Laini Saba Primary School in Kibera

Lunchtime at Laini Saba Primary School

The Polytechnic at Chekalini  photos: Lolín Menéndez rscj

This year I am preparing to embark on a journey which I have made each year since 2003. It is a journey involving pupils and adults from Ireland who travel to the Ugandan-Kenya province to participate in the ministry of our Sisters there.

The three groups of people who will travel to Kenya between 23 June and 7 August 2007 will have an immersion /work experience alongside our sisters in two different places in Kenya. Students of St. Catherine's College, Armagh, (H.U.G.-Kenya) will live with the rscj in Karen in Nairobi and travel each day to Kibera where they will reorganize the Primary School library and help the children with their English.

A week after they complete writing the Leaving Certificate Examination, girls from Mount Anville will travel to Kenya and go to Chekalini where they will build a cow shed under the supervision of a Kenyan mason. They will also spend time working and interacting through play, paint and song with the people who live in the newly built special needs unit. This residence is for those who are developmentally challenged. Some who are physically handicapped but not brain damaged also attend the unit.

The third group consists of young and not so young adults. They come from different counties of Ireland. Two from Armagh have made the journey in previous years - one went to Uganda with the group that painted classrooms in St. Bernadette's Primary School, while the second woman was in Kenya two years ago helping the girls in the Polytechnic and those with special needs. This group is known as V.I.S.I.T. (voluntary immersion and stay in third world country). Both young and old will spend a week in Kibera and a week in Chekalini. The older adults will first go up country to Chekalini where their task will be to paint the walls in the residence and spend time teaching the children. While this is going on, the young adults will be in the Primary School in Kibera, painting too and playing, teaching action songs and the like to the children. Then they will change places with the older group and do some wall murals. In Nairobi, the adults will engage with the children in Kibera, through song and crafts.

For all those who travel there is a special time of preparation. This involves meetings to learn about the culture and customs of the people among whom they will spend the two weeks. They are challenged to look seriously at how the developed and developing world trade and view people in East Africa. In the course of these meetings their own values are questioned through activities and games that help them look closely at our 'western' mindset in a non threatening way. Empowered with some group skills they are helped to prepare to live in close proximity to each other, to take the rough with the smooth and thus come to know that to receive is as important as to give. All who embark on this long journey will receive an enormous amount from their visit to Kenya. Their faith will be challenged and indeed perhaps nurtured, and their gratitude for what they enjoy in our own country will be increased. The happiness of people who live in a very different world asks them if real, true happiness depends on material goods, or on the inner attitude that embraces all life as gift, an opportunity to discover the true self and grow in wholeness.

Carmel Flynn rscj
Province of Ireland – Scotland