Working visit to Ouygis, Kenya – March 2020

In March 2020, I spent a week in Oyugis and the surrounding rural villages visiting the children we send to school and their homes and schools. Due to the generous donations given last year when cycling from Land’s End to John o’Groats and the generous financial gifts given when I retired from Regina Coeli in September, we are able to send 2 more children to school. The fees for the older children are increasing due to longer days at school and in their last year for boarding costs.

We now have Emmy, Tracy and Sheila Atieno at the Key of Knowledge school in Kajimbo. I met the headmistress who really impressed me with her passion and dedication and started the school against all odds. Her teachers are excellent and dedicated even when they only have the basics to teach with. I spent a few days teaching the different classes English, English pronunciation, grammar which is great fun and rewarding.

All the other children are at School in Oyugis at the Bright Academy.

This year again I took 2 large bags of children’s clothes to give to the children in the rural areas. It is quite humbling, and something you never really get used to, to see how these people live in abject poverty. They mostly earn their money by selling bananas and growing corn on their land which they sell at local markets or at the roadside. Many of the mothers take in washing to earn a few Ksh, jobs are scarce for the poor in Kenya.

Remco Bicentini (Trainer for the Curacao national football team gave me shirts and shorts for the Nyakach football team – unbelievable these boys could not believe their luck.

In the eight years I have been visiting the children living in this rural area in and around Oyguis very little has changed. The dwellings are the same, slum landlords, the same the world over, rarely maintain these rental homes. They still have little to no sanitation, no access to running water.

However, the huge change that I have seen, even if only on a small scale and due to your donations, is giving the children an education and making it possible to develop. Going to school means becoming more knowledgable and getting a better understanding of the world around them to at least give them a chance to make the world a little different for themselves. Having meals at school means they are healthier and physically more resilient.

However, the day I left for Nairobi, disaster struck, and the Covid19 had arrived in Kenya. Although, the Kenyan Government immediately implemented lockdown which meant schools closed down (they hope to reopen in January 2021) this left the children without breakfast and a meal at midday. Since March children have had no education whatsoever, online lessons are impossible due to the lack of a digital infrastructure. Lack of running water means hand washing is a lesser priority and living in poor, overcrowded conditions social distancing becomes something only the privileged members of society can put into practice. People have lost their jobs which at least brought in a little income which helped to keep hunger at bay, however, any change in Kenyan society – and in this case a worldwide pandemic has caused food prices to rise exponentially. With schools closed and food expensive the mothers are finding it difficult to even put one meal a day on the table.

This working trip has been documented in a blog on the app ‘polarsteps’.