I have this distinct memory from middle school of walking in my blue plaid skirt from Worcester Prep’s main building to Dr. Marsh’s office in one of the campus houses. I felt like such an independent woman—strolling all by myself and dedicating my free time to public speaking practice. No matter how cool I felt, I still had twig legs, braces, frameless glasses, and navy blue knee socks on.
In that moment, I was dreaming that I would one day go places. I pictured myself strutting down the hallway of a high rise office in some cosmopolitan city. My future outfit featured black heels, a tailored suit (pants or pencil skirt, I have no preference), my hair pulled back in a sleek french twist, and a leather laptop bag slung over my shoulder. You could take a picture of me at any moment and slap me on the front page of Forbes with the headline “50 Young Women Changing the Game.” (I still recreate this visualization to pump myself up before interviews.)
This is who I suspected I would be within 15 years. But little me had no idea that (maybe) on my way up to my penthouse suite, I’d often be playing with kids in the dirt, accidentally burning my hands while building campfires, and spending a whole lot of time on transportation swimming around in my thoughts. In middle school, I was fortunate that my head went to that dream place at all because in some parts of the world, what I viewed as a definite future is illegal for girls.
Truthfully, my memories were not always empowering and would sometimes take me to undesirable places. On the road in Mozambique, if I felt up to it, I would force myself to grapple with more challenging emotions and events to attempt to find peace in the pain that accompanied them. I was in a safe space to begin to allow myself to face the bleak experiences I had avoided dealing with. After smoothing out the peaks and valleys, paired with intense learning, weeks isolated in nature, and strong sense of community, my entire outlook shifted. I would stop thinking about life as a series of treks through challenges to reach glamorous places, but instead, life would just be. Everything is a part of it. I hate to sound like such a cliché traveller.
Speaking of travel, we’ve been hearing since we got here that we’d get sick of the congestion in Nairobi. We’ve heard this from our professors, friends at USIU, and previous students. It’s a funny thing about this city. Kenyans flock from the countryside to live here, to find opportunity, then once they’re here they are craving to get out every weekend if they can afford it. Nairobians are proud but rather tough on their city.
I’m a flexible traveler. I worry sometimes if I’m too flexible because I can’t figure out what I like most since I find the positives in wherever. So naturally, I enjoy Nairobi but was happy to get a change of scenery this weekend and head up north to Nyumbani Village.
On the way, everyone in the van was in a pensive place. It is hard not to be transfixed by the contradictory layout of Nairobi. One moment, we were in the heart of downtown then the next we were spotting giraffes and zebras in the scattered trees. It’s not that everything surrounding the city is rural— we passed through pockets of industry and by coal plants the size of Madison Square Garden. It was a cloudy morning and disturbing to watch the smoke from the plant’s towers blend into the clouds above as if the sky was made of pollution’s byproducts. And beneath these either natural or man-made masses, Earth’s most precious megafauna run about. Nairobi is a concrete jungle with actual jungle animals living around it.
The pockets of industry began to stretch further kilometers apart until they ceased to exist when we entered the mountain pass. The mountains looked similar to those in Kwa-Zulu Natal Province, South Africa. They are made of red dirt and rock, and provide a home for trees, goats, and families who practice agriculture. Most of the land is used for step farming, a farming method invented hundreds of years ago (I remember learning about it in my 6th grade Ancient Civilizations class). Now and then, the road would go past a valley and we could see for miles. No wonder early explorers thought the world was flat.
“We out here,” was one of the first things I heard someone say when we got off the bus. We were. I wrapped myself for the first time in Kenya in a conga, a traditional fabric I had been taught to wear in rural places to respect more conservative cultures. It isn’t required, but a good tip of the hat to the older women of the Village.
My long legs like to walk too fast so I spent the majority of the tour up front chatting with Maggie. She graduated from Princeton in May and is working for Nyumbani through the Princeton Africa program. During her undergraduate, she studied Swahili, development, and environmental conservation. Without question, this self-sustaining village was her first choice.
I asked her a lot about the organization and the kids living there. The Village was started by a Catholic priest and funded by the Church, USAID, and various private donors primarily from the UK. Because of all this foreign funding, the kids were pretty used to visitors. “Hello, how are you?” They would ask. “Fine, and how are you?” We would smile. “Fine,” they would giggle and run off having exhausted their first English lessons. |
In a cluster near the washing station, a young boy with cerebral palsy sat with a grandmother. I asked Maggie how many orphans there were with disabilities in the community. They have 10 kids with disabilities and provide them with transportation and school fees for a special education consortium in Kitui. 10 out of 1,000 may not seem like many, but it is actually a surprising number when culturally, babies with disabilities are often killed at birth in rural areas. In time, Nyumbani hopes to expand their facilities to better serve the needs of these orphans.
Growing up in the same town as Delaware’s largest and most successful consortium, I thought providing a safe space for kids with disabilities was a norm. Not until I got to middle school did the rhetoric change. A majority of the world has yet to recognize the fundamental human rights of people with disabilities. It was refreshing to see an NGO in the developing world treating these orphans with the same care as they do any kid.
The next stop on the tour was the high school, primary school, and polytechnic training facilities. All of their facilities are up to par, including enough desks for every student and appropriate equipment for practical skills workshops. Their polytechnic facilities have recently expanded to include more traditionally female vocations, such as hair styling, dress making, and tailoring (I know, gender roles). Students in the beauty school peeked out through the blinds to wave to us. They looked about 16, although it is difficult to gauge a girl’s age in adolescence.
I asked Maggie where the students would go after they either graduated high school or polytechnic training. She said they have a grace period of a year where they can choose to stay in the community while they figure out their next steps, they can go into neighboring towns to start their careers, or they can begin university. They test the highest in the region in their final exams and often get into top undergraduate programs.
Right past the education buildings is the solar garden. Nyumbani is super eco-friendly. The environmental students were geeking out throughout the rest of the tour where we explored the tree farm, greenhouses, and food plots. They grow all the essentials: onion, tomato, broccoli, mango, etc. What they don’t eat, they sell in the neighboring towns. But I suspect that with 1000 growing kids, they eat most of what they produce.
I ran about doing a little bit of everything and occasionally snapping a photo of my friends in their element or capturing the light in the swirling dust. The scene was a photographer’s paradise and also posed a great challenge to set settings correctly. I did an okay job. I am learning.
Ni hayo tu!