Now, two months after my return from Kenya, I
finally want to reflect about my time there and which impact it had to my life.
There are two major points that became obvious
to me. The first point is facing problems and solutions. Now I am doing my
internship in Berlin. It is an internship at an IT company and I have
absolutely no clue about computers and technical devices in general. Perceived,
the company launches a new product every week, so I have to fight with new
technical terms every day. Usually, I would lose patience at one point and just
do my work in a way that is hardly sufficient. It would be a real problem for
me to constantly work on something unknown until I am able to understand the
topic.
In Kenya I saw an obvious contrast how people face problems compared to
Europeans. We, as Europeans, always have a problem. When the train is one minute
late or the computer does not work the way how we want it to work, we directly
have a serious problem. In Kenya I saw people who have real problems like that
they do not know how to feed their children in the evening or that teachers
have to teach children in classrooms without electricity and holes in the
rooftop. Just imagine a teacher at Hanze who should teach a class without power
point slides. It would directly be a major problem. In Kenya I never saw
someone complaining. People seem to live according to the motto: „I do not have
problems, I just have solutions!“. This
is something I want to keep in mind and I also want to live according to that
motto. I already noticed some progress. My start in Berlin was also not easy. I
left many of my friends in Groningen and I have never lived in such a big city
before. So, always when I start complaining I remind myself that I only want to
focus on solutions instead of problems from now on. I have to admit that this
philosophy makes my daily life easier. Especially at work with technical
devices.
The second point is very touching to me and
showed me something about the importance of education. We visited the Blue Bell
Nursery School together with Salim, a Rescue Diver from the Mombasa Fire
Brigade. I was standing at the schoolyard looking at the buildings that were
built how I built tree houses when I was 14. I was so impressed how the people
managed to took their fate in their own hands and built such a school out of
nothing. In Kenya it is not like in Europe that money will be spent to built
schools. I heard from Condor representatives with how few resources they did it
at Blue Bell, so my appreciation doubled.
While standing at the schoolyard a
little boy came to me and just took my hand without saying anything. He was
quite small, much smaller than the other children running around the
schoolyard. He was maybe around 3 years old. From one second to another 20
children ran up to me, hugging me and trying to pull me down. I had a lot of
fun, but I also got worried about the little boy who was holding my hand. The
other children were way larger than him so I was afraid that they would hurt
him by mistake. So I was looking around and could not see him and I tried to
calm the other kids down, but if you start playing with a mob of Kenyan
children, they will never stop. Then, I was looking down directly in front of
me. The little boy was standing directly in front of me. Smiling. Laughing. And
now holding BOTH of my hands. He was so small, but he managed to establish himself against all the other
children who were way older and stronger than him.
This moment was very touching for me because I
saw my own life in the eyes of this little boy. I was born in a slum of
Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. In the days after my birth my future was
already clear. I would never have an education and a good job. It was not even
clear if I would live for more than 10 years. I had the luck of getting adopted by
a wonderful family who took care of me and gave me the chance of education. In
this moment I realized how important schools like Blue Bell are in a country like
Kenya, where many people even cannot read or write. I am sitting here right now
and writing a blog about my experiences in Kenya. My voice was getting heard.
Schools like Blue Bell give children, like the little boy who held my hand, the
chance to start learning when they are very young. So Blue Bell gives the
little boy the opportunity that his voice will be heard, too.
(written by Brian)
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