William is our driver. He picked us up as two weary travellers from a makeshift Nairobi airport (after the big fire of last month) and has gently guided us along the half-life streets of Nairobi (Definitely watch the film Nairobi Half Life!)
Today was another day with William. Except it wasn’t just another day, it was a snap shot of bigger world that William inhabits and is expanding into.
“So, tell us about the training you did on Sunday William” We asked as we headed off this morning. He began, in full joy and enthusiasm.
On our second day with William, after arriving in Kenya, he took us to check out the training venue for teaching 150 people from life’s most challenging backgrounds. After sorting things out he drove us home, but on our way we just had this sudden thought; if William was going to have to crisscross Nairobi traffic each morning and return us to Karen each evening, then why not invite him to sit in on the training for the 3 days. Who knows, he may get something out of it. So we invited him and he leapt at the opportunity. He sat on the front row for 3 days, pen in hand and each evening on the way home he took the opportunity to have an extra tutorial with the teachers.
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| Jane with her new drum |
The course finished on Friday afternoon. On Sunday we had a text message.
”I’ve just trained 25 people in Day 1’s teaching. They are hungry for more so I’m going to teach them every Sunday”.
So today he was telling us what happened at last Sundays second session. He said
“I started by asking everyone what new stories they had written in their lives since I taught them last time. Everyone had a story! Everyone!”
He then proceeded to tell us about people starting businesses, being reconciled with their wives, setting up a poultry rearing projects and so he continued until we rounded the bend on the Nairobi – Navaisha road where suddenly you break out on to the ridge of the Great Rift Valley. Breathtaking is the only word for it. Words cannot describe. Think of looking down from a mountaintop onto those vast plains seen in Disney’s Lion King and you get the flavor. We stopped to take in our breath, to be inspired. A little stall holder was charming Jane into buying a drum – she loves drumming, and so it was an easy sell. He told us we were the first people to stop that day. He told us how, since the Westgate terrorist attack, business has simply died and with it their income. We drove on.
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| Jane, William & children from the orphanage |
“Over there is the school I support”
'Over there' was a desert, a dustbowl, a dirt track, a route for more Maasi herd boys.
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| The school rabbit hutch! |
“It’s only five minutes” he replied with obvious pride and joy that we were going to see it.
It was an African five minutes. After twenty minutes navigating the dust bowl and deep ruts and bumps we came to a site with children playing outside. He pulls up at the gate and we drive to the buildings. The children come over to see who we are and William makes the introductions. Dusty school clothes and worn out shoes. It is hard to describe these experiences. It is a school with 68 orphans. Remember the violence around the 2007 elections in Kenya? Remember the massacres? Remember the church that was torched and many many
people being burnt to death? Well, these are the orphans of that nightmare. These are the children who watched their parents die.
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| The children show Trevor & William their garden |
This school, set up by a Christian evangelist, is now their life, their hope and their future. The school is so basic, some buildings looking reasonable on the outside sleep 37 of the boys under threadbare mosquito bed nets, other parts are unfinished because there is no more money.
They want to be sustainable and yet their gardens are scrawny, the rabbit hutch has more repairs on it than original bits of wood. The kitchen is full of lunch being prepared on pots of firewood cut down from trees that Kenya cannot afford to lose.
William is cross with them. William got involved in this school because it turns out that our very own driver taught himself about biomass fuel and managed to persuade a government and donor to install one in this school. He is frustrated because it isn’t working properly. His motivation for installing it is that the cow manure produces gas, which is piped to the kitchen to cook the food on gas, so that they will stop cutting down trees. He shows them what to do to get it working again and then shows it to us, now in action. Amazing. Cow dung = cooking for children = protect the environment.
We are now running late so we get back on the road to Naivasha. We arrive at Finlay’s, Kenya’s top exporter of fresh flowers and produce. We head to their football pitch. On the pitch is now set up the tent we used to train the 150 people – one of which was William – a few weeks ago. We check out the site, work out how to run key outdoors exercises because tomorrow we start another three days training of Leadership for Hope.
William waits patiently for us. I tell Purity, a wonderful lady we trained as a trainer in Nairobi a few weeks ago, that our driver is already teaching 25 people a week, has arranged to do a 3 day event with over 50 other people and has set himself the target of training 200 by Christmas. William wasn’t on the Train The Trainer programme. William was just meant to be the driver, but William is already changing his world. Purity is impressed and goes over to William and tells him so. He tells her excitedly of what he is seeing happen in the lives of those he teaches and then he says these words
“This training is worth training”
We have been searching every day since arriving for great Trainers we can use in Africa. Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong place. Maybe the answer lies in emerging leaders like William. |
| Relaxing at Lake Naivasha |
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