Where this all started:
http://lwalacommunityalliance.org/
Go to the site, watch the documentary, give your dollars if you feel compelled; the story is beautiful.
It then starts with the project, which was really all thanks to some incredible professors at the Gillings School of Pubic Health and a really fascinating Point-of-use water treatment lab I'm working in.
It wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/teddy-warria/18/855/7a1
It also starts here: http://www.kenyarayofhope.com/shimbahills.html
I think it started somewhere before that though, really.
I'm leaving around the 3rd week in May, spending 9-12 weeks in Kenya. I'm hoping to raft down the Nile or see Kilimanjaro, and definitely make it back to Shimba Hills to see the kids who taught me Furaha.
A lot of criticism about the education in developing countries is based on the idea that teachers essentially shove information, repeatedly, at the kids. Critics say that children aren't taught analytical skills but rather just to spit back out the things they've heard over and over again. I saw this in the preschool at Ray of Hope, where the kids could recite numbers 1-100, in order, in English (and Swahili and their mother tongue), but when the teacher would point to a random number on the board, not a single child could identify that foreign symbol. Eventually though, they'd learn...
Anyways, in a sense, I feel like that's how the kids at Shimba Hills taught me Furaha. We sang and danced and smiled and laughed, because we were having fun and because that's how they live every moment. Furaha is different than happiness or having fun; it's joy, it's contagious, it's an effortless attitude. When I got home from that first trip (I'm not sure my parents would have given me the ok to go if they knew it would be the first of many) I had a view of Kenya that was so different from anything I'd read in a book or seen in a movie. All I could think of was JOY. When I went back the following summer, the kids had given me the nickname Furaha. Geez, how humbling; the people that I saw as the embodiment of a word as beautiful as joy, and they had seen that in me? On rainy/cold days when I'm in a terrible mood or stressed with schoolwork I think of that and almost laugh.
OKAY, so maybe I'm over-analyzing the situation, but it's a story and a feeling that I try not to forget, every day. Needless to say, I forget it a lot. So when I say I'm finding Furaha, I don't exacly know what that means. I know I'm excited to get back to that place where it seems to be overflowing. And I really hope that while I'm there I can bring the people I meet a little more joy, cleaner water, and some understanding of sanitation. Thats where I wonder how this can possibly be the beginning... implying that it's starting!
I feel completely unprepared and inadequate. 2 months ago I was worried because I had no sense of where I was going with my life. I don't presume that I've found the answer, but rather just in the moment where I was growing tired of worrying, and accepting that my future is out of my hands, I found out about this internship. Excitement. Apply. Worry. Wait. Worry. CARTWHEEL. Life is such a joke sometimes. I do believe in something greater...and I think that God or something/someone out there must be laughing about all of this and laughing about the length of this blog and laughing about my inability to construct sentences.
Life is so beautiful and unexpected and uncontrollable and I love it. I love it all the more because it is beautiful without my doing. And I feel so grateful that I've been given the experiences to realize that.
What I came here to say: I think LCA is doing really great work and I'm going to try to learn as much as possible in the next two months so that I can go and teach the people I'll work with exactly what they've said they want to learn... Water purification and sanitation! I know I'll learn a lot, and have a lot of fun along the way. : ) And find some Furaha. And hopefully share some too.
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Kenya. It's been hard to sleep.
