I'm Going Around The World!: The humbling trip to Saikeri

After checking out the school, church and our tiny little village we were off to Saikeri. The day before at orientation these two girls invited us to come to Saikeri and play futbol with some kids there. Realizing we had no plans for the entire weekend we agreed. Saikeri is about a 30 minute motorbike ride from where we are in Olmaroroi. We organized some motorbikes to take us. They call these motorbike taxi's Bota Bota's. Lots of fun!

See the lake?

Arrival into Saikeri.

I played football with these girls for about 2 hours. Had a blast and got so filthy my legs were covered in orange dirt!

Also, playing soccer really got me used to my new name Tobiko. I bet I heard it 250 times. Both sides of girls wanted me to switch teams non stop haha. "TOBIKO! TOBIKO!" The boys were not allowed to play.

This is also where I realized it is pretty difficult to tell the difference in some of the boys and girls. All have shaved heads and it is a challenge. They have to shave their heads by the way, school requirement. A health and hygiene thing.

After football Katie and Marie (the two volunteers who invited us) wanted us to watch the practice presentation these girls are doing for a ton of volunteers to raise money for their boarding school.

Listening to them speak was shocking. They explained they have really long walks to school and occasionally there are guys that hide and try to attack and rape them. They live in fear because of this. HIV, Aids and sex education is not provided growing up. Girls here also are expected to do almost all the housework when they are home so they have no time to study and are exhausted in school. They also eat very little. Another huge problem is if a family is poor they will send their boys to high school before the girls.

And on and on and on. The issues are real and hit my heart hard. Really hard. You hear about the problems in Africa but here it is right in front of me now and here are the people it affects. Even in my village Nayia does all the cooking and told me she has no idea if she will be able to go to high school. She is scared her family won't afford it. plus she has two brothers her same age so they will send them first. She outperforms them in school and every night studies! High school is around $400-$450 USD a year!! How can she pay that if her father doesn't?

Listening to these girls is when I got a huge impression I need to help sponsor Nayia so she can go to high school. Sometimes you get that feeling to take action and that's what I'm going to do. I'm excited to ask her if I can help.

Singing and dancing first and then explaining to us the huge problems they face everyday.

We are in a building volunteers have been trying to raise money to turn into a boarding school for these girls so they don't have to make the long long walks to and from school everyday. The fear of rape is real and it is heart breaking.

This is where I learned that in Kenya and Africa there are literally ENDLESS things to be done for these people. It is so humbling. How can you not be so grateful for America?

I love the two volunteers here. These two are carrying on what a volunteer before them started trying to help these teenage girls. These two volunteers also have medical backgrounds and every Tuesday and Thursday they meet with endless Maasai people giving prescriptions and doing Aids testing and education. What a difference they are making!