We have been a little behind on our blog entries, sorry to all. It has been a busy past couple of days. We will all be catching up over the next little while.
Yesterday we spent the day with Alister, Sande and the youth volunteers at Kibera Community Youth Programme. This is an outreach programme in Kibera slum that gives young people an opportunity to learn, be creative and connect with their wider community. They offer a number of programmes including nutrition, theatre, computers, solar energy, and a library, among others. These programmes offer learning opportunities for young people in their community beyond the classroom. We spent the day with many of the youth from KCYP learning about their centre and just hang out and playing games. We brought along Canada tees, board games, and soccer balls so after handing them out we all tried out some of the games. Scrabble was a big hit! Another outreach group of KCYP is a network of women who are all HIV positive. They are all single mothers with small businesses who come together to support one another. One great way they are contributing to one anothers businesses is the 'merry-go-round' method: once a week they each but 20 shillings into a pot and give that money to one of the women to help their business. Each week it rotates to a different member. I was so amazed by their creative and generous support of one another. It was an honour to meet these women.
Before lunch, Sande offered us a Kiswahili lesson. The lesson started alright until an argument broke out between Sande and Lillian (KCYP youth) regarding the meaning of the word 'Magharibi', even Zhebib came out of the kitchen shaking a rolling pin at Sande, we all had a good laugh! It was a pretty successful lesson which ended with the title of this post: I was taught Kiswahili at the University of Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya. Laura had a great opportunity to help with food preparation for the group. She went with two of the KCYP youth throughout the food market of Kibera to purchase cabbage, rice, pilau spice and beef. She learned how to cook the excellent cabbage we have been eating throughout the trip. It was delicious!
Our day was concluded with a performance from the theatre group. The group uses drama to address issues in the community such as domestic violence, sexual abuse, HIV/AIDS, and poverty. They present their plays to small groups in Kibera and then open up the space for discussion. Their goal is not to provide answers but to create awareness and to facilitate discussion in order to get people talking about important issues. We all enjoyed this performance and were very glad they could share their creativity with us. It was a great day. We have all made new friends at KCYP and are very glad to have spent a day in the life of a youth in Kibera slum.
Emily
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