replacing broken windows
Nicholas
and Mike Halley repairing a wash station
Given
my keen interest in the welfare of vulnerable young people, I was keen to seize
the opportunity to visit a Rotary led project in Nairobi that provides homes
and education for children living with HIV/AIDS. Like most people, having
agreed so readily to tag along with a team of Rotarians from Scotland, I was
slightly apprehensive about what I had let myself in for.
I
had expected the worst, certainly in terms of the travel, food and
accommodation, and was largely pleasantly surprised; once I got used to rice
and beans for every meal, eco-friendly toilets (don’t ask!) and electricity and
water for just a few hours each day. We were split up into two working
parties, each taking turns at the home itself and then spending time at a
village community around 4 hours drive away.
The
village consists of 100 houses, divided into clusters of four properties, in
each of which 10 children of mixed ages live with two surrogate ‘grannies’.
In
addition to the funds we had raised to donate towards the running costs, plus
the two large suitcases full of clothing we were instructed to bring with us,
our key role was to carry out any number of maintenance tasks from a list
provided to us. This proved to be quite a challenge as we were in the main
people of a certain age and with no specific skills, especially when it came to
metal working, plumbing, plastering and glazing.
We
were quickly able to establish that we were not capable of demolishing and
rebuilding a garage in the time we had there, so settled down to fixing the
communal wash sinks and re-glazing the many broken windows. The only problem
was that none of the materials were to hand. Ordering and having them delivered
took the best part of two days leaving us not much time to get down to work.
As
someone who is out and about from first thing in the morning until late at
night I found the hanging around the most tiring of all, especially when the
temperatures were hovering around 30’C.
On
mentioning that I was coming out here a friend implied rather disparagingly that
this ‘charity tourism’ was self-indulgent, satisfying our own egos, and that
rather than going out to satisfy our own feel-good factor we should just send
the money over.
This
gave me pause for thought but on reflection I realised that he was quite wrong.
One
of the key benefits of visiting such projects is in being able to witness
first-hand the valuable work that is being done, learning about other cultures,
realising that others do not enjoy the same standard of life as us, and most
importantly, the opportunity to interact and become involved with those we have
come to help. Handing over money is not quite as simple as it sounds. To be
perfectly frank, from my own exasperating experience, the jobs would just not
get done at all. What bothers me more though, is that despite the lack of money
and resources, what we are not doing is encouraging the people who live in
these communities to take on ownership of their own living environment.
In
the case of Nyumbani, as funding streams become ever more difficult, they are
making a real effort to become self-sustainable by investing in projects to
bring in much needed income.
There
are no simple answers to the multitude of problems that exist in the world, but
I am more convinced than ever that doing something practical is of far more
value than just putting my hand in my pocket.
Perhaps
our own leaders, in their dealings with foreign governments, should be paying
more attention to how they are investing their resources in finding solutions
to their own problems rather than relying on outside aid.
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