Jennie Blayney tells us of a summer she spent as a volunteer working in Kenya. She says she got back a lot more than she gave.
Suas is a non-profit organization which sends young volunteers in teams to Kenya and India every summer. The volunteers spend three months working in an educational role with Suas’s partner organizations who are all involved with disadvantaged children and communities. I got through the application and interview process to be selected as one of the lucky eighty-six volunteers to take part in the 2007 Programme.
I was sent to work in a primary school in Mombasa, Kenya. Mombasa is famous for its sandy beaches and luxury hotels. What it is not so well known for, is its slums. I was part of a team of thirteen people who were sent to volunteer in Kongowea village, which forms part of a slum with a population 80,000 people.
Before leaving Ireland we were briefed about Kenya and the challenges we would face. We were told that we were going into a school with 2000 children, where the average class size was between eighty and a hundred pupils. We would be assisting the teachers in English, science and maths. From the moment I met my team, we just clicked; they were to become the closest thing to a family over the next three months.
My first reaction on arriving into Mombasa was anxiety. It was quite a shock to be a minority. We ‘whities’ or ‘Muzungus’ as the locals called us, stood out like aliens. However, this sense of isolation disappeared the minute we arrived at our school on the first day. The teachers greeted us with open arms and we were treated with great respect.
We didn’t meet the kids until the next day when we were basically thrown to the lions. For some of us, there was no sign of our class teacher. This was to be a common occurrence throughout the summer. We were told to go into class and teach them whatever we liked.
Out of my team, I was the only one with teaching experience. Luckily I had been teaching English as a foreign language for two years but standing in front of eighty-or-so watchful faces, I felt my knees knocking and my pulse jumping in my throat. The pupils ranged in age from 13-17 in my class and there was a big difference in ability as well. We never had any trouble controlling them, though, as they were hungry to be educated.
They crammed into their rows of seats, sitting all day on hard narrow benches. They kept their text books at home for fear of having them stolen. They all wore a uniform which they washed and ironed every day after school. Their shoes were often ripped and they carried their books in plastic bags.
Some children did not go home for lunch and ate nothing all day bar a chapatti (a salty pancake) and water from the school well. Yet, they never complained; they loved to laugh and to joke.
It was understandable when you took into account the workload and the low salary, why the teachers were not always the most motivated. Absenteeism is a common problem in schools which have become totally overcrowded since 2002 when the Kenyan government made education free for all. This meant that teachers had to deal with classes of 100 students or more when they had been used to classes of thirty.
Lunch was cooked in the staff-room. One day we arrived to find two mangy-looking chickens sitting in a plastic bag in the corner. At break time we were handed a knife to do the honours. Politely we refused and the chickens were beheaded in front of us. They were then gutted next to us as we corrected copies. Three hours later we were eating chicken stew!
After school, we ran grinds in English and maths, and one of the lads on the team organized a football tournament. The kids lived for football; even the girls loved it. The football league culminated in a final match which the whole school came out to support. Another high point was the chance to work with weaker students. We organized a three-week summer camp during the school holidays to help students prepare for the exams for secondary school. In the morning we held classes in which the students were split into small classes of fifteen. They loved the attention. We were able to help the weakest ones, some of whom had big problems reading and writing. In the afternoons we ran activities like, art, drama and homework club, and the kids could choose which activity they wanted to do.
The hardest part was a feeling that no matter how much you tried, everything in Kenya was so corrupt that you were fighting against an invisible wave. To be admitted to secondary school, the children have to sit exams which are incorrect or illogical. I attempted to do an English paper and got 70%. Even if they do get the points needed to get into secondary school, they cannot afford to go.
But those moments of despair were outweighed by the sense of achievement we saw in the children. We believed in them and in their potential. We gave them as much encouragement as we could and strangely, by doing our best for them, we were able to do things we never imagined we could.
At the end of the summer, we came back to Dublin with the understanding that you can make a difference to the world. It may sometimes be intangible but it is also very powerful. Volunteering was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (February 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
