Almost two months ago I was in Mombasa with
the Contribute Kenya team working with them on various community projects all
located around Mombasa. The community work and life experience we made is still
quite present in the back of my head even though I am in a completely new and
different environment right now. I am currently doing my study abroad on
Reunion which is an island in the Indian Ocean. On that account I must say the
environment meaning the palms trees, beaches and Ocean isn’t such a different
environment than Mombasa after all. This blog entry is not about my adventurous
study abroad it is about my reflection on the time in Mombasa with the
Contribute Kenya team and my view on this amazing life experience.
Unlike the rest of the contribute team,
Kenya is very familiar to me because I was born and raised there. For that
reason the environment and people around me weren’t that new to me. However,
the whole community project aspect was something fairly new to me. Prior to
this 6 week endeavour I had never been part of a community project even though
such a project had been in my mind since I was 16 years old. The project that I
worked on during my stay in Mombasa was about developing and implementing an
accounting system for the Blue Bell Nursery School in Mtwapa, a town on the
outskirts of Mombasa. If I reflect on the question about how successful we were
in implementing the accounting system I can truthfully say that we managed to
implement the system very well. The approach Robin and I took in implementing
the system was to first understand the current accounting system and build a
relationship with Grace and Gideon before introducing our ideas. During the
course of the first weeks the relationship building went extremely well which
made the corporation extremely pleasant. The product that we left behind in the
end is one that I believe will make a difference for the school and simplify a
lot of procedures regarding the book keeping.
Working and living together with 10 other
honour Students also contributed greatly to the whole community project
experience. Over the course of the 6 weeks I got to know a lot of my fellow
students better and create lots of new friendships. In my opinion we started
off as a group of 11 students each working on their project and later on
transformed into a team all working together on the various projects and
helping each other out. Simply experiencing this process has given me a new
definition of what a really team
looks like and a better understanding of group dynamics.
One last thing that I would like to share
before ending this blog entry is one of the most memorable moments I
experienced in regard to the community project. A couple of weeks after we had
already left Mombasa I received an e-mail from Gideon, the person in charge of
the administration. Attached to this e-mail was a perfectly comprehensive and
transparent income statement that he had created with the accounting system
that we left behind. This e-mail showed me how sustainable our work is and the
difference we were able to make.
(written by Biko)
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