The Destination
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Nairobi, Kenya
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The Journey
Far away from Home
It could of been my anxiety of arriving in a country that I have never been to before mixed with all the overwhelming emotions attached to being an African American in an African country for the first time, but when I arrived in Nairobi I immediately noticed that something was different. After the 19 hour flight I was exhausted and wanted very much to just say “I made it” and close my eyes to go to sleep.
However I couldn't close my eyes because they kept darting around taking in my new surroundings. Posters of Obama 20ft tall hung from the side of the building. An eclectic mix of cultures and ethnicities I had never seen before walked back and forth around the baggage claim. Perhaps the biggest noticeable difference was the heavily armed soldiers stationed all around the airport. It definitely wasn’t Kansas anymore. I was greeted by my home stay family at the gate George and Patricia Ndiritu who immediately treated me as if I was a long lost cousin. As we drove the unmarked dirt roads lit by nothing but the cars headlights; we talked politics, philosophy and about Kenya’s rich tribal history. By the end of my trip I began to realize that I was right to feel that there was something different about Kenya when I first landed. Kenya in many ways is a testament to human resilience. The lack of first world infrastructure has created poverty, but Kenyans refuse to feel poor. Their compassion for each other guides their ambitions, making them cheerful, laid back and genuinely contented. A Kenyan friend once told me “In America you have to wear fake smiles everywhere because everyone is always pretending to be happy, we don’t have to do that here.”
However I couldn't close my eyes because they kept darting around taking in my new surroundings. Posters of Obama 20ft tall hung from the side of the building. An eclectic mix of cultures and ethnicities I had never seen before walked back and forth around the baggage claim. Perhaps the biggest noticeable difference was the heavily armed soldiers stationed all around the airport. It definitely wasn’t Kansas anymore. I was greeted by my home stay family at the gate George and Patricia Ndiritu who immediately treated me as if I was a long lost cousin. As we drove the unmarked dirt roads lit by nothing but the cars headlights; we talked politics, philosophy and about Kenya’s rich tribal history. By the end of my trip I began to realize that I was right to feel that there was something different about Kenya when I first landed. Kenya in many ways is a testament to human resilience. The lack of first world infrastructure has created poverty, but Kenyans refuse to feel poor. Their compassion for each other guides their ambitions, making them cheerful, laid back and genuinely contented. A Kenyan friend once told me “In America you have to wear fake smiles everywhere because everyone is always pretending to be happy, we don’t have to do that here.”
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The Slums
Despite the romantic feelings I still have about my stay in Nairobi there are still some very real issues facing the people who live there. About 60 percent of the Kenyans living in Nairobi live in the slums. That is about 2.5 million people living on about 269 square miles of land. I worked mostly in Mathare which is a collection of slums built around the Nairobi river. The level of filth is unimaginable. Over half a million Kenyans live within 3 square miles. Weaving through the 6x8 shacks made of dirt and old tin feels more like walking through a landfill than a neighborhood. In every corner there are people surfing the best they know how without water, electricity, or even public restrooms. The result is the Nairobi river has become a toxic sludge filled with trash and disease. Many inhabitants of the slums will not live to see adulthood and those that due will have a 1 and 3 chance of contracting HIV when they do. Recently the Kenyan government has taken up an initiative to clean up the slums and decrease crime using the youth in the area. The initiative is called NYS and employs many young adults from the slums in hopes of not only rebuilding the slums but the morale of the Kenyan millennial generation. To learn more about NYS click here. |
The Primary school
Some of my work in Nairobi consisted of teaching in Mathare at the Primary school. Brilliant Academy was created to give children in Mathare a chance at education. Using minimal faculty and supplies they manage to teach hundreds of students english, math and the arts. In many class situations there is only one text book for the entire class (usually outdated). In the Kenyan way somehow they manage to maximize minimal resources into a formal education. I along with 3 other youth volunteers taught music dance and drama 1-2 times a week. Because we could only fit so many students in one room the principal hand picked what he thought were the most interested/art inclined students and we ended up with about 25 6-11 year olds. As an american It was hard to adjust to the Kenyan way of teaching. We would switch on and off between the volunteers (only two of us were foreign). First Dance then Drama then music. We had about 15-20 minutes each to do an activity and then we had to move on. I decided to do a little vocal exercise and then an activity that made use of the imagination. We practice each vowel at varying levels and then would interact with something invisible. The students favorite was lifting an enormous boulder as a class above our heads and letting it drop. Having worked in both the American and Kenyan educations systems, I noticed an eagerness to learn and be involved in school when it is seen as a privilege or opportunity that is not there amongst many American students. It may have something to do with the lack of formality and class structure that is needed to teach children in a highly “organized” society. Either way I was overwhelmed to see students in grade school in a country very different from our own take pleasure in the same types of theater games I used to play as a child in Ohio.
