Another month has passed so quickly. It is December, and our time at the MCC is slowly coming to an end. That’s why we want to share everything we’ve experienced over the past few weeks.
As planned, we built a goal wall with the children. Already when cutting the boards and marking the first holes, it was clear how enthusiastic the children were about the project. Everyone wanted to saw, screw, or at least hold the level. As soon as the first element was finished, it was temporarily leaned against a tree. Then there was no stopping the excitement. The balls flew around in competition… even the adults and the more reserved children wanted to test their accuracy and had a lot of fun doing it! After the goal wall was built, we added some color to it. Both we and the children are happy with the result.
With great joy, we were able to reopen our library in these weeks. From old shelves, new, beautiful bookcases were built – with the help of many diligent children’s hands. Together, we also revised the library rules so that everyone knows how we want to treat each other and the books. With two new benches, we were able to create a cozy reading corner. In line with this, we acquired new books so that there is something for every interest.
Since all the children were on vacation and therefore had a lot of free time, the idea arose to invite all the community children to the MCC for a day. We started with a soccer tournament in the morning: the center-based boys played against the community-based boys and had an exciting game. However, the girls’ match literally fell into the water. The rain ruined our plans.
To lift everyone’s spirits, there was stick bread and smokies by the campfire. But even that was a bit of a challenge in the rain. Together, the children tried to keep the fire going – with remarkable stamina and lots of team spirit. Luckily, the weather cleared up later, and we were able to finish the day dry. In the end, everyone went home happy, tired, and with big smiles on their faces. A rainy day that still turned out to be a truly wonderful holiday day.
The beauty of traveling to unknown and distant countries is, as we find, among other things, experiencing the changing of the times firsthand. The soil, the landscape, and the smell of the air change with the rainy season, and within oneself, a feeling awakens of discovering the country once again in a completely new way. Among other things, we were able to witness how the rain lured hundreds of termites, commonly called Bauwa, from their homes in the ground into the air. The kids loved catching and collecting them, frying them with salt, and then snacking on them. We also had the pleasure of trying them—and to our surprise, the Bauwa actually tasted good.
To kick off the Christmas season here as well, we took an afternoon to bake cookies, which turned out to be a bit more to our taste. The day before, we prepared the dough with a small group – what fun they had kneading the ingredients! The next day, we baked the cookies in a completely open way – anyone who wanted could help. In the end, we had really delicious cookies, which were enjoyed in the evening along with the movie…
But not only were movies watched in the evening, karaoke was also sung! The kids love music and, along with it, singing and dancing. And you could really tell! We were once again amazed at how loud the organs of nearly 30 children can be, unbelievable!
We dedicated our last slot for a possible workshop to preparing and doing creative work with salt dough. Although it failed, the children had an absolute blast trying their hand at modeling and letting their creativity run wild. This project sparked a valuable and critically reflective moment of interaction for all of us. Since the kids were unfamiliar with salt dough, they didn’t know how to categorize our idea and saw it more as food waste – and they weren’t wrong, as we were unsure about it ourselves beforehand. It was nice to see them engage with it, but it is also very clear to us that we would not offer salt dough again.
We are grateful for the experiences we were able to have here over the two months. With the children, the people living here, and the country. We got to learn a lot—an incredible amount about Kenya and the related discussion topics. An incredible amount about social pedagogical aspects, which will certainly have a lasting impact on our daily lives as professionals in social work. But we also got to learn an incredible amount about ourselves—about our values, personal boundaries, and very individual perspectives. It wasn’t always easy, but we certainly wouldn’t want to miss those moments either.
Vanessa Vogler und Paulina Daniel
