One of the teachers at Githunguri Primary School told me near the beginning of my stay, ‘Every night you will try to write down what you have seen, but you will not be able to write it all down, and when you get home you are going to spend a lot of time making sense of it.’ How he knew that I don’t know, but it could not have been more true. My only complaint about my five weeks in Kenya was that I was not there for long enough; in the time I had there, I learned so much but also went away with a lot of questions.

Out of Afrika is a small organisation which does quite a lot; in addition to sponsoring children, running the computer project and developing a new plot of land for a skills training centre, they help out at schools and at the rehab centre and day care. This means that for a volunteer who is not specialised in something (like a teacher), the first thing to do is work out which projects to help out on. It’s really impossible to get a good idea of this before you get there, as things are evolving all the time.

The first thing I decided I wanted to do was help out at the primary school, but unfortunately I arrived two weeks before the end of term and at primary school in Kenya, every term ends with difficult exams for every year. Because it was revision time, I was unable to help out with teaching and mainly did administrative work during the two weeks, of which there is a lot at the end of the term!

Although I wasn’t able to teach, getting a chance to talk with the teachers was really educational for me. Marking exam papers was sobering: there is a large gap between those who are doing well and those who are doing poorly. But then I was shown a class with 113 children and one teacher, and after seeing that I began to understand the difficulties they face as teachers. Like many people in Kenya, they are simply working very hard to cope with not having the resources they need. As teachers, you can see that it hurts them that they are not able to provide the kind of education they would like to, but they simply are not provided with the right support.

After the end of term, I spent most of my time helping out with the OOA’s computer projects—in the cybercafé and training room. Teaching rudimentary computer skills to adults is a painstaking process, and a reminder of how new computers are to many people there. Helping out at the cyber, I learned about some of the people who come there as customers, because the guys who work at the cyber must not just turn computers on and off, but actually help out a lot of the people who come in with typing and other computer work. Again, although many people may not have the experience to use computers very efficiently yet, they compensate for it by working hard and persevering.

During my time in Ruiru I was also able to see a couple of the other projects with which OOA are involved. I won’t forget going to the rehab centre with colouring books, when not just young children but also 15 and 16-year-old boys sat down and started colouring with us—they must be incredibly bored with so little to do especially when it is not term time at school, but again it was people making do with what they had, dancing and playing with even the simplest objects to pass the time.

I was also able to travel away from Ruiru on the weekends and saw a bit of different parts of the country. I would advise anyone who volunteers with OOA to travel a bit in Kenya, as the diversity across the country is huge. Seeing some of the differences between parts of Kenya helped me to understand better some of the problems faced by people in Ruiru. Although the problems may be different, many of the root causes seem to be linked. And aside from some people who are in very dire circumstances, the majority of people across the country have one thing in common: they work hard to cope with their situation and try to improve it.

I would encourage anyone who is thinking about volunteering with Out of Afrika to seriously consider doing so. Out of Afrika is a small organisation so you will definitely not feel lost, and you will get an idea of how much can really be accomplished by a small number of dedicated people! Anyone who volunteers there will come out of it with a greater respect for the Kenyan people and a better understanding of what they face. The longer you stay, the more you will be able to contribute, but even if you only stay for a short time I think it is hard not to learn a great deal.