Volunteer project week 4 - tears in Mang'u

The final and undoubtedly most emotional week of the trip saw the majority of the volunteers reluctantly pack up the cosy ‘Mang’u Hilton’ - our home for the past month - and farewell our Kenyan family. On our final night together, expressions of appreciation and love flew around the room, and there was barely a dry eye in the house. To blunt the sting of goodbyes and allow us a moment to mop up our tears, Joe, Matilda, Conor and Stella performed a hilariously brilliant song about our time in Mang’u, set to the tune of ‘Tears in Heaven’. It summed up our experience and adventures perfectly, filling the Muiru house with roaring laughter and applause once more. In all honesty, it’s too hard to define our experience in words; there really isn’t a way to describe what Familia Moja, the Muiru family and the Mang’u community has etched into us.

Earlier in the week before we lost too many hands, we excitedly began painting the dorm rooms in the new home - covering ourselves in the process. Seeing the home reach this point in construction is incredibly rewarding and makes all the aches, pains and calluses absolutely worthwhile. It is really starting to take shape and every now and then a scene of the home fully furnished and full of life and love appears in my mind.

Despite the sheer emotional drainage endured in this final stage of the project, another joyous and productive week was enjoyed with the beautiful children of Familia Moja. On Sunday, Amy took Agnes and Jane to get their ears pierced in Thika.

Agnes getting her ears pierced.

To celebrate four of the older kids completing their KCPE exams and graduating primary school, Jess, Shar, Conor and Amy took them for a Nairobi trip. The intention of this outing was to congratulate them and educate them about the city at the same time. Dinner was an interesting experience – the children had never tried Ethiopian food and found it a real challenge to stomach. The assault of flavours and spices shocked their palate and the injerra was questioned, “What kind of Ugali is this

The next day we threw them in the gastronomic deep end again, with a mix of dishes for breakfast at Nairobi Java House, which thankfully went down a treat. From croissants to Mexican breakfast burritos, there was something for everyone – sans Ethiopian!

Enjoying breakfast at Java Coffee House

The next part of our Nairobi adventure was to pay a visit to one of the slums, namely Kibera. We could immediately see the children’s minds whirring as they absorbed the confronting yet endearingly resilient environment. Our first stop was a small local art space where we explored some incredibly skilful works and spent some time chatting with the group of Nairobi street artists. For the rest of the day we meandered through the community, exploring stalls selling locally crafted goods and learning about their respective causes; income generating activities for HIV positive women in the community for example. We felt very humbled by the experience - impressed but not surprised by the resilience and tenacity of the people we met along the way. To end the day on a more relaxed note, we caught a screening of the Hobbit at a cinema nearby.

Ken at the Maasai Mbili Project in Kibera.

The girls in Kibera