On July 7, 2017, the time had come and Manuela and I set off on our trip to Africa together. After having to take 5 Immodium in the morning, I was suitably doped up for the virus export and drove to the airport with a fuzzy feeling. There I realized that Manuela wanted to travel under a different name than the one I had booked the ticket under. Madame had her Italian passport with her and her maiden name was written there. Thanks to Swiss efficiency, she was able to have a Swiss emergency passport issued directly at the airport in just a few minutes. There is a reason why the emergency passport office is located there: at 08:00 in the morning that day, she was apparently already the 15th Swiss citizen in need of an emergency passport. We were then able to check in my four suitcases and Manuela’s small rucksack.
Moni Hess and Peter Brock had provided us with plenty of dressing materials …THANK YOU!
After a seven-hour flight, we arrived in Nairobi, where we spent a quiet first night. Early the next morning we met Giorgio and anthropology student Eleonora, who is writing a master’s thesis on FGM (female genital mutilation). After a short visit to the market and a dentist’s wholesale shop (Angela, the doctor from Olpirikata at the time, had given us a few more “orders”) and a large supermarket (mosquito nets, water filters, footballs and sweets), we headed towards Kajiado, where we arrived in the afternoon. For our next project, “Nasaru: Masai Girls’ Learning Center”, we then visited four hotels that could be potential locations or future employers.
After an almost alcohol-free evening (original quote from Manuela: “If there is no white wine, then we drink water”) – with a gin and tonic (a “hint of gin”), we slept more or less well in the best house in Kajiado Square.
Early the next morning, we set off for Olpirikata, where the women of the women’s cooperative were already waiting for us. After a long and intensive motivational talk with the doctor Angela, we joined the women who were cooking lunch under a tree to brief them for our bazaar products. We had bought samples at the Masai market in Nairobi and I had prepared a briefing.
After lunch with the men in the refectory of Olpirikata, we went out for the obligatory “meeting” – the community expressed their gratitude to us and we tried to motivate them for the upcoming farm project. At the end of the meeting, the gifts were presented in a touching handover ceremony.
This was followed by another go-go dinner in “downtown” Kajiado and early the next morning we set off for Iloshion (about 30 km from Olpirikata in the savannah). The road there is about 30 km per hour – by car! It is very dusty and we were quite shaken up on the way.
Our visit to Iloshion was very moving. There has been a school there since 2011, but so far no girl has been able to finish school. The girls have a journey to school of up to 10 km and are threatened by “challenges” along the way, meaning that most of them become pregnant from the age of sexual maturity…and that is the end of their school career.
We received a very warm welcome from the new head teacher Paul and the entire teaching staff and were once again made aware of the need for a solution to the problem of “challenges”. For this reason, we have also decided that the project for this year’s Bazaar 2017 will be a learning center with overnight accommodation for Maasai girls.
After a “Maasai baptism”, Manuela and I started our journey back to Nairobi as Nashipae and Nasaru. After four hours on the dirt road and two hours on the tarmac, we arrived at Nairobi airport, where we said goodbye to Giorgio and Eleonora.
A short hour’s flight then took us to Kilimanjaro airport in Tanzania, where a driver from the “More-Than-A-Drop” Bed & Breakfest was already waiting for us. We were very much looking forward to seeing Nicola again, who has been running the B&B’s hotel management school for 1.5 years. This really great and exciting project is funded by the Swiss More-ThanADrop Foundation.
A visit to Sam’s Born To Learn project was once again very inspiring and, above all, impressed by what can be achieved with a lot of good will and determination and, of course, donations.
A 1.5-day safari in Arusha National Park concluded our short trip to Africa. Here we made the acquaintance of Mokili, a young Maasai who works there as a guide and immediately caught our attention with his enormous knowledge of the local flora and fauna. We struck up a conversation with him and he told us that he was the youngest of 13 siblings. By chance, he came into contact with an American couple who financed his training as a guide. At the time, his friends advised him to use the money to buy a house or cows. Mokili, however, argued to his friends that the house could burn down and the cows could die. He therefore completed his training and is now able to feed his family and also serve his village well. Nashipae and Nasaru were so fascinated by this intelligent and committed young man that we spontaneously commissioned him to develop a product that we will be happy to present and sell at the 2017 bazaar.
Full of new impressions and extremely motivated, we then made our way home to Zurich with the certainty: “We will be back!”.
