Forumteater

Som en del af temaet ”going public”, beskæftigede vi os det meste af syvende uge med forumteater. Det handler om, at man først spiller et kort stykke, som omhandler et aktuelt problem for publikum. Stykket indeholder en undertrykker og en undertrykt person og ender som en tragedie.

Efter første gennemspilning kommer joker-rollen ind på scenen. Jokeren skal facilitere en diskussion med publikum, der skal komme med mulige løsninger på problemet i stykket. Publikum deltager aktivt, ved blot at tage del i diskussionen, eller ved simpelthen at rejse sig op og spille med i stykket. Under anden gennemspilning vil skuespillerne så improvisere på baggrund af diskussionen mellem jokeren og publikum.

Maya som joker

Vi startede ugen med at interviewe nogle af skolepigerne på Daraja for at høre, hvilke problemer de har haft i deres liv. Vi forberedte så tre korte stykker, der blandt andet kom til at omhandle alkoholisme, hustruvold, diskrimination og angst.

Daraja-pigerne var vores deltagende publikum, vores ”spect-actors”. I begyndelsen var de lidt generte, men de lærte at forstå konceptet, og alle vores tre stykker gav gode diskussioner. Det hele endte i succes, da en af Daraja-pigerne rejste sig op i det sidste stykke og spillede en undertrykt hustru for at ændre stykkets slutning.

Pige fra Daraja (th) og Aisha (tv)

Nu er jeg ikke den store skuespiller, så dette forløb var en smule grænseoverskridende for mig. Men undervejs legede vi en masse udfordrende acting games, der virkede både som skuespiltræning og som ice breakers, så det endte med at være et ret spændende og sjovt forløb.

Masai Mara

Fredag, lørdag og søndag i slutningen af vores friuge var vi på safari i nationalparken Masai Mara. Parken er en del af Mara-Serengeti-økosystemet, der er på størrelse med Jylland. I parken er det muligt at komme tæt på vilde dyr i deres naturlige omgivelser. Det benyttede Disney sig af i 90'erne, da de søgte inspiration til Løvernes Konge.

Vi var på safari morgen, middag og eftermiddag. Krybskytteri er et stort problem, og man må derfor ikke køre i parken mellem 6:30 og 18:30, hvor man kan risikere at blive forvekslet med en krybskytte og skudt.

Hanløve

Hunløver med unger

Hunløve på jagt

Søndag stod vi op meget tidligt for at se rovdyrene jage. Vi kom desværre få øjeblikke for sent til dette scenarie, hvor en gepard lige havde nedlagt en impalahan.

Gepard og impala

Vi var ret heldige at se en leopard, da leoparder er sky og samtidig svære at spotte. I dagtimerne sover de for det meste. Forskellen mellem geparden og leoparden er, at geparden er mere adræt, hvor leoparden er mere robust bygget. Geparden har pletter, hvor leoparden har ringe, og desuden har geparden sorte tårestriber, der fungerer som et par solbriller, når den jager ude på savannen . En stor tak skal lyde til Maya for fagligt (nørdet) input gennem hele weekenden. Besøg Mayas blog: Mzunguen Vender Tilbage

Leopard 

Fra venstre: Marie, Magnus, Silja, mig og Caroline

Bøffel

Krontrane

Øregrib

Samme øregrib

Jeg fik gjort god brug af denne julegave:

Solopgang i Masai Mara

Vores lejr lå ude i skoven. I lejren befandt sig masser af grønne marekatte, som på facaden ser søde ud, men som inderst inde er nogle tyvagtige sataner. En morgen glemte vi at sætte en hængelås på en enkelt lynlås i drengeteltet, og da vi kom hjem fra vores game drive, havde aberne stjålet det meste af vores proviant (snacks).

En af de mange grønne marekatte

Fordi vi befandt os midt i en turisthøjborg var standarden for lejren ret høj. Vi boede i moderne telte med toilet og bad, og vi spiste det bedste mad, vi endnu har fået i Kenya. Ser man bort fra en ret nærgående og sociopatisk tjener/receptionist, som nægtede at servere mad for os, før vi havde gættet hele menuen, og som insisterede på, at vi skulle proppe os med mad til vi segnede, så var weekenden som helhed en stor succes.

