Unlike my twin brother Scott, I don’t travel the world a whole lot. Maybe that’s a hard comparison, given he’s in at least a dozen or two dozen countries a year with his work.
But tomorrow I head out for what will be my third trip to Nairobi. Doing some volunteer work for Minneapolis-based Friends of Ngong Road on a short video project called “I’m working! It’s working!” We want to show how well the students who are graduating from high school are doing. Up to this point, our stories have been about the little kids.
Last year, I collected a lot of video to show where the kids are from, the slums, where there is not running water, no sanitation infrastructure or service, and few paved streets without traffic systems, as in stop signs or lights. The visuals of being in the slums are pretty obvious, but what I recall and anticipate most is the smell of burning charcoal that surrounds. It’s used for heating, cooking and burning trash just about everywhere.
The kids sponsored by people like us who have the means, are growing up and in fact are doing amazing. But just like young adults anywhere, they are working to find their way in a bustling city and economic hub of East Africa. So our story will be about that.
I’ve been frantically trying to get some working knowledge of this new web site in order to hopefully provide some content and context of this experience. So I hope you check back.