My New Project

The KCC is a project that was started by Marcus and Katherine (who I live with) in 2009 to help support some of the people in the slum.  This slum is much much smaller than Kibera that I wrote about before, housing only around 6000 people in the Naivasha area.  The project started with the goal of feeding some of the children in the slum, and has grown impressively in many ways over the last four years.  They began teaching the students (ages 4-7) shortly after they started the feeding program, have added on to the school in several stages, they have organized multiple medical camps to provide free care for needy people at the slum, and also began sponsoring students from underprivileged families to go to primary school the area.  It is only $10 per child per month and includes their schooling and their lunch.  Last year, the farmer who owns the land that the school is on decided to sell his land and told them they either had to buy the land (all 40 acres of it) or get out of the school.  Despite that the only farming they had done was for vegetables for the school and a little extra to sell at the market, they decided they couldn’t lose the school & they took a chance at farming the land.  They did an extensive amount of fundraising, asked for a few farming tips from friends and decided to give it a shot.  They have planted their first crops now on a portion of the land, and so far things are going really well.  They plan to export much of the yield and hope to raise money to continue to grow the school and support the people at the slum.  It’s a pretty impressive project & I’m excited to be a part of it.

So, my job here will be a bit of a mix.  I’ll be doing a lot of food prep and cooking, some work in the gardens, and one day a week they work with some HIV positive women on a project in the slum….as well as any other variety of things they need.  I’m really excited for the change, and happy to help such a great group of people.  Day one we distributed vitamins to the kiddos, made porridge in the biggest pot I’ve ever seen, picked through beans for lunch the following day, helped the kids wash up for lunch, moved building materials around for some of the work they are doing, and of course did the dishes.  We are busy the whole time we are there and so far I like it a lot!  You can go to kccslumproject.org in you're interested in reading more about the project.

As you can see, the school is immaculate.

Two classrooms, the storage area and the teachers lounge.