What do I miss? Top of the list is the complete randomness of Africa – the interest and excitement of not knowing what will happen next. Power cuts, dirt roads, unplanned stop offs on journeys, insane traffic, crowded matatus (buses), overfilled boats, ordered food not arriving, unordered food then arriving, coffee after lunch taking 3 hours. And whats with the overpowering use of garlic? The unexpected will always happen, and the only thing to do is laugh (a lot).

And of course, my amazing co-volunteers. You guys!  The 2+ rule was never a problem, I always wanted to spend time in your company. Group dinners, dhow rides, market trips, teaching together, sing-sings, late night swimming  N – all so much fun. It was incredibly interesting to meet people with such different backgrounds and personalities. Week one was a repeat of the “getting to know each other” conversation x 10, but always with such a diversity of answers. Living all together in one apartment tends to open all boundaries between people…., as does the negative effects of eating food from an African country! (And curtains for toilet doors).

I miss the friendliness, openness and the sense of humour of the Kenyan people. Every morning I was greeted with a smile, a handshake, a hello, how are you. Arms around you, like you are their favourite person. Wanting friendship, email addresses, a chat. Giving you small presents. And not just those in Camara – the shop assistant asking where you’re from, the worker cleaning the toilet admiring your necklace, the tuk tuk driver wondering do you know Robbie Keane. Security guards at the bank falling off the steps laughing when I pretend to misunderstand and make a lame joke about taking out 1 schilling at the time (1000 schilling to one euro). I can tell you that the staff in Frankfurt airport were scared by the crazy Irish lady talking at them. At least the Irish bus driver was a little more receptive.

The enthusiasm of the local Camara volunteers was overwhelming. They all thoroughly supported the Camara cause, and worked long hours to schedule the classes, to help us teaching in any way, and to prepare for a graduation party that rivalled any college graduation I’ve been too. The belief in the volunteers, and in the trainees in the importance of education was incredible. It was impossible to finish any class on time, as there were so many questions, and people wanted to practise what we had taught. If only the same enthusiasm was present in my own workplace! 

So Camara Kenya 10 is over, and I have learned an incredible amount and made some lifelong friends (I think ). I hope that the computer skills that I have taught will encourage the volunteers and teachers to continue to educate and up-skill themselves, and to pass that knowledge onto others… that’s the best I can aim for in a months work.

Asante everyone,

Helena   (Halanna, HB, ToTo, Dave)

PS: Oh, and I miss the sunshine. A lot.

And what a week since our last post.  We finished all our work in Mombasa last Friday, and left our apartment Saturday morning to make the journey up to Lamu.  It was great arriving on a Saturday afternoon and having a day and a half to chill out before we got stuck into classes again – the team had a chance to enjoy the wonderful Shella beach, experience a night-time dhow ride off the coast of Lamu, take some walks around Lamu old town (the entire old town is a UNESCO world heritage sight, and extremely beautiful), and generally catch up on some eating and sleeping.

Monday morning saw us get cracking again.  The Camara hub in Lamu is in a terrific location – right on the town square, and only five minutes from our hotel, and the team have well settled into training at this point.  The standard of the students is considerably more basic than in Mombasa, which is at least making us keep the tecahing materials fresh by making us re-jig things to suit the standard of the classes.  But yet again, everyone’s getting a great buzz from the teaching.  One interesting observation most of the guys have been making is that students here are far better than Irish students at learning by rote – they have an amazing capacity to memorise things.  However, the flip-side of this is a substantially weaker ability to think creatively, or to connect pieces of information together.  Something else to keep us on our toes!

Back to some observations on Lamu itself – the town is genuinely stunning.  There are only three motorised vehicles on the island that we have noticed (one car, a jeep that serves as the ambulance, and a tractor), and the difference that makes to the pace of life is extraordinary – walking, donkeys or dhows are the only possible methods of transport, which naturally slows everything down.  We’re also getting much closer to Kenyan life – the market takes place in the town square 7 days a week, so we get to see people bargaining over their shopping, and living their normal lives (we were a bit more removed from real life in Mombasa).  Also, as there are a lot more tourists here, we don’t quite attract as much attention just by virtue of being white, which people are quite enjoying.

Better get back to work, but we’ll try to keep the posts a bit more regular from now on in (apologies for the lack of photos, but upload speeds are far too slow for us to even consider uploading some of the thousands of photos we’ve taken – that’ll have to follow when we get home…).

