Hello, I’m Kevin Brimble.

I have come to Kenya with Out-Of-Afrika twice now. The first time for 3 months (January 2005 to April 2005) and the second, regrettably for only a month (August 2005).

To me Kenya is a land of unanswerable questions! And being asked to write this, I couldn’t help thinking of the question I have been regularly asked while here in Kenya, ‘How do you find it?’. In answer I so much want to be flippant and say ‘I just turned right at that tree there’, but the Kenyans ask with such earnestness that I could never be so obtuse. I came to Kenya expecting it to be similar to many of the other developing countries I’ve visited, being constantly hassled to buy things, beggars around hotels and tourist sites, and generally finding it hard to live a life similar to many of the locals. However, I was pleased to find that I could happily move around on my own, I could use public transport and felt I was looked after by the locals rather than hassled by them. That’s not to say there are no bad things in Kenya because there certainly are, but the thing that brought me back to Kenya and will continue to do so, is that I was always comfortable in Kenya and was allowed to live how I chose (a simple life).

While in Kenya I spent the majority of my time in the training room, teaching both paying customers and sponsored children in the use of computers. Incredibly, this has meant in certain cases teaching the simplest of things, such as how to use a mouse. However whatever their starting point they all are enthusiastic about learning and most develop very quickly; gaining more and more confidence and knowledge when moving through each the computer packages (Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, Power Point, etc.). In the past, when I’ve been able to teach I have really enjoyed the experience and my time in Kenya has been no different, with the exception that everyone has been so appreciative with a great deal of positive feedback.

This time, I observed a container from the UK arrive. Not unusual for Kenya, the lorry arrived far later than expected and to most peoples amazement broke-down at the end of the road. But this wasn’t something that perturbed anyone here, with the waiting unloaders (numbering 30ish) firstly push-starting the lorry and then literally shoving it a good 100 yards of the dirt road to Park View. Then once in place, the lorry full of what seemed like hundreds of computers, monitors and sundry other items was unloaded down a human chain, to the Out-Of-Afrika stores, within a couple hours.

In the short time between my trips to Kenya, I was amazed by everything that Out-Of-Afrika has achieved. This is particularly true of the land, in Thika, which I worked on a little while here last time. It was just open scrub land but now is fully fenced, cleared, a house for the caretaker, many plants, running water and many other projects underway.