Yesterday our day started off with a trip to the Nairobi National Museum. Unfortunately Mary wasn't feeling so well so it was only Nikita and I who went. The Museum was great with lots of interesting exhibits about evolution and the animals which exist within Nairobi. There were masses of school children at the museum on this particular day, and Nikita and I became local celebrities as we are known as "muzungus"; literally translation "white person", non-literal translation "anyone who looks like a tourist". We can't even count the number of pictures we were asked to pose for and how many children just wanted us to shake their hand. It was a very interesting experience and gave us a glimpse into the lives of Brad and Angelina ;) Many of the children asked Nikita and I if we had Facebook to which we replied "what's that?". They asked us if we used any social networking sites such as Twitter, to which we replied that we only had a sole e-mail address which only our school could contact us...little do they know....
The toilet situation in general has been pretty good in Nairobi. There have been toilets everywhere, but sometimes the toilet paper is only available outside of the stalls (where we usually keep paper towels). So, if you forget to bring it in with you, you're out of luck.
After the museum, Mary met us and we went to the local "Nakumat" which is pretty much a version of their Wal-Mart for lunch. For $1 Canadian, we got a box of mango juice, four cookies and a "Mandazi" (dough bread). It was at the Nakumat, where Sande, our Kibera Slum Tour Guide met us. We had no idea what we were in for.
The minute we entered the slums, all you saw was piles and piles of garbage for miles and miles. Sande told us that the estimated number of people living in the slums was about 1.5 million. As we entered into a specific part of the Kibera Slum, I realized that the background picture of my blog, was in fact the Kibera slum itself. I had randomly selected a template that was available through the website and had no idea that a week later I would be there myself.
We first visited an HIV/AIDS clinic founded by and run by a woman named Judy. Judy is a local nurse who created this clinic mainly for women who have been affected by HIV/AIDS. While we were there, we met some of the program creators who explained to us the various types of groups that were run. For all you OTs, we were lucky enough to see a women's empowerment group being run!!
After this, Sande took us on a long walk to a school for vulnerable children. This population included children who were orphans and/or affected by HIV/AIDS. On our long walk to the school, we must have passed by thousands and thousands of children. All of them (and when I say all, I mean ALL) of them tried to reach out and grab our hand and kept repeating "how are you? how are you? how are you?". We tried to stop and at least give each of them a high five, but Sande was getting impatient as the school we were trying to get to was about to close. However, we couldn't resist stopping and speaking to them and taking pictures (which many of them loved posing for). It was incredible, uplifting and moving to see how happy these children were with barely nothing around them. They were laughing and smiling and playing without a care in the world; something to truly think about. We arrived at the school with about 12 minutes left in the school day. 55 children attended this school and were split into three classes according to their age. As we entered each of the classes, the children got up and sang a song for us. It was amazing! They hugged us and treated us like they had known us for years. Mary held the school owner's three month old baby for the majority of the time, and as she handed her back over, realized that the baby had peed all over her. AMAZING.
Following the school, Sande took us to the "bead factory" which was actually a place where they used cow bone to make various pieces of jewelery. We were shown each of the steps that were needed to create a final piece of jewelery and Nikita even sanded one of her own pieces! Each of us bought a key chain with our name on it and a bracelet of some sort! They were extremely welcoming and we loved every second of it!
Sande walked us to our waiting cab and we thanked him for such an incredible experience. Words can only tell so much and even pictures don't do it justice. You truly have to be there, in the moment to see and feel what we did.
I am going to try and upload some pictures with this blog so hopefully all of you can visualize what I've spoken about.
Thanks for reading :)
Love,
Shahla
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