Besøg på børnehjem og artikelskrivning

Fredag i uge syv fik vi igen lov at prøve vores evner af inden for borgerjournalistik. Vi besøgte børnehjemmet Baraka og interviewede nogle af børnene der. Vi gennemførte vores interviews i grupper, og skrev så artiklerne individuelt.

From street child to high school student

The two dorms and the dining hall of Baraka

To learn about the life of orphan children in Kenya we set out to visit  Baraka orphanage that is located in the bush a few kilometers outside Nanyuki in the Central Highlands of Kenya. Its main purpose is to help children from homes of few ressources to get an education. The orphanage houses 28 children living  there and additional 10 street children who visit on a reguar basis. Baraka consists of four seperate small buildings; the girls’ dorm, the boys’ dorm, the dining hall and the kitchen. 

We meet the 19 years old Moses Kimathi outside the boys’ dorm on a sunny Friday noon. As we follow him into the shadow, Moses begins telling us about his childhood.

In his early childhood, Moses lived with his mother, father and five siblings in Nanyuki. The father left the family when Moses was only three years old, and no one ever heard anything from him again before his death. Some years later the mother became suicidal and ran away leaving the children of the family to take care of themselves. Moses then moved in with his older brother who was now married. The brother was very rough against Moses, and one time he hit Moses so hard that his arm broke. Moses ran away to join his older sister, also married, who was running a small hotel. However, the sister, taking care of her own new family, did not have the ressources to take care of Moses.

Now left completely alone, Moses went to live on the streets of Nanyuki. His number one priority every day was to get something to eat. He would go to hotels and ask for leftovers. In the day hours he went to the village center to kill time by watching movies. At ten o’clock he would go the city market and sleep underneath the stall tables. Living on the streets he met a young boy at his own age with whom he began to evolve a friendship. The two boys started providing for each other by sharing their food and money. One day, like many other street children in Kenya, they began sniffing glue. But while Moses stopped sniffing shortly after, his friend got more and more addicted. Moses left him.

Moses Kimathi

Let down once again, Moses finaly got some real help. In the streets of Nanyuki he met pastor John of a nearby church. After being introduced to Baraka by the pastor, Moses walked on his bare feet all the way to Baraka that was then situated 25 kilometers from Nanyuki.

The first few weeks after arriving at Baraka, Moses “changed his life into a christian life”, as he says. “I was disciplined, and I was good to people. That is why they were good to me”. At Baraka he got a new “family” with one of the women working there as his “mother” whom he could always go to when facing a problem. He and some of the other children would be “siblings” that would always take extra care of each other.

While staying at Baraka, Moses went from fifth grade to eighth grade in primary school. Today he is in form four at a boarding school located at the other side of the nearby mountain, Mount Kenya. Now he only stays at Baraka during the holidays. Moses studies Chemistry, Math, Physics, History, English and Swahili. He finds these classes quite difficult but still he likes school because he is good at sports and games, which is practised a lot at the boarding school. Moses’ future dream is to be an engineer, but possibly his grades will not allow him to study engineering. Therefore he would like to take some cooking classes so that he will be able to get a job in a catering business.

The story of Moses tells us how hard the life of a kenyan street child can be. Moses’ childhood was filled with violence, addiction and neglect. But his story also tells us that you can go through it all to experience better times of love and care and to get an education.

Champions League

Til min store glæde har der indtil nu været rig mulighed for at følge med i sportens verden, og især Champions League samler virkelig folk hernede. I Nairobi så vi første runde af kvartfinalerne. Vi gik ned på den nærmeste bar, og så sad vi seks kenyanere, en ugander, tre danskere og en sydafrikaner og så Bayern München spille i Manchester. Tal lige om at være global citizens :)

Ugen efter, da kvartfinalerne skulle afgøres, var der storskærmsarrangement på vores nabohostel ved fiskerlandsbyen i Tanzania. Fremmødet talte cirka 40 mennesker, og bestod af alt fra aldrende tyske hotelejere til unge masaier i deres stammedragter.

