Exams you say?!

With our fearless leader feeling under the weather, we nevertheless set out to Kanjuku primary school (motto: Together We Succeed) with optimism that exams would not put paid to another session. Sadly our optimism was misplaced, a teacher at the school ‘tried’ to find another school to send us to and quite obviously did not succeed as Luke noticed he didn’t actually call anyone on his phone…. Still, nothing can dampen the spirits of our merry band and we headed back to our hotel for a little more down time before heading for a children’s centre in the afternoon.
We visited the Otto Hofmann Centre for orphans, rescued girls and feeding and education programme. I don’t think any of us were prepared for the sight of this mini fortress in a bad part of town, the tiny building where 35 girls lived and a further 45 received free food and education. The founder of the home, a lady called Jane, spoke to us about how she was helped with her education by Otto Hofmann and how she was determined to give back to her community and so set up the centre which she named after her benefactor. The centre deals with orphans, abused girls and neglected children from the Kiandutu slum and relies entirely on donations from the public, for food, bedding and most importantly school fees. The children are all desperate to attend school and get educated and despite this, we learnt that three of the girls were not able to take their exams today as they did not have the fee of 300 Kenyan shillings, approximately £2.40. As a passionate believer in education for all, I found this particularly sad.
The children made us welcome by singing us a song in both Swahili and English before we headed outside to play some games with them. It was a heart-warming experience to see faces which had looked so careworn inside the centre break into smiles and laughter when they knocked down some stumps or hit a ball, such simple things to us but which had a major effect on them. A round of keepy-uppies and some clapping games kept them entertained a bit longer and after handing out some T-shirts, wristbands and pens, we headed off, a more sombre group who were all counting our blessings

By Tracey