Again, it was great to get out on the road, leaving the hub in Mombasa at about 8.30am.  From there, we got a lift as far as Mtwapa (a suburb of Mombasa out past the hub), and then hopped on a matatu as far as Malindi airport (about 2 hours or so, which is far too much time to ever spend in a matatu!).  Malindi “airport” was a bit of a surprise to say the least – it’s a very small building in the middle of a field, so using the word airport is probably stretching it a little.  After getting over the surprise, we boarded a Fly540 plane to Manda – the island next to Lamu.  The plane was decent enough – a 35 seater or so, and the flight is only 25 minutes.

Our surprise at the size of Malindi “airport” dissipated on arrival at Manda airstrip, which is at least honest in the description of itself.  Manda amounts to a field with two wall-less huts – one of them is the security checking area, and the other is departures!

From Manda, we hopped on a ferry over to Lamu, taking about 20 minutes or so, and just sat in awe – Lamu is particularly beautiful as you approach the island.

Once in Lamu, we were kept busy walking around the narrow streets examining accommodation options and training venues for the team to use next week (the whole team will make the above journey this Saturday, except with some other form of transport substituted for the matatu ride).  Camara have a second hub in Lamu (Kenya is the only country with more than one hub in Africa), and it was very interesting to get a look at it to explore the differences between it and the Mombasa hub.  The primary (though certainly not the only) activity of the Mombasa hub is the distribution of refurbished computers to schools – all other activity flows from this.  In Lamu however, a different model is in operation.  As Lamu has only a small number of schools, all of which are now equipped with either Camara or non-Camara computers, there would be no requirement for such a model.

The Lamu hub therefore focusses on two core activities.  One is training, which is provided not only to teachers in the area, but to business people, public servants, and generally any of the Lamu people who are interested in learning.  The second area is the provision of internet access, which is done by providing a very low-cost internet cafe (internet rates in the cafe are 50c per hour, which is very reasonable by Kenyan standards).  These two areas are the backbone of the Lamu hub, which certainly seems to be thriving – Camara are well respected on Lamu, and an awful lot of people seem very apreciative of the work being done.

Those are obviously only initial observations, as we spent less than 36 hours in Lamu before making the above mentioned journey in reverse.  Thankfully, the team had cooked us dinner for when we arrived back in Mombasa – it really was nice to get back to the group, even after only a couple of days…

This morning, we’re back in the hub in Mombasa for Week 2 of training.  The Train the Trainer, School Admin and Linux Administration courses are now done, and this week Dani continues with Web Design, while Dom, Wencke, Roseanne and Conor get started with their courses – PC Repair & Maintenance, ICT in Education, Moodle Administration and Networking respectively.

Tomorrow, myself and Dee will be heading up to Lamu to try and make sure everything is sorted up there.  We’ll get back Saturday evening, and then the whole group will travel up together on Saturday morning.  In the meantime, we only have five days left here in Mombasa, and we’re hoping to get back out to the Tewa Project, as well as visiting Fort Jesus and trying to see some work that’s being done with women in the shanty towns of Mombasa.  That’s rather a lot to try and get done while we’re still training here, so we’ll keep you posted as we go!

A new constitution was proposed by President Kibaki first in 2005, but was defeated 58%-42%, with the Government National Rainbow Coalition splitting into camps in favour and against the referendum.  When Kibaki was re-elected in 2007, he defeated Raila Odinga.  But they have campaigned together in favour of the new proposed referendum (drafted by a panel of experts, with amendments added by parliament after a 30-day period within which members of the public were given time to strutinise and suggest amendments), and it looks like they have won a convincing victory – looks like a 67%-33% victory for the Yes side as I type, with no reports of violence at this point (a first in Kenyan history).

Because of the possibility of tensions arising yesterday, the team were under lock-down in the apartment.  In preparation for this, we had a night out on Tuesday, celebrating Wencke’s birthday with dinner in a tasty Indian, and watching Inception as a group (interestingly, the cinema is nicer than ours at home).  We then went shopping as a team at midnight, stocking up on loads of food and some beers in preparation for our house arrest!