Folk samles til Champions League i Tanzania

Pangani

Sjette uge var vores friuge, og danskernes plan for de første fem dage var at opleve swahilikultur og slappe af i kystbyen Mombasa. Men kort tid før friugen havde politiet i Mombasa stoppet en bil fyldt med sprængstoffer, ført af terrorgruppen Al-Shabaab, der med jævne mellemrum hævner Kenyas militære engagement i Somalia. Action Aid (Mellemfolkeligt Samvirkes hovedorganisation) forbød os nu at opholde os noget sted i Kenyas kystregion.

Vores flybilletter var allerede betalt, og vi fik heldigvis lov til at køre non stop fra lufthavnen i Mombasa sydpå over den tanzanianske grænse til en landsby ved stranden lidt syd for kystbyen Pangani. Her boede vi i en lille fugtig hytte med 11 meget korte senge, en masse myg og sandmider. Til gengæld var der en lækker bar og godt vejr. Vi var landet midt i en fiskerlandsby, og vi var praktisk talt de eneste gæster i hele området.

Vores naboer, fiskerlandsbyen

Der bliver læst og skrevet dagbog i barområdet

Otte af os tog dykkercertifikat på stranden, og vi kom ud at dykke ved et marinereservat ti kilometer fra kysten ved den øde sandø Maziwe, som kun kan ses ved lavvande. Det var super sjovt og hyggeligt.

Otte nybagte Open Water Divers

Den øde ø, Maziwe, ti kilometer fra Tanzanias kyst

Frokost på Maziwe mellem to dyk

Badning ved Maziwe

En enkelt dag var Mathilde, Maya, Magnus og jeg inde i Pangani, hvor man kan opleve swahilikultur. Vi gik rundt i byen nogle timer, og folk var utroligt venlige og gæstfri. Alle hilste og bød os velkommen, og vi svarede så godt vi kunne på vores gebrokne swahili. På vej hjem fra byen kørte vi på Piki Piki (motorcykler). Vejene i Tanzania er ret dårlige, så det var skide sjovt.

Maya og jeg bag på en Piki Piki

Mathilde og Magnus bag på en Piki Piki

Citizen journalism

Temaet for uge fem var “going public”, herunder ”citizen journalism”. Vi tog tilbage til Kibera for at skrive artikler fra et område, der ellers har et ret ensidigt ry, og hvis indbyggere er stigmatiserede. Anne Bro, Eddie Robert og jeg skrev nedenstående artikel.

Kiberian youth and job opportunities

Kibera is a slum area in Nairobi. With around one million residents, it is the biggest slum area in Africa. Around 50 % of all people in Kibera are unemployed. To learn about the conditions and opportunities of life as a young Kiberian, we met three young persons living in Kibera.

The 22 years old Washington Gwaah belongs to the small percentage of young employees in Kibera. He was born and raised in the slum and has also graduated from high school here. After high school, he wanted to follow his passion for designing and sewing clothes. But in Kibera, it is difficult to get a job without any kind of education. With that in mind, he applied for college to study clothing design to improve his designing skills. But finishing the designing course was not enough to get a job. It took him two years and financial support from his friends to get his dream started. He bought an old Swan sewing machine and rented a stall. He was now ready to be a clothing designer. But being a clothing designer in Kibera takes a lot of hard work.

He works from early morning to late evening. However, he doesn’t earn a lot of money. Generally, he makes 800 ksh for a pair of jeans. But 500 ksh of the 800 ksh goes to fabric material and the last 300 ksh is for rent and food. If he has enough clients, in one day he can produce 2-3 pair of jeans. This is because his sewing machine isn’t made for making jeans. The needle bar is too fragile and is made for sewing in thinner fabric than jeans fabric.

But the many hours of work and the difficult work conditions doesn’t stop him from dreaming. He dreams about becoming a big designer and having his own employees. Kibera is not involved in this dream though. He wants to move away if he gets the opportunity. “Life in Kibera is tough” he says. “Nobody likes it.”

Loreen Vihenda is a 22 years old woman living in Kibera. She has been living in Kibera for 16 years. Before living here, she used to live with her parents at Huruma estate, and afterwards she moved for settlement in Kibera.

Even though Loreen’s parents are working, she finds it very difficult to live in Kibera as a young person. She looked at the life her sister passed through before getting a job in a hotel in Nairobi. After high school, her sister had spent five years at home before getting a job. She finds this bad for her because she has to rely on her parents even for her basic needs.