Some of my work in Nairobi consisted of teaching in Mathare at the Primary school. Brilliant Academy was created to give children in Mathare a chance at education. Using minimal faculty and supplies they manage to teach hundreds of students english, math and the arts. In many class situations there is only one text book for the entire class (usually outdated). In the Kenyan way somehow they manage to maximize minimal resources into a formal education. I along with 3 other youth volunteers taught music dance and drama 1-2 times a week. Because we could only fit so many students in one room the principal hand picked what he thought were the most interested/art inclined students and we ended up with about 25 6-11 year olds. As an american It was hard to adjust to the Kenyan way of teaching. We would switch on and off between the volunteers (only two of us were foreign). First Dance then Drama then music. We had about 15-20 minutes each to do an activity and then we had to move on. I decided to do a little vocal exercise and then an activity that made use of the imagination. We practice each vowel at varying levels and then would interact with something invisible. The students favorite was lifting an enormous boulder as a class above our heads and letting it drop. Having worked in both the American and Kenyan educations systems, I noticed an eagerness to learn and be involved in school when it is seen as a privilege or opportunity that is not there amongst many American students. It may have something to do with the lack of formality and class structure that is needed to teach children in a highly “organized” society. Either way I was overwhelmed to see students in grade school in a country very different from our own take pleasure in the same types of theater games I used to play as a child in Ohio.
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The Orphanage
One of the most important aspects of my trip and biggest life changing moments was my volunteer visits to the Good Samaritan Orphanage. In a building that would be long condemned in America an elderly woman has taken it upon herself to take in lost and abandoned children. Dozens of children, newborn to adolescent, run through the courtyard playing with a few toys donated by people of the community and trash they find on the ground (their favorite toy being a leftover plastic water bottle). There are several volunteers who help, most of which were once orphans themselves. |
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I could tell right away the children loved me, mostly by the way they called me “Obama” or “Muzungu” which means white or westernized. The rest is no different then walking into a preschool. Children reaching for high fives while others hang from your calf. The Good Samaritan was in repair from a recent fire, luckily in which no life was lost. The Orphanage is business as usual even with heavy tools and contraction workers working over head. We are currently working on organizing a relief fund for the orphanage because even when the repairs are done it is still a very dangerous place to raise children. I will update you on how to donate once all the logistics have been worked out.
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The secondary school
Across the street from Mathare, in a neighborhood named Eastleigh, is an mostly vacated stone apartment building. Tucked out of the way against the cinderblock wall, separating the citizens residential area and the soldiers residential area, is a small high school. With less than 5 teachers and less than 100 students it was the perfect place to bring Art education. The group who I partnered with is VOCAL or “Voices Of Change All Over” which is a network of young performers and educators who spread the arts throughout different parts of Kenya. This Organization was founded by George Ndiritu and Antony Mwas and focuses on developing young performers to achieve higher levels of success in their art. The first day at the Highschool we held auditions to condense the group down to the most committed to learning about theater. Each student was to present a song, dance or monologue and then talk to us about their ambitions as an artist. We ended up with 25 really talented students for our two week acting workshop. I had the honor of leading the workshop and organizing the curriculum so I decided rather than devising a piece as VOCAL usually does, I wanted to focus on teaching some key acting elements that the students could use to improve their overall stage performance. |
Next we did a series of movement exercises that focused on speed and levels. I wanted to get them comfortable playing and having fun as an ensemble but also thinking about tempo and 3 dimensional space.
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After that we added in form. The goal was to push yourself out of your comfort zone. When I said freeze they had to freeze in a fully body gesture. It was at this point that I could clearly see who the shy students were and who was willing to be more vulnerable around their friends.
The next exercise brought in the idea of atmosphere. This is a concept created by Micheal Chekov in which you endow a space with a certain quality or atmosphere. We started with simple qualities like hot/cold and slowly worked our way towards more abstract qualities like love and death.
The next addition was text and contact. Keeping the form of the exercise the students paces around the space but upon eye contact had to greet one another keeping the quality of the atmosphere intact. gradually I would throw in something like a change of tempo or tell them to find a moment to make a grand gesture while keeping it in the world. At this point we had crossed into a more advance exercise but surprisingly the students were able to not only grasp the concepts but excel with them.
Lastly we put everything together and crafted improvisations that used all aspects in some form. I was very impressed with the level of commitment and attention the students gave the improv. They actually like the class so much that they requested on more day to hang out with us before we ended the workshop. We ended up meeting them around lunch a couple days before our departure and taught them a few American theater games that they really seemed to enjoy. They also taught us a few games as well. My hope is to go back before the majority of them graduate and do another lesson, this time adding written text to the mix.
The Students
Working with these students has been the the opportunity of the lifetime so I wanted to allow them the opportunity to meet you. below are the students I worked with over the summer introducing themselves to you. We hope to continue bringing this type of training and opportunity to students like these so they can continue to grow and thrive as artists.
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ContactIf you are interested in learning more or would like to donate please contact me at [email protected]
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