Back to day one of a new activity and I'm taken out of my comfort zone once again… This is a pretty familiar feeling because just 3 months ago, I was doing the exact same thing.
I think I kinda like the feeling of stepping outside my comfort zone and pushing myself to grow. Despite my loooonnng stay here already, I like there's some more GROWING ROOM left for me to do in East Africa.
I think I kinda like the feeling of stepping outside my comfort zone and pushing myself to grow. Despite my loooonnng stay here already, I like there's some more GROWING ROOM left for me to do in East Africa.
The first thing I did was head to Kibera with Karen (the head mama here) to see the feeding program in action. We ended up arriving a little late so I sat down to have a chat with some of the mamas in the kitchen, which was the commencement of my long journey to learn and practice my basic Swahili.
Through this process I met Jack, the 21 year old “intern” working in the first love office right in the slum. Jack was from Kibera and had recently graduated from the school in the slum that First Love worked at. He was typing up some stuff on ‘powerpoint’ in those big and flashy letters that elementary school kids like to use to make their projects look “good”.
So I thought… this kid definitely doesn’t know what he is doing so I offered him some help by asking him if he wanted some “tips” in using powerpoint. We eventually got to the point where he was just asking me questions, and I realized that these basic programs that I have been able to use since I was 10 years old are foreign territory to him because he never had access to any of this stuff. I mean, he was asking me how he was suppose to lay his fingers on the key board so that he could type quickly, which is something I learned from being on MSN Messenger 24/7 in grade 7.
Then he asked me how "cut, copy and paste" worked and I was shocked! I was shocked at MYSELF because it had never once occurred to me that this was something people did NOT know how to do if they had any access to a computer. I don't even remember being 'TAUGHT' how to use it, but I guess that is because I had time to experiment with what we would call "basic" programs from such a young age. Computer usage, on my side of the world (and I guess in my income bracket) was the "norm" and so things came pretty intuitively to me.
This got me thinking about internet access in the slum. I found myself asking many of the kids at the Raila School if they wanted to continue on to the next level of schooling after grade 12. All of them had high aspirations. They wanted to be doctors and lawyers but were demotivated by their lack of access to universities. I found myself telling them that if they studied really, really hard, they could apply for scholarships and maybe get into universities in Europe or North America. Then we got talking about how to apply for scholarships and the conversation turned towards how to access the internet. In the slum, the only way to access the internet is through internet "cafes" set up... each with very slow internet, and quite expensive. If you are going to choose between buying clean water and internet, the money definitely goes to the water. Isn't it funny how powerful the internet is? It makes so much information accessible so that students living in a slum in East Africa can have the opportunity to apply to university whereas they may have not had this option before - yet, under the circumstances these students live in - they still don't have regular internet access and so this powerful tool is lost.... Is it fair that all our information is stored online in this way when only a small percentage of the world's population has access to it? In my opinion, we need to find a way to get internet accessible to these students because it will EMPOWER THEM.... I think quite a few people already know this like the One Laptop Per Child Project.
Then Jack and I practiced cutting and pasting "Sheena Melwani is cool" all over a powerpoint slide for about 10 minutes so that he could learn how to do it. Then I told Jack that he should bring a notebook and that I would come back and teach him some computer stuff and he could write it down and practice so that he could acquire some computer skills.
Jack eventually also came up to the ophanage and together with Fridah, we created his first Powerpoint presentation on the First Love Curio Store. Have a look their hard work.
Through this process I met Jack, the 21 year old “intern” working in the first love office right in the slum. Jack was from Kibera and had recently graduated from the school in the slum that First Love worked at. He was typing up some stuff on ‘powerpoint’ in those big and flashy letters that elementary school kids like to use to make their projects look “good”.
So I thought… this kid definitely doesn’t know what he is doing so I offered him some help by asking him if he wanted some “tips” in using powerpoint. We eventually got to the point where he was just asking me questions, and I realized that these basic programs that I have been able to use since I was 10 years old are foreign territory to him because he never had access to any of this stuff. I mean, he was asking me how he was suppose to lay his fingers on the key board so that he could type quickly, which is something I learned from being on MSN Messenger 24/7 in grade 7.
Then he asked me how "cut, copy and paste" worked and I was shocked! I was shocked at MYSELF because it had never once occurred to me that this was something people did NOT know how to do if they had any access to a computer. I don't even remember being 'TAUGHT' how to use it, but I guess that is because I had time to experiment with what we would call "basic" programs from such a young age. Computer usage, on my side of the world (and I guess in my income bracket) was the "norm" and so things came pretty intuitively to me.
This got me thinking about internet access in the slum. I found myself asking many of the kids at the Raila School if they wanted to continue on to the next level of schooling after grade 12. All of them had high aspirations. They wanted to be doctors and lawyers but were demotivated by their lack of access to universities. I found myself telling them that if they studied really, really hard, they could apply for scholarships and maybe get into universities in Europe or North America. Then we got talking about how to apply for scholarships and the conversation turned towards how to access the internet. In the slum, the only way to access the internet is through internet "cafes" set up... each with very slow internet, and quite expensive. If you are going to choose between buying clean water and internet, the money definitely goes to the water. Isn't it funny how powerful the internet is? It makes so much information accessible so that students living in a slum in East Africa can have the opportunity to apply to university whereas they may have not had this option before - yet, under the circumstances these students live in - they still don't have regular internet access and so this powerful tool is lost.... Is it fair that all our information is stored online in this way when only a small percentage of the world's population has access to it? In my opinion, we need to find a way to get internet accessible to these students because it will EMPOWER THEM.... I think quite a few people already know this like the One Laptop Per Child Project.
Then Jack and I practiced cutting and pasting "Sheena Melwani is cool" all over a powerpoint slide for about 10 minutes so that he could learn how to do it. Then I told Jack that he should bring a notebook and that I would come back and teach him some computer stuff and he could write it down and practice so that he could acquire some computer skills.
Jack eventually also came up to the ophanage and together with Fridah, we created his first Powerpoint presentation on the First Love Curio Store. Have a look their hard work.
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| Jack and I with some of the kids at First Love |
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