Day 5 – From Dandora to Amani Ya Juu

The team had another action packed day – but we added one more member to the team for today’s activities.  Serah Nzomo, the Community Development student that MPPC has sponsored through scholarship assistance joined us on our journey to the Kinyago Dandora primary and secondary schools in the morning and to Amani Ya Juu in the afternoon.

                The Kinyago Dandora School is an oasis of hope in one of the most seemingly hopeless places on earth – the Dandora slum.  The slum surrounds the Dandora city dump where mountains of trash from Nairobi are piled higher than tractor-trailer trucks.  After we invited Serah to go with us to visit the school, she later told us on the van ride over that some Kenyans won’t even go into Dandora – ever.   The area is densely packed with makeshift housing and roadside shanty shops, has nasty unpaved often muddy “roads”, and such potential for crime and theft that it is considered too risky by some to even bother traveling through.

If you are curious about the location of the Kinyago Dandora School you can click on this Google map for Dandora to see where we were in Nairobi today.  With Nairobi traffic, the 11 mile journey from our hotel took us about an hour and a half.   If you are in the “map” view mode where you can see the names of the roads, you will see a large blanked out gray area on the map – that area is the Dandora dump.  The Kinyago Dandora School is located in the slum area very near the dump.   You can zoom in all the way on the Google map link in “satellite” view mode to see the vast area of shanty shacks and unnamed streets in this region of the city.  Here is a snapshot  from the surrounding area in Dandora.

Inside the Dandora school the children made us feel welcome immediately and many rushed out to meet us.  We got the chance to sit down and talk with Jane, Catherine and the rest of the Dandora staff and were able to work out some potential solutions for their video promotion needs that might include some training at Daystar or even some help from Mary Gathoni (the Daystar Communications major grad who had us over to dinner at her home in the Kikuyu / Kanangware Slum on Wednesday night.  Jane, the Director of both the Kinyago Dandora Primary and Secondary schools, gave us some great news:  the top scoring male and female students on the most national Secondary School exams for their region were BOTH from the Kinyago Dandora Secondary School!

The students at Kinyago then put on a joyous musical and dancing program for us in their courtyard which we all thoroughly enjoyed – it was wonderful to see all their smiles and they sang and danced for us!   After the show we got to visit each and every classroom; each time being greeted and touched by songs and welcomes before introducing ourselves in front of the class.  The faculty of the Kinyago school is a truly amazing set of people who are called by God and go above and beyond to create an incredibily safe, secure, and disciplined learning environment for their students.

                Next we visited the Kinyago Dandora Secondary school – a school that has been carved out of a former grinding stone factory that offers students the opportunity to receive an the outstanding “Kinyago Dandora” standard of education at the Secondary level.  There are some specific small and large needs at the Secondary school that we might be able to help with in the near term.  Peter, the Principal of the Secondary School, was an outstanding host and is truly doing God’s work everyday.

                Our day ended with a visit to the Amani Ya Juu mission where displaced women from all over Africa are highly trained in the production of sewn products from dresses to napkins to handbags and quilts.  We were again greeted with hugs and song as the whole place stopped work to welcome us and share their story.  The women there pray together every day and start work on making over 300 beautiful products (sometimes with hand dyed fabric and often with a toddler sitting next to them on a stool!) after meeting together for a morning devotional.  Their products are sold locally and shipped around the world through multiple channels.  Their organization left a lasting impression on our team and seems to be a shining example of a well-run, highly successful Christ-centered mission.