rachel m hardwick: kenya: the kids were so much fun

The kids we worked with, met, played soccer with were so amazing!

I felt like the Pied Piper (only a good version!) in Mai Mahiu.Our daily routine generally had us walking back and forth from Transit (our hotel) to Ngeya Primary School a couple times a day, plus we had a lot of down time during Art Camp to rotate out of the classroom and spend time with local kids that just sorta hung out around the school. Everywhere we went we had swarms of kids running up to meet us. They wanted to touch our faces and hair, walk along the road with us, but they wanted mostly to hold our hands! I remember a little girl, no more than three, holding Kris' hand as we walked home one afternoon and having an absolute temper tantrum when she had to let go and go back home because we were about to cross the highway. Her brother (who could not have been more than five or six years old) was trying to carry her back as she just wailed. The really, really weird thing for me personally was that there were no parents in site- just about 12 or 15 kids between three and 10 years old. (On a happy note, she came out to meet us the next couple days and we were able to part without incident :)

A few random things to share (and help provide context for the kids in these pictures):

* Kenya does not have public schools in the way we do- all kids have to pay a monthly fee to attend. While $10 or $12 a month may not sound like a lot- for an orphan, or a struggling single parent, or even working parents but with multiple kids, it is a small fortune that makes attending school unattainable. Many of the kids we saw that "loitered" around the playground were unattended, and wore the same clothes every day for days, and most didn't have shoes.

* We were there during Winter so school was not in session, so most of these kids very well may have had some sort of supervision during the school year, but then again I met a lot of the kids who said they didn't attend school at all.

* There were so many little kids that just sorta hung out, played soccer, and watched us teach. I was so inspired in that so many of the spoke at least two, if not three languages (kiSwahili, Kikuyu and English), or at least made an effort to communicate with us in English. So very sweet.

Over the 7 or 8 days we worked out of Ngeya, I had the opportunity to not only get to know the teens in our art class, but to connect with some of the kids hanging out at the school on their own. I tried not to have favorites, but seriously, that's just impossible... here are a handful of pics of and with the kids around the Ngeya as we were teaching Art Camp.

These little girls in pink were two of my favorite girls at the school :) i know i shouldn't have favorites, but seriously, they were so much fun, and had such amazing personalities that I totally fell in love with them and laughed soooo much watching them play and be goofy.

so much fun!

Jazz hands. NO idea why to be honest..

This young woman was around 10, and cared for her little brother during the day.

he was so shy, and didn't really speak English but was so curious and wanted to watch class, hold my hand and just watch everything that was going on.