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An African Adventure

Visiting a place like Kenya can have a major impact on your life, I don’t want to write about Kenya as if it’s hell on earth, if anything Kenya is one of the most advanced and progressive countries in Africa, but it’s still has problems with poverty and other 3rd world problems, what I mean is that a trip to a place like Kenya makes you feel truly grateful (some may feel a little guilt) that even though we live in a country which is still divided, we are still better off than many in the world, “visiting a slum with almost one million people was frightening, exiting and heart breaking” those were the words of Anne O’Neill, a RE teacher at Thornhill College in Londonderry, who I got the opportunity to interview about her life changing visit to Kenya along with trocaire teacher support programme.

Anne O’Neill has been involved with Trocaire for quite a while now, she has been involved with various trocaire projects in her school such as the Christmas gifts, she has done so much work that Trocaire gave her the opportunity to visit Kenya on a visit, they brought her along with a group of other people heavily involved with their organization to Kenya to show them the various projects that they have set up and where exactly the money is going. “When we first arrived we were a group of white people in the midst of a large body of black people, by the time we left, we could see the different tribes that we left, we could see the different tribes that people belonged to by their colour and face shape, we no longer saw colour, we saw our friends”

Mrs O’Neill told me a very saddening story about one of the people she met in Kenya; their names were Wilson and Teresa, “Wilson was dying from cancer and his wife had set up a crèche (day care centre) to provide for the family. Their house was a shack made of cardboard boxes with one armchair, a small TV and decorated with house paper cuttings and tinsel. 2 of their children had got to university; one had dropped out in his final year because he was unable to pay the fees.”

Not everything was upsetting; in fact a lot of it was quite amazing. Mrs O’Neill got the opportunity to work with one of the secondary schools in Kenya “the girl’s secondary school we visited had a brown uniform, the same as I had at school...they were the same as teenage girls in Ireland, interested in music and boys, they went to school from 8 to 6 everyday and Saturday until 2 o’clock.”

Mrs O’Neill also got the opportunity to go on a safari trip, “the safari gave us a chance to get up close to the giraffes and lions. The elephant sanctuary showed the beauty of Africa as well as the dignity of its people”

The visit showed Anne O’Neill just the amount of good that the Trocaire projects do across the world, and how the human spirit can overcome any adversity.

“Despite the desperate poverty, the people were cheerful, polite, welcoming and generous. They had next to nothing but were determined to make the best of what they had, life!”

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