that could fit my voice would be from Barry White.

We've also been working on starting a few projects of our own. Morgan is trying to start up a program that will make books more accessible to kids, and I have talked with our organization director Joe about starting a program up in which volunteers would be recommended to bring kids clothes with them to donate to the children that we do outreaches with (some of these children have been wearing the same outfits for over a week). The most ambitious idea we have came through was by an Australian investment banker named Jane. She wants to start up a micro financing program in Kibera to help lend out money to these people so they can start their own businesses. She has asked me to help with it as I know a bit about finances and economics. We are meeting with some people that live in Kibera this weekend to hopefully put together a blue-print for this idea. I'm hoping to help in any possible way and this was a great idea by Jane and hopefully with time and effort we can implement this into the community.

It's very easy to help out in this country in any capacity because there's a lot to do. The challenge is focusing your energy on just one or two things. It's very easy to get lost in everything going on and trying to “save the world”, only to have your efforts disjointed and meaningless when it's all said and done. Thomas had to make a tough call when he chose to only help support eight families in Kenya, but that's better than zero. I'm hoping to make a small dent while here, as my time is winding down. I've put up some pictures from this past week on my Facebook, and will be sure to upload more soon!