September 2019, Kenya

Looking back, Kenya 2019 has done a lot to shape the direction I have decided to take the charity. What I learnt, the opportunities I had, and the people I have met on this trip have been invaluable to the charity going forward.

This trip begun as a travelling holiday for Max (Stevo), William (Pez) and myself. We wanted to experiemnce Africa in all of its rawness. My Grandma was from Tanzania, so I had at least some awareness of what we were getting into, but this trip went beyond all of our expectations.

We didn't actually do a project on this trip. It was actually quite a few years before Village Projects Foundation was recognised as a registered charity. However, the learnings and principles of this trip have stayed with me, and will continue to guide me on how the charity will run.

5 days before our trip, and we have only have our flights booked. We have long list of things we would like to do, but nothing set in stone. It was pure fortune that I happened to meet Simon Prodger at a cricket ground in Cranleigh. Prodge was wearing a Kenya Kongoonis Cricket Club jumper, and so we began chatting. Prodge was a white Kenyan who had grown up there before moving to Hertfordshire. He has incredibly enthusatic and charismatic about Kenya, and also let me know that he had a friend who ran a travel agency. His friend was David Waters MBE, who also co-chair'ed a charitable organisation with Prodge, called EACDT.

Having made contact with David, he assured me he could handle all details of the trip, including two safaris; one in the Sambura Region, one in the Masai Mara, and a trip up Mount Kenya. We also enquired about the EACDT, an acroyn for East African Charater Development Trust. He informed us that his organisation goes into the slums and teaches young children important life values through inspirational stories, people and sport. Dave invited us to see their work first hand.

On the day of our visit to Kangewi Slum, Stevo, Pez and I were picked up by our tour guide who was to ensure our safety. We were not going on the common tourist routes through the slum. Our trip consisted of metting local slum security and socialising with the Kenyans who live in the neighbourhood. We saw tourist vehicles drive past us on the common routes around the Kangewi, and it was clear we were on a very unique tour.

Our tour guide was a local to the slum. He had grown up there and, to our knowledge, was familiar with eveything to do with the Kangewi. After we left our vehicle and entered the slum on foot, the first person he introuced us to was keen to show us around his house he had built himself. This man had built his property from recycled glass bottles and mud. He explained how he spent his days walking around collecting glass bottles from landfill, side streets and bins, cleaning them, and then sticking them together to create walls for his new structure. It seemed to give him a huge purpose to be able to construct this home for him and his family.

Over the next few hours we continued to meet more inspriring and resourceful slum dwellers, who all seemed to be friends with our guide. Everyone had a small business they were trying to promote or an idea they were building. And everything was so co-dependent.

Another take away from our visit was just how strucutred and organised Kangewi was. From distance, it would be easy to misunderstand a slum as a forgotten waste land, but it was so much more than that. One lady invited us into her house for a drink, and she began explaining the housing market to us. She was renting, which meant she had a landlord. Just like in the regular economy, the property had title deeds showing the amount of land the landlord owned. As tenant, she was responsible for maintenance of the house, and paid rent to the landlord. Rent was collected by someone who picked up cash on 1st every month. There were no lawyers or estate agents (which I thought was nice!) and she seemed to have a respectable landlord. It was all enforced by the area security, and her reputation was hugely important.

The "area security" were the next people to meet on our tour. The slum was divided into many different sub-districts, each of which had their own security. As far as I could work out these were gangs with guns. They ensured that there were no misdemenours within their sub-district, and if there were, the gang dealt with it accordingly. We met with the local gang outside their headquarters which was a shack with local lottery tickets for sale. There were 4 security guards and they were all heavily armed.

They explained to us what I have just explained in the previous paragraph about the sub-districts and how they were responsible for the people in the area. They also explained how it would be a bad idea for anyone to come into their area unannounced. Finally, they asked for a bribe to ensure our safety, to which I quickly paid and got out of their way.

As walked left the security lottery station, Stevo asked our guide what would have happened to us if we hadn't had him with us. He answered, "You'd be unlikely to be walking out of here."

The last stop was our request. We wanted to treat our guide to a beer or two to say thank you for the trip. He took us into a local "pub" where we were greeted by roughly 10 people sat around a large sharing bowl of liquid. I'm still not sure what the drink was, but it was heavily alcoholic. Stevo, Pez and I joined these guys for a little while and talked about the Premier League. The drinkers also had lots of questions about the UK and what it was like. We did our best to answer as much as we can without coming across like rich white tourists, for our own safety.

On the second day of our trip to the slums, we became educators and cricket coaches. The three of us visited a number of local schools to partake in Question and Answer sessions with classes. I remember the schools being completed overcrowded with children, on a small campus tucked into corners of Kangewi. It was nothing like a school in the UK, you honestly could have walked right past it.

In all honesty, I didn't much enjoy the Question and Answers. It's a strange thing as a 19 year old boy from England being asked your opinion on what a good career move would be, and what are the availability of green cards in the US.

I had more questions for the children than they had for me. I vividly remember this one 13 year old girl, who had been at the school for 4 years. At aged 9, she had left war torn Democratic Republic of Congo for a better life in Kenya. She left by herself on a 14 day hike and hoped that her family would join her one day. She found the school when she arrived in Kenya and they offered her refuge. Her english was a little patchy but she spoke excellent Kiswahili, I am told. Other than her remarkable story, I just remember her smiling all the time we were trying to communicate.

That was a running theme across the whole of our trip to Kenya. A positive attitude to life.

By the afternoon on our second day we were coaching cricket to 90 children, who had never witnessed a game before. So, we split them into 3 teams of 30 and took a group each. Pez was to teach bowling, Stevo to teach batting, and I was to teach fielding. We all agreed that the most important thing wasn't getting the technique perfect, but enjoying the game as much as possible. That tactic seemed to work pretty well and within an hour or so we were having numerous cricket games, all overlapping with each other in the local open space that was shared by 3 schools and the community (see picture above).

Our experience in Kangewi, and our trips to the Masai Mara and the Sambura are brought up regularly when Stevo, Pez and I meet up. It was such a grip and we were incredibly fortunate to see a side of Kenya that not many people do.

I left feeling that I wanted to share my experience with my friends to hopefully encourage them to do something similar. I also felt that the EACDT was a model charity and that was a great initiative to be a part of.