Study tour to Nairobi – January 2018

UN

9 Swedish participants and 7 actors from the My Life group Nairobi joined the guided tour of the UN.

Dandora

Teachers from Farsta school in Stockholm Sweden visited Rosbella school in Dandora, Nairobi.

Christmas Party at the YMCA for 400 people

TEXT: ANNA-LEE JANSÉN

Christmas party in the sunshine!

On Saturday, January 20, there was a big Christmas party at the YMCA in Nairobi. 300 children (and some adults) from the slum area of ​​Dandora were invited – close to 400 people came! This created both confusion and slight panic, but the organizers of the Christmas party together with the kitchen staff at the YMCA managed to calm the whole thing down, and thankfully no one went without food.

Early in the morning, volunteers and organizers from the Globe Tree gathered at the YMCA to prepare the party. 500 balloons were to be inflated to decorate the “party room”, i.e. the large lawn. Chairs were polished off and set up in a crescent shape facing the stage, where we would later enjoy performances, music and dancing.

By the time the clock started to approach 10, we had luckily finished the preparations, but it was on the hair (inflating 500 balloons is more time consuming than you might think)! The buses started to arrive just in time, and out streamed expectant children who had dressed up in their finest clothes in honor of the day. The children first went down towards the party area in neat, fine lines… but as soon as they saw the balloons and heard the music, all order disappeared and they ran down laughing, picked up balloons and started dancing.

A DJ was playing the latest music that all the kids seemed to know, and some ten-year-old girls were showing me the dance steps to the song that was playing. They laughed heartily as I clattered to the steps, and then they corrected me: “Look at me carefully! Do exactly as I do! Good! …Now it’s freestyle, so now you get to do whatever moves you want.”

Now followed a variety of activities – there was something for everyone. Those who wanted to jump rope or walk on can stilts did. Some ran off and played soccer, and some found car tires that they rolled back and forth with sticks.
Our more artistic volunteers did face paintings on the children, which was very much appreciated by both the smallest children and the slightly older teenagers. Most popular were perhaps the balloon figures that some of the teachers from Farsta elementary school made. Luckily, they had inflated the balloons beforehand, and “just” needed to fold them into different animals while the children waited eagerly. The teachers were completely surrounded by the children who shouted “I’m in, I’m in!”. Everyone wanted a balloon!

At one o’clock it was time for lunch. Very first, the smallest children got food, and there were generous portions: meat stew, chicken, rice, ugali and vegetables, and a soft drink was served with it. The lunch queue was filling up all the time and in the end we discovered to our horror that neither the food nor the soft drinks would be enough for everyone in the queue. After some trickery and knee-jerk trolling, the organizers together with the kitchen staff at the YMCA managed to solve the whole thing. All’s well that ends well, and everyone got their food and drink. Afterwards it turned out that there had been close to a hundred more people than the party was planned for, so it was amazing that they managed to pull it all off.

After lunch, the party continued down on the lawn. A band consisting of some young girls performed their own rap songs, and they were really professional. The audience loved them!