Rafiki 2007 - report

Between the 3rd and 12th August 2007 our second Rafiki Programme took place with 14 volunteers going to Magunga Primary School and Rae Mixed Primary School.

Introduction

Following the success of the 2006 programme we decided to run another programme this year. Rupert leapt into action at the end of 2006 and pitched the idea to schools in Oxford and as a result before we knew it we had 40 volunteers due to come. Eventually 10 came, 9 of whom were sixth formers from Headington's and St Edward's. Together with friends from last year's visit and friends of friends, on the 3rd of August a slightly anxious looking group of volunteers were to be found at Heathrow Terminal 3 waiting for the Virgin flight to Nairobi.

Programme

The programme this year drew on the experience of last year plus incorporating new elements that we encourage volunteers to bring with them. First of all though upon arrival in Nairobi we had to make a quick change to catch the internal flight to Kisumu and try to let everyone have a few hours sleep to recover....

Sunday saw the start of the programme with an orientation session at Magunga Primary School followed by a visit to our local project coordinator's home to see first hand what rural life is like in this part of Kenya. This year's programme was more ambitious than last year's in that we took two Kenyan primary schools into the programme. The Magunga Primary School and the Rae Mixed Primary School. This gave us an interesting logistical problem of getting a vehicle to take us from one school to the other every lunch time which is much easier said than done...

Sport - rugby, soccer, hockey, netball & frisbee Julian, Sam, Joseph, Emily, Georgia and Zoe took on the task of organising the sporting activities. Between them they brought rugby and hockey equipment and a bunch of frisbees. The week's training and practise in the various sports culminated in tournaments and prize givings at the 2 schools. The female carers of the children on the footsteps child sponsorship programme, who were very keen not to be left out of the fun, insisted on their own netball tournament too!

Classroom painting Last year our volunteers painted 3 classrooms and this year we did 2 more from scratch and added more footprints to the footsteps classroom. Rebecca did an outstanding job in transforming the classrooms with the help of most of the other volunteers plus the children.

Solar cooking Last year we had a day of solar cooking and natural medicine where we learnt about what's possible in this part of Kenya in these areas. This year we decided to give the solar cooking a go ourselves. So armed with 11 solar cookers and a recipe from the internet for mango-banana bread we set about instucting the kids on how to make cakes with solar cookers. Unfortunately the whole process rather depends on it being a sunny day or else it takes hours and hours for the bread to be ready. On a couple of days we struggled but all in all they turned out great. The kids tried something new (as did we volunteers) and we got to see how challenging it is to do the simple things that we take for granted, like cooking and even washing up.

t-shirts and art This year we did t-shirts again. Using the tie-dye technique we made 100 kids' day by letting them make their own designs and choosing their favourite colours. Art always goes down well, so with paints and balloons and brushes the creative talents of the children was unleashed with prizes for the most inspired work.

Finally we ended up the week on Saturday with a fundraising event at Magunga Primary School. We have done this on previous occassions and it is an opportunity for the community to show their support for the school. Through the efforts of our fundraising and with money left over from the costs of the trip we were able to give a donation of around £500 to the efforts. Together with a matched donation from the Nairobi footsteps cyber cafe we were delighted to help give another push to the rebuilding work at Magunga.

Once back in Nairobi, most of the group finally got the chance to relax in surroundings that were a little less basic and we went out to Carnivore restaurant and ate as much meat as we could stand before rolling into the club next door to spend the remaining hours before the flight the following morning.