After returning to London after my stay in Kenya there has been a lot of people asking me how it was. At first I must have looked a bit dumb fooled as I couldn?t come up with a nice and simple answer.
I could have said "great" or "fine", which would have been true in one sense and also what people expected of me.

I simply felt like the things I saw and experienced was of a to complex nature to just brush off like that.
I tend to end up saying things were "weird and wonderful, simultaneously rich and poor, heart breaking and lovely." A place where everything happens around you and affects you in all different ways at once.

Upon arrival in Nairobi I was greeted by Sylvester, Grace and Desmond and went back with them to the flat in ruiru, crashed in bed , and then got up early the next morning to accompany Grace to the different schools and visit the sponsored children.

Found the whole day a bit mind-blowing really, but managed to control myself and just go with the flow.
So many lovely people in just one day! Taking that day would make a years worth of friendly encounters in London.
At the same time I couldn?t help seeing the social political issues of the symbol a white person is. White skin means opportunities, money, education and so forth.

Initially it angered me a bit, feeling judged just by the colour of my skin and
then managed to relax into it by thinking "what comes around goes around" and the fact is that it is only fair as well. To a certain degree its true, I have a lot more opportunities than most of the people I met there, and it is about time the white man start paying his dues.

After about a week of visiting the different projects I decided that I wanted to dedicate most of my time in Kenya to the children at the rehabilitation centre. As there sometimes is
shortages of supply I thought that my skills as a designer/jeweller could come handy in starting up a self sustaining beadwork project. All smiles
and positive replies, I had to scratch my head on how easy it seemed.

How na?ve I was!! It is easy to start things, it is to make a continuity plan that is the difficult one. Another problem was tools. I had brought some with me from England but I didn?t even consider essentials like drill and drill bits.
Three days of walking around with Grace and asking various carpenters and hardware shops we gave up and I continued the classes based on the beading techniques.

The kids were great, and extremely fast learners, and normally if there was something I couldn?t figure out I could disguise it by giving the job to one of the kids. Out of the selected ten that was willing to dedicate their time I would specially like to mention Kairo, Staneley and Bernard? And Dennis- hard worker, and of course Peter- eager as ever, Robert and Francis- cheeky as few, Isaac- very clever when he wants to be, and John..

Oh.. They were all brilliant in their own ways!!

Looking back and remembering the different episodes that happened I can only say

that it was an enriching experience, and one I would like to repeat with the knowledge I now have on how things work there.

Thank you all!!
Janniche Toerlen