Service/Action--Habitat for Humanity

At the beginning of the year I enrolled in the Habitat for Humanity club. I am not particularly good with interacting with people so this club seemed the perfect fit for me. I could have picked trash in Karura or similar activities but I would have found them unrewarding, and felt that they did not actually help people. Habitat for Humanity seemed like the best option for me, I would be offering a great, direct service for people, and also work out my body. My first Habitat trip was the first Habitat trip of the school year. This trip was actually a certified Habitat for Humanity organization trip. Since the actual Habitat for Humanity organization does not have any actual builds near the Nairobi area, the actual build site was about 5 hours away from ISK. This meant that I had to wake up at around 4 a.m. to catch the bus at ISK which left before 5 a.m. It was pretty terrible. After the long drive, we finally got to our location. Our job was to dig four trenches in a square-like formation. This square would be later filled with cement, the base of a house. Later Habitat for Humanity workers would end up constructing this house, but we were just there to create the base of the house.The first trip was uneventful, due to the long drive we did not have very much time at the build site and only had enough time to dig the trenches.
The second trip was much better. It was on February 16th, 2013. We decided rather than to go on the certified Habitat for Humanity builds, we struck a deal with a local school that was in desperate need of repair. From then on we mainly went to the school Morningstar Academy, in Kangemi. Kangemi is only 20 minutes away from ISK so it was a very short drive and an incredibly convenient location. However, the main construction needed in Morningtar Academy was painting, which for me was unfortunate. Kenyan paint does not adhere to very strict non-toxic policies and being stuck in a sealed room for 5 hours with semi-hazardous paint fumes does not a merry painter make.

I started painting one classroom, and with he help of my friends, we completed it in about 3 hours. this is me above painting my first section of the classroom. As you can see, the classroom was made of corrugated metal and wooden beams, making it very difficult to paint, but also helping me understand the poor conditions that these students were learning in. After a good 5 hours of painting, we were all feeling quite dizzy but we were finally finished, the final product being the picture below:

This mainly depicts the outside of the school, which you can clearly see is flawlessly painted. What you don't see, is that the building is actually shaped like an L, this being one leg, with an entire other leg that was also painted that was not shown. The large amount of wood stacked outside is all of the desks and chairs we had to move before being able to paint the interior of the rooms.

Above is the picture of the permission slip of the latest build, which was actually last Saturday, the 20th of April. We had two options of what build we wanted to participate in. The first was again at Morningstar Academy, where my last build took place. The build was mainly painting a fence for the kids. Since I have had bad experiences with paint from the last build, I chose to go to the next build, at Harvest academy. Harvest is a secondary school in Kangemi. It is situated at the bottom of a hill so whenever the rains come in,  it sweeps through the entire school yard and disrupts the classroom and fields. Our job was to build 3 irrigation canals to divert water and then to fill them with cement blocks. The build was mainly a bunch of hoeing and shoveling. Below are a few action shots of me working hard hoeing and shoveling. 

Hoeing in my first ditch. I had to break apart the tough soil first. Then a person with a shovel would go and dig out all the loose soil. Then the ground was finally ready for me to hoe again.

A few action shots of me rocking the hoe.

Here we moved onto our second ditch, which is located in the middle of the school yard. This was actually the first ditch we dug here, then somebody told us we built it in the wrong location. As you can see we are building on top of a small hill. It turned out we had to build it at the bottom of the hill so we had to cover up this complete ditch, and then dig an entirely new one literally less than a meter from the original. Shoveling was more difficult than hoeing because you were stooped over the whole time, having to constantly lift more than a kilogram with each shovel-full of dirt.

This is me being patriotic.

Finally our job was to fill all the ditches with cement gutters, each which must have weighed more than 30 kilograms. They needed at least 2 people to carry and even then were a major struggle. People often dropped them, often times on my limbs, which resulted in my two main injuries during the trip, shown below.

I can finally say I have poured sweat and blood into this project.

Overall, Habitat for Humanity was the most rewarding project that I partook in this school year. I got to actually see how my work helped people, and not just poor farmers, but actual school children living in slums.Habitat for Humanity is great service, my hard work directly helping people. It has exposed me to some of the conditions that people are living in and it taught me that a little work goes a long way. I will definitely be doing Habitat for Humanity next year. It was a fantastic experience and I am glad i participated in it.