VOLUNTEERING

The children of the orphanage are always happy to welcome volunteers who wish to donate some of their time in this sharing experience. It is for them a way to get in touch with people from different parts of the world and to share moments of happiness and laughter. It goes without saying that these children are very needy of affection and this is the greatest resource you can bring to them as a volunteer.

If you have particular skills which you can bring to the orphanage is all the better but even only simple things will do, such as knowing a song or two, a game, a rhyme etc that you can teach to the children. They pick up things like these very very quickly and... even in your own language! They are really bright! In exchange, they'll teach you a few Swahili words that might come in handy during your stay. By the way, Swahili is the official language of Kenya together with English. The children speak both of them. They tend to speak Swahili among themselves and English with the volunteers and they all speak very good English!

All you need, really, is a great love for children, an open mind, adaptability and lots of enthusiasm. Leave your prejudices at home and bring instead lots of energy.

In a typical day you would do some light house-works in the morning (such as tidying up the children's bedrooms) and then serve both lunch and dinner to the children and helping with the washing up. The afternoon is usually spent with the children by doing activities, reading, playing with them, taking them to the beach etc etc...However, it's not a rigid schedule you will be following. Everything is relaxed and takes place in a very friendly environment. You will soon find out that the children will make you feel at home very quickly.

You can stay for a long period of time or only for a few weeks. The orphanage provides the volunteers with accommodation (inside the orphanage) and food for a small fee which will have to be paid in advance or when arriving at the orphanage.

If you are interested in this experience please email one of us and we will be happy to give you all the information you require and to answer all the questions you might have. We will also be able to discuss the availability according to your plans.

You might find useful to read about our own experiences at the orphanage below.

OUR EXPERIENCE

LAURA

SUSANNA

When I first arrived in Kenya, I got deeply shocked. I thought I was day-dreaming. Thousands of times we have watched the news on TV and many times Africa was the main subject with its droughts, hunger, epidemics, misery, and broken-dreams. But these images were never able to provide an overall real picture of the situation. Reality sometimes surpasses imagination. When I saw Nairobi I just got speechless. And two days later, when I stepped on Likoni Aids Orphanage in Mombasa, I was still speechless.

 The house was a three store apartment with four dormitories and two very tiny “toilets” where 47 orphans were living and sharing clothes, toiletries and food. There was no drinkable water and current water came out of a small pipe under which all the children washed themselves. Food was scarce and repetitive: beans, ugali (made of maize), rice and spinach (scuma). Shoes and clothes were old, ripped, and shared. They all live in a slummy area just 2 Km far from Mombasa, in a huge neighbourhood where hundreds of kids play half-naked and dirty on the street. Every time we crossed their ways, I could feel them staring at us as if we were some sort of gods. They used to stop everything they were doing and say: Hey, Muzungu (white-European), how are you?

With just a short glance, anyone could see how much there was to be done down there! How many healthy hands would be useful! How many dreams we,  “muzungu”, can bring to them!

After almost two months, I became a good friend of all of them, and I felt proud of sharing roof with these big-hearted, always-smiling people. During this period of time other volunteers and me made some efforts to provide all the orphans with shoes, school uniforms, bags, toys and Christmas presents, They were very thankful but they could never understand how thankful I was, how much I owe them.

They gave me a great present. They made me realise that there is something else in life than just struggling to get a better job, a better house, and a better car. They showed me that there is something much bigger in the world to fight for: OUR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS.

I’m a teacher and I was trained in a university for that; however, the most important lesson I got in my whole life came from these people: happiness comes when we feel useful, when we feel that we are something else than money-machines and that we can count, we MUST count.

It’s been 3 months now since I came back, and I’ve already been working in two different schools in Spain and studying to finish a post-graduated degree, but my days went short of hours because I spent a lot of time making projects for the orphanage. Since then, I feel that a new engine drives my life, and I completely devote my spare and non-spare time to increase the future expectations of these children. And I swear, I don’t regret any single second spent on that.

Susanna Gómez

MARCIO

Hey!

My name is Marcio, I'm a 22 year-old volunteer from Brazil. I spent almost two months at the Likoni Orphanage during december/06 and january/07. I can honestly say that it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Not only I could contribute to people who have so little, but I learned a lot from the same people who enjoy life so much. It made me realize that we not only have responsibility for the children around the world but we do have the power to help them. I will keep on this fight for better life and future for those children and try to get more and more people to join us on this cause, creating a better world with our own bare hands.

Marcio (Marc) Reolon,

March 2007

FABIOLA

From 1^st to 26th of December 2006 something happened…my life changed!

I took a flight to Amsterdam where I met another girl and together we flew to Nairobi and there we understood that the project we chose was no longer available. So with the third girl who arrived in the evening we decided to go to Likoni Aids Orphanage near Mombasa. We traveled all the night in a dark bus on a very bad road. We didn’t sleep at all but when we arrived there we felt a lot of different sensations but not the tiredness. I remembered very well the moment we were in the car, in front of the orphanage’s gate. When we came in we saw a lot of children who were looking at us and probably they were asking “who are they?” everything started there. Our experience started when the car moved inside the garden. I felt a shot in my heart, lots of thoughts went through my mind, and shivers went up and down my body.

When we entered the house the first more brave children started to shake our hands and came closer to us. After one day all of them came closer to us and they started to be “our children”, our guys, our friends.

The pastor showed us our bed in a room with 4 bunk beds but we had to wait just few hours to understand that in that room we were going to sleep in 13. Actually most of the time we slept on the roof terrace because it was too hot for us in the room; being up there was quite funny!

We used to spend all the day in the orphanage; sometimes during the day we went in town always with one of the “big boys” because they told us it’s quite dangerous for white people to go around alone. We usually spent our day in this way: we opened our eyes at 5 am because near the orphanage there were two mosques and they started to pray at that time; around 6 a.m. the first children started to come upstairs and started singing; after that we moved in the room in our bed and there we tried to sleep few minutes more. At 7 a.m. the alarm clock rang and we went downstairs to have breakfast; after that we started our work (clean the rooms, clean the bathroom etc) and finally we started playing with the children.

Usually during the afternoon we went to the beach where the children always had lots of fun. At 18.00 most afternoons all five of us used to go for a walk and a drink in a very little shop near the orphanage. Our day finished on the terrace with the “big boys” chatting and relaxing.

This is everything we did for one month (less or more); every moment, every action, every word changed my life and I thank God every day for this experience.

Fabiola