By all this, Loreen has been trying to get a job so that she can help her parents pay her fees and her siblings’ fees who are still in school. Loreen thinks that life in Kibera is tough because she hasn’t been able to get a job and therefore still depends on her parents for food and shelter. This doesn’t keep her from dreaming of a good job, a comfortable life and also moving away from Kibera to a better estate for a better life.

Joseph Alphonse, aged 27, is living in a small house together with his fiancé. He is engaged in a community organisation called Pillars of Kibera that is creating and performing forum theatres in the community. In 2003 after he left high school, Joseph was one of five founders of the organisation. Joseph and some few others were trained to do thematic presentations in Kibera by Care International Kenya, a development and humanitarian organisation. Today, Pillars of Kibera has 45 members between the age of 18 and 30. The organisers and the artists get some payment for every performance that they present, but this is not enough to be able to afford paying rents and food. The life quality of the organisation members depends on how many shows they perform each month. This is why Joseph encourages the other members to do different things in addition to the organisation work and to save money for less productive times in the future.

Joseph and four other members of the organisation have a small barber shop and a beauty shop “to raise a few coins” as he says. The founding of the shops was supported by Pillars of Kibera, that donated the necessary machines for the shops and today the shops provide a certain percentage of their profit to Pillars of Kibera.

As one of the successive stories of Kibera, Joseph has a positive view on Kibera’s future. He is happy to be a Kiberian even though life can be tough sometimes. He explains how the amount of social work in Kibera has been exploding over the past 15 years. “In 1999 only five youth groups existed in Kibera. Now there are about 3000 youth groups”. Joseph believes that “everyone has a talent and something to give out, but things doesn’t work smoothly”. Today, most Kiberian children get an education but most schools of Kibera are not government schools and this means that the school certificates rarely can be used outside Kibera.

How do Joseph’s future dreams look like? He wants Pillars of Kibera to be an NGO that will be able to employ a great amount of people. Personally he dreams of being able to support himself without Pillars of Kibera and he believes his many connections in Kibera give him different opportunities. But he cannot leave the group behind. When he turns 30, he will use his opportunity to become a member of Friends of Pillars of Kibera, a supportive group of the organisation.

Joseph cannot imagine leaving Kibera either, even though he one day might be able to provide for himself without the organisation; “Maybe I will extend the size of my room, but I will stay in Kibera and give hope to other people. If I leave Kibera, how am I supposed to help people here?”

These three young Kiberians show that it is difficult to live in the slum area and that it takes hard work to get a job, but they have proven it possible to get an education, to open a business and to start an organisation. Because of the hard conditions in Kibera, most of the young residents dream about leaving Kibera, but there are also people like Joseph, who are willing to stay in Kibera and create opportunities for young people in the area.

Playing with local kids

I programmet for torsdag i uge to stod der, at vi skulle hygge os og have det sjovt. James (også kaldet Dik-Dik), som er vores altmuligmand på Daraja, havde inviteret børn fra lokalområdet til at møde til to timers leg på Darajas sportsplads. Fremmødet talte 50 børn. Der blev blandt andet sjippet, spillet rundbold og leget sanglege.

En fodboldkamp skulle vi selvfølgelig også have; Global Citizen Course mod de lokale børn. Der blev gået hårdt til stålet, og de lokale drenge var lynhurtige, selvom mange af dem spillede med bare tæer.

Kampen endte 4-4, så vi krævede en omkamp ugen efter, da det nyligt ankomne hold af global volunteers (16 danskere, der skal bo en måned på platformen) havde skemalagt leg med børnene. Her vandt vi stensikkert 4-2.

Mount Longonot National Park

Lørdag i fjerde uge tog danskerne på vandre-/klatretur på Mount Longonot, som er et kæmpe vulkankrater, der ligger halvanden times kørsel uden for Nairobi. Det tog en times tid at gå den, til tider, meget stejle vej op på vulkanen. Derfra tog det fire timer at gå hele vejen rundt om krateret, og til sidst en halv times kontrolleret løbetur ned igen.

Der var 634 højdemeter fra bunden til det højeste punkt på vulkanen. Turen var ret hård, men udsigten deroppefra var super flot.

Bunden af vulkanen er dækket af tæt skov, hvori zebraer, giraffer og bøfler lever. Trods hårde anstrengelser spottede vi desværre ingen af dyrene.