How it is to volunteer in Nairobi, in Kenya, at Hai Africa primary school
Kenya is one of the poorest countries in the world – almost half of the country, 46% of the population, live below the poverty line, earning less than one dollar a day.
No wonder why so many travelers decide to go there or to some other African countries do to volunteering work.
Many companies offer this kind of volunteering service, but be aware: some of them charge you a lot for it, supposedly for paying for you food and accommodation, but sometimes just a small part of the money go to the institution.
My volunteering in Kenya is different from the regular ones: I spent some time volunteering informally at Hai Africa, a primary school opened in 2015 by a Brazilian girl in Nairobi. It was definitely something special, that I´ll never forget about!
WHAT IS HAI AFRICA?
Hai Africa is a primary school where about 30 kids, from 3 to 7 years old, attend daily to the classes, for free.
It was opened in 2015 by Mariana Fischer, a Brazilian girl with a super gentle heart, who is also my personal friend.
She had spent some time before volunteering in Kenya, and that´s when she realized how poor they are, and also when she decided to do something else for them. She decided to open a public school in Nairobi, and made a crowd funding project to raise funds for that aim.
The school offers the classes and 3 healthy meals a day for free, for 30 children. It´s maintained by people´s donations and also by social bazars that Mariana organizes in São Paulo.
WHERE IS IT?
The school is located in Kabiria, a community in the suburbs of Nairobi, in Kenya.
It´s a very poor area, without tap water at the houses (they have to fetch it at the well or at the public tap), and even electricity at the streets is still a problem.
HOW WAS MY VOLUNTEERING WORK IN HAI AFRICA
There at Hai Africa I helped all the ways I could. The team is very small (just two teachers, the administrator, Zaria, which is also the cook, and Mariana, who organizes everything she can from Brazil).
I played with the kids, helped somehow with the lessons (they learn everything in English, which is very good), also helped with the dishes washing and went to the market to buy the groceries for their meals. As I said, it´s not a formal volunteering, so you may help as you can.
What I found very interesting was to stay at Zaria´s house (she lives in the same land of the school, at the back). I had the opportunity to feel how it is to live as they do, in the community – that’s something you usually don´t experience, staying just in hostels or hotels.
The community is very simple, and also are the houses: they usually have one bedroom, a sitting/living room, a small kitchen, and an outside toilet. They don´t have tap water, so taking a shower, or especially washing the dishes, is always quite challenging for us who aren´t used to that. But it´s good for us to start valuating more all the comfort we have back home.
The toilet is African/Asian style (pretty much a whole in the floor), it can take a while to get used to that too.
Zaria hosted me as if I was part of the family, introduced me to her own family, and took me to muslin events and also local tribe parties, it was a great experience! I really appreciated that!
THE CHILDREN
Ah, the kids! So cute! Their ages are from 3 to 7, and at least the older ones speak English (all of them are learning everything in English at school).
At the beginning they were very shy, but after a while they were just playing with me as if I was also a kid, and taking photos and having fun!
One cool thing about their education is that they learn to help since they are very young – the kids are also responsible for helping at the meals, serving them to their colleagues and bringing the dishes to the class.
HAI – BUILDING WITH LOVEAs you can imagine, many families in the community would like their kids to study at Hai Africa as well, as most of them don´t have money to pay for education somewhere else, and sometimes even can´t feed the children properly. Unfortunately there are lots of kids in Kabiria that don´t go to any school.
The area of Hai is small, so it can´t receive more than the 30 kids that already attend to the classes. But do you wanna hear some good news? There´s a project happening right now, to make the school bigger, so that more kids can study there: Hai, Building with Love.
It´s a crowd funding project that aims to raise funds to buy a land, so that they don´t have to pay rent anymore, and to build a larger school.
And you can help this dream to come true: you can donate even small amounts, from 4 US dollars on, to help them to buy the land. The deadline of the project is on the end of October, so there´s still time.
How about that? Here is the site where you can find the crowd funding project. Also, if it pleases you, maybe share this post or the link of the project, so that more people can get to know about that. Sharing is caring!
Your help is most welcome! Thank you very much!
More info: Hai Africa’s site.