And we rather enjoyed our day together in the apartment.  In the morning, there was lots of sleeping in, as half the team recovered from the journey from Ireland, and some of us just caught up on some badly needed sleep!  The afternoon was mostly spent sunning ourselves, with some of the group doing additional preparation for today’s training.  And in the evening, a few of us cooked together (sweet potato and mango curry was the veggie option, with spag bol for the meat lovers), and we all had a few drinks as a group before settling in for movie night (Shutter Island, which bears a number of similarities with the previous night’s movie!).

So Referendum day was pretty enjoyable for us as a group.  This morning, we’re back in the Mombasa hub.  A couple of additional students have arrived as a result of word-of-mouth from Tuesday’s training, which is a nice sign.  And it’s good to be back at work…

As I (Neil) type, Dani is leading a class on ‘Web Design’, while Shelly is working on ‘Train the Trainers’.  It’s a great sign of the team spirit that Wencke is in with Shelly, while Roseanne, Helena and Alanna are all helping facilitate the ‘Web Design’ class.  Meanwhile, Dom and Conor are planning their ‘Linux Administration’ course, which kicks off this afternoon.  Alanna and Helena will also be running a ‘School Admin’course this afternoon.

And so we’ve started – it feels like the last 9 days were all building up to this, and at this point, it’s all worked out pretty well.  The classes are running smoothly, there is plenty of local support available, and each of the classes is a nice, manageable size.  Long may it continue like this!

Tomorrow sees a referendum on the proposed new Kenyan constitution, which is also a public holiday (note – having public holidays when referendums/voting is taking place is an excellent idea in my view).  We’re not expecting trouble over the result, and if it does break out, it’s likely to be in the North of the country.  That said, just to be safe, we’re staying in the apartment compond tomorrow.  Tonight, we’re off to see Inception, and we’ll get some food and drink in to keep us occupied tomorrow.  Then back to work Thursday…

Tonight, we’re going to see what Kenyan cinemas are like, as we go to see Knight and Day in the local cinema.  Then, at about 6.45am, we’re off to Malindi – a small town north of Mombasa, where the final week of training (23rd-26th August) will be carried out.  We’re just heading up to evaluate some of the possible training venues and accommodation options, but it should be a nice day away – we have a lot of the planning for the training complete now, so not a huge amount remains to be done in the hub until next week.

We’ll be back online on Friday with an update on how we got on.  And from Saturday, we’ll have two additional team members arriving to help us with the blogging!

The project currently houses 31 women from very disadvantaged, rural communities.  These women more of less live on the margins of society, with low levels of education, extremely low incomes, and often live in households where alcoholism or abuse are present.

All of these women come to the Tewa project for a couple of months at a time, where they learn cooking skills, household skills, subsistence farming, sewing and serving (waitressing).  The idea is that these skills enable them to access employment much more easily, but also to run their own households in a healthier, cheaper way.

The project was largely funded by the Roman Catholic church.  There seems to be a little confusion about which organ of the church the funding was drawn from, but the results are impressive nonetheless.  The lodgings and facilities are genuinely top-notch – from a state of the art kitchen, to spacious comfortable classrooms, a top-quality IT room and comfortable, beautiful fittings throughout the building.  It’s also completely secure, which is vital for these women to be given the space to learn and develop.

After visiting the project, we popped in to Veronica’s house (next door) to talk to her about the work.  She first envisaged the project about 17 years ago, when a local woman came to her to complain that her 9 year old daughter had been sold by her husband.  The man the girl was sold to was an elderly man, who already had 4 wives, and Veronica went to help get the daughter back.  The only way this could be done safely, was to ship mother and daughter away to a town 150 miles away, where they could start a new life.  Since then, Veronica has been dreaming, planning, funding and overseeing the development of the Tewa project, which finally opened it’s doors this year.

Hopefully, Camara will be building a stronger relationship with Tewa in the future, helping build the ICT education of the women involved.  In the meantime, we left Tewa feeling inspired by the ability of a single person to effect such change.

We’re sitting here planning the itinerary for the team for the next month.  We have accommodation and transport sorted for the Mombasa leg of the visit, but now we need to nail down the dates for that leg!  From there, we can slot in the trips to Lamu and Malindi during the month.

I think it’s safe to say the first couple of days have been an eye-opening experience for us.  From walking past camels on the street, to visiting isolated beaches deep in the countryside, it’s been a rollercoaster ride so far.

That’ll do as an intro – with everyone else arriving this weekend, it’ll be a lot easier for us to keep the blog good and active.