It’s amazing how fast another month has flown by. It is December, and our time at the MCC is slowly coming to an end. That’s why we don’t want to keep you in the dark about everything we’ve experienced over the last few weeks.
As planned, we built a goal wall with the children. Even while cutting the boards and marking the first holes, it was clear how much enthusiasm the kids had for the project. Everyone wanted a turn to saw, screw, or at least hold the level. As soon as the first section was finished, it was propped up against a tree. Then there was no stopping them. Balls were flying everywhere… even the adults and the more reserved children wanted to test their accuracy and had a blast! Once the goal wall was finished, we added some color to the whole thing. Both we and the kids are happy with the result.
We were so happy to be able to reopen our library during these weeks. With the help of many busy little hands, old shelves were turned into beautiful new bookshelves. Together, we also revised the library rules so that everyone knows how we want to treat each other and the books. We were able to create a cozy reading nook with two new benches. To go along with it, we bought new books so that there is something for every interest.
Since all the children were on vacation and had plenty of free time, we came up with the idea of inviting all the community children to the MCC for a day. We started with a soccer tournament in the morning: the center-based boys played against the community-based boys and had an exciting game. However, the girls’ match literally fell through. The rain threw a wrench in our plans.
To lift the mood again, we had stick bread and smokies by the campfire. But even that was a bit of a challenge in the rain. Together, the children tried to keep the fire alive—with amazing perseverance and a lot of team spirit. Luckily, the weather cleared up later, and we were able to finish the day dry. In the end, everyone went home happy, tired, and with big smiles on their faces. A rainy day that turned into a really wonderful vacation day after all.
One of the beautiful things about traveling to unknown and distant countries, we think, is experiencing the changing seasons. The soil, the landscape, the smell of the air all change with the rainy season, and you start to feel like you’re getting to know the country all over again in a completely new way. Among other things, we got to see how the rain lured hundreds of termites—locally known as Bauwa—out of their underground homes and into the air. The kids loved catching and collecting them, frying them up with salt, and then feasting on them. We also got to try them—and contrary to expectations, the Bauwa actually tasted good.
To ring in the Christmas season here as well, we took an afternoon to bake cookies that were a bit more to our taste. The day before, we prepared the dough with a small group—they had so much fun kneading the ingredients! The next day, we baked the cookies following an open-door policy—anyone who wanted to help was welcome. In the end, we had really delicious cookies that were devoured during the movie that evening…
But it wasn’t just movies in the evenings; there was also karaoke! The kids love music and, along with it, singing and dancing. And it showed! Once again, we were amazed at how loud the voices of nearly 30 children can be—incredible!
We dedicated our last slot for a potential workshop to making and creatively working with salt dough. Although it didn’t turn out perfectly, the children had a total blast trying their hand at modeling and letting their creativity run wild. For all of us, this project sparked a valuable and thought-provoking moment of interaction. Since the kids weren’t familiar with salt dough, they didn’t know what to make of our idea and saw it more as a waste of food—and they weren’t wrong, as we had been unsure about it ourselves beforehand. It was nice to see how they embraced it, yet it’s also clear to us that we wouldn’t offer salt dough again.
We are grateful for the experiences we were able to have here over the two months. With the children, the people living here, and the country. We were able to learn a lot—an incredible amount about Kenya and the discussions surrounding it. An incredible amount about social-pedagogical aspects that will certainly have a lasting influence on our daily lives as social work professionals. But we also learned an incredible amount about ourselves—about our values, personal boundaries, and very individual perspectives. It wasn’t always easy, but we wouldn’t want to miss those moments for anything.
Vanessa Vogler and Paulina Daniel