This morning (very very very sad that it was the last actual morning!) we had to get up early. We had to be at the Finnish embassy at 9.00am, but the traffic was heavy so we had to leave Scripture Mission at 7.30am sharp. When we finally arrived at the embassy after sitting quite a while in the traffic, we were slightly shocked about the clean and very western building, which we weren't used to at all! The people in the embassy were really nice, we met Heli Sirve who has been the ambassador in Nairobi since year 2007. Then we were given a presentation about the work that the embassy does in Kenya by some other employees, Theresa and Jussi. Some things we learned were that...
-" The main aim of the Embassy of Finland is to uphold and strengthen the relations between Finland and the Republic of Kenya as well as the relations between Finland and Uganda, Seychelles and Eritrea. The embassy is also in charge of matters related to Somalia." (from: http://www.finland.or.ke/public/default.aspx?nodeid=32139&contentlan=2&culture=en-US)
- The embassy puts mostly effort on supporting the developement in Kenya (and I can tell you that there is loads and loads and loads of things that need to be done)
- Between the years 2008-2011 Kenya will recieve 63,4 million euros for different projects
- The Finnish embassy emphasises on forestry, agriculture and the Kenyean government
- 250 Finns live permanently in Kenya, tourism from Finland isn't that big yet, only about 1000 tourist per year
We were inspired by the work they do, especially Crista who now might know what she wants to do in the future! Some of the information would have been useful in the beginning of the trip though, for example what might be dangerous and some manners. Before the visit to the embassy we didn't now that you will be fined if you smoke on the streets!
After the visit we radically changed the environment and went to the biggest slum in Africa, Kibera. We weren't quite sure about what toi expect, some were afraid about what might happen, and some took it quite easy. I was one of the people in the last group. Why should one be worried if there's nothing to worry about? Of course you have to be careful in the slums, but if you keep your mind cool and use your brain nothing should happen if you move together with other people, keep your valuables out of sight and dress properly. It's hard to describe what the slum is like. If you try to imagine some iron plates that are poorly put together to something that could be a shack, people had shops in these shacks and probably also lived in something compareble to them. The streets were full of small shops selling everything that you can imagine, light bulbs, beans, music, clothes, shoes..... on the streets little children in dirty clothes, bare feet and runny noses happily shouted "how are you mzungu!"and you tried to answer them but most of the time I just smiled and kept on walking. The ground was dirty, mostly covered with mud, stones, old pieces of shoes, flat bottles, and corn (the hard part that is left when you have eaten the yellow part.. you know what I mean?). The smells differed from foods that were cooked (ie cow feet barbeque, smelly fish, vegetables) and some human feases. The streets were colourles but the shops were colourful.. It's hard to describe all the feelings that went through my head during the walk on the streets, you should see it yourself. Not even pictures are good enough to describe it all (which we by the way don't have for security reasons, we didn't want our cameras to be seen while walking). I never felt threathened though.
The point of the Kibera visit was visiting a school called Drug Fighters and Councelling for the young generation (DFC), but I will let Crista continue with that.
0 kommenttia:
Post a Comment