5 June 2015
Tough day for me here at Nakuru for many reasons.
In the morning we returned to the new site of St.Trizah’s School to continue the construction of the new classroom. Now that the walls and roof are complete, I helped to level out the soil of the floor ready to be cemented hopefully tomorrow. As the site is on a hill, this was a tough but fulfilling job.
After lunch, we visited the Walk In Centre. This is a school that was set up 12 years ago to help educate the children of Nakuru who lived at ‘The Dump’. The Dump is where dumpsters leave the rubbish that they have collected throughout Nakuru.
There are approximately 70 families that live at The Dump. They get 13p for every kilogram of bottles that they find and 26p for every kilogram of steel. Words can not describe how horrific and upsetting this place is.
We saw men, women and children search through so much rubbish, God knows how many diseases they could catch. One man has lived there for 50 years! When I thought that I had seen poverty at its lowest, this takes it to a different level.
We saw the residents tents and unfortunately one had recently caught on fire, where one man lost his life. So sad.
It’s not only people who are searching through the rubbish. Animals such as pigs, chickens, dogs and stalks are just a few that are scavenging for food.
The Walk In Centre is a school that allows those children to leave The Dump and get a full time education. Over 400 children attend now. A tremendous achievement. I met Eric, who is about to start his 3rd year at University. He attended the school in its first year of opening. It just shows what this school can do.
As we headed to the bus to come home, a number of children arrived, so I handed out a lot of pencils. A pencil is an important instrument for an education. Just read ‘A Promise of a Pencil’, a fantastic book that details one mans vision to build a number of schools in deprived countries.
Standing just next to our bus were three men on motorcycles listening to music. The first song that they played was ‘You Are Not Alone’ by Michael Jackson. Such an appropriate song for this trip. The chorus goes: “You are not alone, I am here with you, though we’re far apart, you’re always in my heart”. Perfect.
It’s our last full day in Nakuru tomorrow.