Short…I Hope

This needs to be short coz I need to sleep (its 10:30 pm) but knowing me…well that's always difficult.

Today was amazing. A while back I got an email from World magazine. Apparently someone had seen my article in World and wrote them asking for my email address. World being ever efficient forwarded the email to me for my response. The email intrigued me so I replied. It was from a lady here in Kenya, looking for a journalist to talk at a high school in a "slum" area. I certainly was flattered since I haven't been a "real" journalist very long and personally don't feel quite qualified to speak as a journalist just yet. But it was an offer and opportunity I just couldn't resist.

So today I visited a part of Nairobi I've never been to and found that there are informal settlement areas in places I didn't know they existed. (One interesting little God twist to this story – the school was started as a ministry of a church called Karura Community Chapel and during Msafara the pastor from this church, Pastor Ngari, headed up the Community Networking department – read the department in the office across the hall from the Media department office – interesting huh).

The students (form 3 – 11^th grade) were amazing. They welcomed me with "open arms" and tons of questions. I don't think I've ever heard so many questions from a group of Kenyan students. I shared with them for an hour and a half and they were still asking questions when the time was up. It extra special to me because I have sat in a classroom similar to theirs and I understand their education system, the struggles and challenges and could even chat with them in Swahili. I definitely had missed playing the role of teacher (its been almost one year since I was last addressed as Mwalimu – teacher).

After sharing with the form 3 class, I spoke with the Journalism club – about 30 students. They are new and really didn't have a vision or goal so I challenged them to decide what they envision for their club. I gave them some tips on writing stories and some ideas for ways that they could do a small school/community publication. I also gave them some thoughts on activities they can do to improve their journalism skills – things like analyzing newspaper articles, interview each other and writing a report based on the interview, writing about things they would like to see change in their community and ideas of how to implement that change.

Honestly I can't remember the last time I felt that fulfilled at the end of the day (the day ended with me standing out in the rain for a while and finally having my dad come pick me up coz there was a huge traffic jam and literally no public transport vehicles J ). Actually I do remember the last time – when World published my story about Pastor Simon Waiti. I've acted upon a part of my dream that I thought would be a far in the future deal – helping the voiceless find their voice through writing and journalism.

An addition to this story (which is by the way getting way too long) is that on Wednesday I was talking with Ken (just get used to his name – look at the pictures below if you want to know what he looks like – coz I have a feeling he will play a big role in many of my future blogs). He was telling me about training some youths in Kibera in videoing and how he wanted to go back and do it some more. So I shared with him that I would like to do something similar with writing but sometime in the future and he responded. "why the future, why not now?" Interesting conversation especially considering that it was only two days ago – a God thing? I think maybe. I have already suggested to him that we team up – he can teach about video and photography (and I can help some) and I can teach about writing (and maybe he can help some because he is also an excellent writer). I think it is a huge need in cultures like Kenya where young people have little voice and few means to express themselves. It means that we are raising young people who when they get older still can't find their voice and still don't know how to express themselves. Can't we do something to change that?

By the way if you would like to better understand what I'm talking about, check out the movie Freedom Writers. Although many of the details are very different than what I'm talking about, in many ways that movie has inspired me and explains the heart of what I'm talking about.

Well I wish I could post some pictures but sadly I didn't take any – how could I miss an opportunity like that???