Insight Trip to Kenya – Day 7

For my previous posts on this trip:

Insight Trip to Kenya – Day 1 & 2 (click here)
Insight Trip to Kenya – Day 3 (click here)
Insight Trip to Kenya – Day 4 (click here)
Insight Trip to Kenya – Day 5 (click here)
Insight Trip to Kenya – Day 6 (click here)

Day 7: the Fun Day

When I decided to go on this trip, I was asked if I would like to have Mwelu brought to the “Fun Day” where we would go on an excursion and spend time with each other.

Of course!!!

Prior to the Fun Day, when I was at Kiu, I asked Mwelu when was the last time she went to Nairobi, and she told me that it was when she was 9 years old, which was 7 years ago! I was surprised to hear that because Nairobi is only 2 hours away from Kiu, but at the same time it’s understandable and I felt very excited for her. Indeed, both of us were very looking forward to the excursion where we would then go to the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage and the Mamba Village in Nairobi.

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at the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage

Most of these young elephants in the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage were rescued from Maasai Mara National Reserve, an area of preserved savannah wilderness in southwestern Kenya. The elephants were found when they were little, usually, they were either abandoned by their mothers or that their mothers had died before these elephants were mature enough to survive on their own.

This Orphanage rescues these young elephants from the wild, looks after them until they become adult, and then release them back to the nature.

I was told that this guy, who works at the elephant orphanage, used to be a Compassion kid. After he graduated from the project, he got a job at the orphanage.

Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to chat with him on the day. I’m sure he would have an inspiring story to tell.

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It was Mwelu’s first time seeing and touching an elephant.

She said that she learnt about elephants from books, but she had never seen a real one until this day.

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at the Nairobi Mamba Village

Jenna, my group mate, also had her sponsored child, a 16-year-old girl called Selphine, travelled to Nairobi by bus for the Fun Day.

Jenna later on told me that it was Selphine’s first time being on a bus!

And! There’s more! Because Selphine lives in Western Kenya which is quite far from Nairobi, Jenna organised to have her fly back home by plane after the excursion. This means that Selphine got to be on the bus and on the plane for the very first time in her life on the same day. How exciting was that!

Selphine is one of the new friends Mwelu met during the excursion.

She also met another girl named Akiru who is the sponsored child of Christine and David, a lovely elderly couple in my group.

Because these three teenage girls are similar in age, they get along with each other so well.

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Apart from playing with the teenage girls, Mwelu also met two young boys from the “Fun Day”, one named Moki, the other named Elijah.

Moki is the sponsored child of my group mate Debbie. He and his brother Elijah live in a remote place that is even further away from Kiu. On Day 5, while the rest of the group visited the mums and bubs at the project in Kiu, Debbie and her friend Sam together with the social worker briefly departed from us and travelled to Moki’s home for a home visit.

Debbie shared with us the details of her visit later on that night. She told us that they had to drive another two hours or so from Kiu to a very remote area, where the van they were on could not drive on anymore because of the roughness of the road. The van simply could not get through the pathway, so they had no choice but to step out of the van and started walking to Moki’s home on foot.

The area was very hilly. Walking in this condition was already a challenge, not to mention that they were also carrying a 10kg gift box which contained some basic necessities such as rice, sugar, detergent, etc.  Not only that, on the way there, the social worker was bitten by some bugs and started having allergic reactions, luckily, because Debbie is a pharmacist and she had been carrying loads of drugs with her during the trip, she was able to give him some treatments immediately. He was fine after a short while.

Following a long walk which took them over an hour to complete, they finally arrived at Moki’s home. Like the rest of us, Debbie met her sponsored child Moki for the first time. She said that she was a bit surprised when she first saw him because although he’s now 13 year of age, he’s as small as a normal 8, 9 year old western kid.

During the home visit, they also met Moki’s little brother Elijah and their mother, only to find out that the boys walk the same route to school every day!

Their mother told Debbie that this long distance walk to school has been a burden to Moki because he gets exhausted every day after returning home from school. On top of that, because this family live in a very small environment and they don’t have a comfortable bed to sleep on, let alone the long walk, Moki’s not getting any quality sleep at night either, as a result, he is constantly feeling fatigued and unable to concentrate in class. He’s really struggling with his study.

Anyway, this is just a little part of Moki’s life story from what Debbie reported to us after her home visit.

From what I observed on the “Fun Day”, Moki and his brother Elijiah had a fantastic time just like the rest of us. We all indeed had so much fun on this “Fun Day” and we enjoyed every minute of our precious time with our sponsored children.

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***End of Day 7***