Ronald, Ian, and the Trainers

It’s easy to smile before the 14-hour flight! Claudia and I met at JFK for the flight to Nairobi. Both of us are thrilled to be headed back to Kenya and to have temporarily parted company with our combined 185 lbs of checked luggage. Mine has 55 lbs of self-defense keychains. Hers has more weight than that in gifts for a variety of kids that either she or friends of hers sponsor. Plus she brought a large crock pot as a carry-on for the house in Ngong. 

Claudia’s room below. All the stuff on the beds are the things she brought for kids. The blankets on the bed are handmade by Mama B, who has a tailoring business. For the return trip, Claudia stuffs her suitcase (and probably mine) with the blankets, wallets, bags, and other items to sell, sending the proceeds back to Mama B.  

On our first full day, Ronald and Ian came for a visit. Ginger and I have been sponsoring Ronald for a number of years. Claudia sponsors Ian. Both young men just graduated from secondary school. We spent the afternoon providing career guidance and researching professions and universities. The schools will have secondary grade level requirements to get into each major. If the student doesn’t have the grades to get in, then they either have to take classes to improve the grades or downsize their expectations. It is very regimented.  

Most of the secondary graduates don’t have the resources to go on to university regardless of grades. Some sponsors will pay for it, but not all are able/willing to. Scholarships are available to the very best students.  

Additionally, career counseling at the secondary level is practically nonexistent. All the kids say they want to be a lawyer, engineer, pilot, or doctor. From the counselors’ point of view, nothing else exists. This also affects the families’ perceptions.  

I heard a great line from a successful Kenyan actuary and friend. She was trying to convince her parents that actuarial science was a legitimate field to pursue. She said from her parents’ perspective, there were only four paths: “doctor, lawyer, engineer, or disgrace to the family.”  

After lots of discussion and research, we discovered that neither Ronald nor Ian have quite high enough grades for the direction they really want to go. We also confirmed  that there appear to be jobs available in the field in Kenya. But they need to do some digging on alternatives for either getting into a 5-year university program or  approaching it from a different direction, such as a 3-year diploma. 

We finished the day with dinner and a highly competitive few games of Yahtzee. Below are the combatants: Ronald, Ian, Claudia, Moses (Mama B’s son), Virginia, and me. 

The following day was my first self-defense class. I’ve got something like 17 classes spread over 10 days. This was mainly a “train the trainers” session for Kenya Red Cross volunteers.  

In the half-day class, we had 5 Red Cross workers (including Cedric and Wangari, who I worked with last visit), four girls who recently graduated from secondary school and are awaiting next steps, similar to Ronald and Ian, the mother of a girl Ginger and I sponsor (she just happened to be there), and me.  

We went more in-depth in this class than I’ve done with any other class in Kenya. The Red Cross (KRC) workers want to teach their own classes when I can’t be there. I’m working to make sure they can be effective as teachers, and am providing the curriculum. 

We were supposed to have three more KRC workers with us. Cedric spoke to one of them. The three were on their way to the class when one got a call that another KRC worker had been raped and was at the hospital. They redirected to go to the hospital instead. This is a prime reason the KRC workers want to teach the classes, for both their workers and other women/girls.  

Cedric working with me, below. Poor Cedric.

Below is Cedric working with Sarah. Sarah is one of the recent secondary school graduates. Ginger and I have sponsored her since 2017. We met Sarah when she was living in an orphanage in Nairobi in 2019. It was a pretty grim place. We discovered she had been placed at the orphanage with two sisters by their mother, who couldn’t care for them after the girls’ father died, and was moving back to her home region.  

We fairly quickly determined that Sarah would do better in a different environment, and started making arrangements to move her to Kisumu with her mother. But the sisters (Vallary and Marion) had to be moved too, to avoid retribution from the school due to our removing a paying (sponsored) kid.  

In 2022, we visited the family in the Kisumu area. We found on that trip that there were, in fact, 5 sisters. Patience and Cecelia had been with their mom all along. Sarah is the oldest.  

The family has since moved to Ngong. The other four girls are in school.  

Sarah is going to help us in some of the self-defense classes. 

Last visit, I started talking about the use of a Maasai walking stick as a defense weapon in the classes. In the more rural areas, most of the families have them around. Although a little short for my liking, they are a good tool to use and are readily available. 

Below is the official class photo. Wangari is on the far left.

May through July are considered winter in Kenya. Which means highs in the 70s F. It has been cooler than that and rainy since we got here. So the indoor space was nice to have.