Rafiki 2006 - report

Between the 12th and 18th August 2006 our first Rafiki Programme took place with 6 volunteers going to Magunga Primary School.

Introduction

During 2006, Suzanne, Tony and Rupert have been working on ideas for the rafiki programme for this year and following years. A successful approach to the sports coaching company, Futurepro, resulted in 2 volunteers joining the programme. So together Suzanne, David (her husband), Michael and Brett (coaches) and Vicky (family friend) travelled to Kenya on the 12th August laden with over 100 kilos of sporting equipment, generously donated by futurepro and art materials. They were met at Nairobi airport by Tony who was already in the country preparing the ground and by James, our man in Nairobi.

Programme

The idea was to work on 2 projects during the week, Soccer coaching & mini-world cup tournament and classroom painting, plus to meet all the children on the Footsteps child-sponsorship programme and check on their welfare and see how they are getting on.

Michael, Brett and David took care of the soccer and Suzanne, Vicky and James got their paint brushes out. (Tony supervised from a distance)

Soccer

As everywhere else in the world, Kenyan kids are crazy about soccer but balls usually consist of discarded plastic bags tied together with string and roughly shaped into a ball. Michael, Brett and David came prepared with 80 leather soccer balls, pumps, coloured vests to break the groups into teams, cones, pitch markers, t-shirts for coaches and whistles! Over 200 kids went through a 4 day course of training in all skills ranging from dribbling and passing to shooting and tackling. The kids were divided into sizes rather than ages: as a consequence of HIV, children with the virus are noticeably smaller than those without.

Out of a need to have better facilities, our friends from futurepro also paid for timber to build 2 sets of goal posts to make 2 pitches.

Following the 4 days of training, a mini world-cup tournament was held with children from Magunga Primary School and six surrounding schools. A junior tournament for the youngest was held on Friday morning with boys and girls of Magunga Primary School and then the serious business of the senior tournament was held in the afternoon with the boys of Magunga Primary School getting to the final of theirs and the girls winning their tournament! Scenes of delerium ensued.

Teachers and support staff at the school have been left with all the training materials required to continue the training programmes that Michael, Brett and David have started.

Classroom painting Suzanne's mission was to decorate a classroom in the footsteps cyber cafe colours and using the footstep motif. 3 new classrooms were awaiting and one was chosen for Suzanne's artistic skills to be let loose on. Having experience of painting with hands in a previous company, we had the idea to get the volunteers and kids to have their feet painted and printed onto the wall. The class was prepared with the wavy lines and footsteps logo at the mid-level of the classroom and one by one children and adults alike were ushered into the room to have their feet washed, painted, squashed to the wall, washed again and dried!

Art - sport link up Having finished the classroom by Wednesday, the artists then put their heads together to see how they could support the soccer tournament and a plan was designed to have the children paint flags that could be given to all the supporters of the different schools who were expected on the Friday. Footsteps children All the children on the Footsteps programme at that time were brought together so that they could write letters to their UK sponsors and have their photographs taken and some video footage. Ending with a safari and a good meal

It is hard to overstate how much of an impact this experience has had on the people who went. Spending a week where you are with people living in such poverty, where the weather can be so harsh, where the toilets are no better than a hole in the ground, where the roads are in such an appaling condition and where corruption is endemic can really take its toll. In Michael's diary you get a feeling for how it has touched him in a way that coaching children in the UK hasn't. Because of this it was very important that everyone in the group left on a little high.

Back in Nairobi we organised everyone to go on a day safari to the Nairobi National Park where they all spent a lovely few hours watching the wildlife which lives literally less than 20 miles away from downtown Nairobi. Then in the evening we went to the Carnivore restaurant, a tourist heaven where you can eat all the meat you like of all different kinds including such exotic things as crocodile, camel and ostrich. It's not one for the vegetarians, although even the vegetarians were not disappointed.