Wallingford student's report of his trip to Kenya with the Nasio Trust

Smile Mum. Everybody smiles over there,” was one of the first few things I said once I had landed back home.

Arriving back in the UK everybody seemed so much more serious. You see, in Musanda, Kenya, people make time to smile.

On arriving in this country, as a Mzungu it might have just been my skin tone that made everybody so happy to see me, and it is true there are very few white people in Kenya. However, it felt like these people were just genuinely happy to have others there – no matter who they were or what they looked like.

The lingo was easy enough to pick up on once you understood the gist, the people were refreshingly kind, the landscape was stunning but there was something which wasn’t quite right, something I struggled to understand. Although these people had very little, they were incredibly thankful for what they did have, and tried to share anything they could.

There was one instance when I was playing with one of the children, Beatrice, whilst at St Irene’s Day Care School, when she offered me a grasshopper, one of a few which she had been carrying round, and a bit of unripe fruit. The blatant thing to me was she was hungry, and quite obviously treasuring the little she could find, yet she still was there lifting her hand out to me and placing her grasshopper into mine. That’s the thing I take back the most from this trip. The people I met in Musanda and Mumias weren’t concerned with property values, but with what they could do to help somebody else.

This wasn’t the only thing though. Something that had been bugging me a few days into the visit was that they always would apologise, and more often than not for something that they couldn’t control. So whilst in conversation with Bobby, a new good friend I made there, I asked “Why does everybody apologise when they haven’t done anything wrong?”

He replied “Because a good person always feels sorry for other’s misfortunes whether they can control them or not”. I felt foolish at that point for asking such a silly question because living in England I’d gained the mind-set of always thinking “Well if that person is apologising they have done something wrong”, but the truth is you don’t have to have done something wrong to be sympathetic.

children at St. Irene’s fascinated by the guitar donated by Mrs Monaghan Another Kenyan tradition is the handshake. In the UK we say our handshake derives from showing friendship and trust from when people used to open the palm of their hands out to show that they didn’t have a weapon, and yet now it seems like a competition; the stronger the handshake the stronger the man, so to speak. Kenyans, however, shake hands much more loosely, it was a hard concept to get used to at first, but over time I realised it was better because it truly made people feel more at ease and friendly, it wasn’t a competition.

So, this is all very interesting, I hear you say, but what did you actually do? Well, where to start? At the beginning I suppose: first things first, we went on an eight hour flight from Heathrow to Nairobi. On arriving we all felt a little on edge, this was only natural we had been told we expect it.

The group of Wallingford School pupils in Kenya in February. They visited with Abingdon-based charity the Nasio Trust

After about an hour and a half between checking out at the airport and arriving at the hotel we’d done much waiting about, sitting in cars (myself, Alfie and Will in a state of near hysterics, our imaginations wandering at many points waiting to be transported). Once we had arrived at the hotel we moved into our designated rooms for the night, it was 1am Nairobi time.

I had three hours sleep that night, even though I could blame humidity or paranoia, I put it down to the ‘rubbishy’ Kenyan soap opera that was on the television. I say ‘rubbishy’, it was actually quite transfixing. We were woken up at five in the morning, I had to jump out of bed and be out of the room within five minutes, I was tired and dazed but I managed it. We narrowly made our transit flight to Kisumu. Flying with Jambo Jet was unnerving, they weirdly made a stop like a bus would to drop off passengers and pick up more at Eldoret. Nevertheless we arrived at Musanda, and the Chief’s Guesthouse for midday.

Altogether within the first 40 hours I calculated I only had three hours sleep, it was more than anything, exhilarating. Once we were there the days went quickly. In our time there we did many things – we harvested some fish, started building a new fish pond, milked a cow, started building a cow shed, played with, taught and fed the children and went on many home visits to see just what it was like to live in a situation many of these children have to go through day in and day out.

Chris, standing outside the front of his house.

Nasio Trust founder Nancy Hunt

The thing which struck us the most when we went on our home visits were the lives of Chris and his siblings. Orphaned early on Chris and his siblings had been outcast by their family who had also tried to steal their land and any possessions they had. Neighbours tried to help but only to receive threats from those relatives. At one point Chris took a year out of school at the age of 14 so he could do casual jobs just to make sure his family could eat. It was at this time that NASIO had been told about Justice, Chris’ youngest sibling, because he was so very hungry. We were so moved by this story that we decided to do something about it.

Whilst we were out there we used any money we could spare, and in fact some we couldn’t, to raise sixty thousand Kenyan Shillings, equivalent to £423. With this money NASIO was able to buy Chris and his family extra beds so that they didn’t have to share the one mattress and bed which were breaking, a stove so that they could cook, a new door, and windows, their roof was mended and painted, their walls and floors re-plastered, a table to work on, water butt, guttering, a plough ready for rainy season, seeds to plant and food to keep them going.

We knew when we signed up for this trip, that we were going to have our lives changed, but we didn’t realise just how much we could change the lives of others. Five people now live so much better off than they did before and all because of £423. It was amazing to see just how NASIO changed the lives of these children for the better. I know that I want to go back.

However, before I start to fundraise for that My primary concern will be raising awareness of what is going on there, and raising money for those children in the similar situations as Chris and his family but who haven’t yet been given enough to change their lives.

I will never forget my first trip to Kenya. It taught me to always; be friendly, be sympathetic to other people’s situations and appreciate what I have, and above all smile.

See thenasiotrust.org