A day in the life

Several people have recently asked me how exactly I spend my time as a volunteer at Pipeline IDP Camp so here's an idea of what a typical day looks like:

My housemate Nina and I usually get up around 7am, say hi to the chickens, take a bucket shower and then get served breakfast by our lovely host mum Mary. Daily staples are Kenyan chai (tea), fruit, and either bread, mandazi (type of donut) or pancakes if we're lucky.

Walking to camp in the morning can take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, depending how many schoolkids, mosquitoes or goats you encounter ;-).

To my own surprise I have decided to help out with pre-school (ECD) classes three days a week, since the ECD project can't afford to run its programmes with lots of staffed labour. Despite my initial apprehension (I've never worked with groups of kids before), "Teacher Inga" seems to be doing well - the children haven't started throwings sharp objects at me in protest (yet!)... My teaching curriculum so far has consisted of the alphabet, basic maths & geography, drawing pictures of the students' families, storytelling and LOTS of colouring. Help is on the way soon to expand my repertoire because my dear V. is sending over a box of teaching materials from NZ. The kids are loving the lessons though and are always super excited to show off their work!

One of my main jobs here is to assess the sustainability of the camp's income-generating projects, and to do this I have been meeting with many of the camp's 'self-help groups'. All these groups consist of community members who have joined forces to set up a business (like rabbit breeding -see photo above-, mushroom growing, chicken rearing, bead making etc). Their long-term goal is to earn enough income to become self-sufficient and no longer need outside assistance. Unfortunately, most projects I've visited have encountered a few setbacks and are not producing any profit at the moment so I'm hoping to help them on their way again.

These two ladies belong to a women's group called 'Shining Star' and are aiming to rear enough chickens to sell them for their meat. Girl power! Throughout the day I often get jumped on by many of the camp children (amazingly all of them know how to say "How are you?" in English, no matter how young they are), which is both enjoyable and exhausting! The by on the left, Victor, has become one of Nina's projects as he's malnourished and way too small for his age.

Regular invitations also come to visit people's tents, in this case mother-of-six Virginia and her son Johnny. I love getting to know the community so these moments are great :-).

World Cup fever has gripped the camp and until 11 July an unused chicken coop is the place to watch all the games. I saw New Zealand draw 1-1 with Italy there last Sunday and the atmosphere was fantastic. Next up Ghana! After work Nina and I regularly end up in the tent of Naomi, administrator at GVN Australia's's recently built Aberdare Ranges Primary School. On this occasion we were joined there by two other excellent women, pharmacist extraordinaire Linet (left) and Kenyan Idol-to-be Mary (middle).