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I arrived back home in Germany four weeks ago. I expected it to be shocking and difficult to return in my old environment but I experienced it to be very easy. Everything was so normal to me and I realized that nothing had changed much – apart from me.
I know that I managed to achieve what I wanted: to become somehow Kenyan. I know that because I have been told by quite some people. I managed to adjust so much with the Kenyan culture that I was able to talk and behave like a Kenyan (ok…my Kiswahili is not fluent, but those who heard me talking English know what I mean =)
I understood that it is not possible to fully accept and understand
another culture if you are not able to (only for some time of
course) abandon your own customs and ways of thinking. If I could
have kept my German understanding of cleanliness for example I
could never have been happy in Nairobi, the city of dust and dirt
and I could have never eaten the food of my project, Bosco Boys
without fearing after stepping into the boys´ kitchen for the first
time. The same with politeness: As a German I am used to being very
polite and being treated politely as well. Polite in this case
means using the words
“please”, “thank you”, “excuse me” and such pretty often. Having those things in my mind Kenyans must seem very impolite to me since I won´t hear those expressions of politeness too much. But in real sense the Kenyan politeness is just more subtle and the communication is clearer, more direct and therefore - at least for me - more comfortable.
I am not sure if the exchange year really met the expectations I had and yet I didn´t have many. I expected to learn the language – which I did even though not as good as I would have wanted but this is mostly my fault. I also expected to interact a lot with the boys to get to know and understand them which I also did even though it was very hard since I was restricted and held back as much as possible by the people who actually called me to come to Bosco Boys. This is a bit ironical whereby I can understand since it is difficult to keep a single girl together with a lot of boys, some of them being the same age as me. And it is nice and I am grateful that even though the fathers (my project was catholic) didn´t really want me to be there I was given the chance to come. But nevertheless I can not hide that sometimes especially during the first three months being in Bosco Boys and dealing with the hostility of the people in the project who were supposed to support and guide me was one of the hardest things I ever experienced in my life and for sure the opposite of what I expected.
What the fathers achieved with this behavior was the opposite of what they wanted me to do. Instead of me keeping a certain distance to the boys I spent even more time with them and searched among them for people to talk to since they were the only people left who seemed to be happy to have me there. What I am writing is not over-exaggerated but unfortunately the vey way I felt.
Actually I didn´t feel very supported throughout the year. It started on the very first day when I was told things like “don´t drink and smoke inside the compound, don´t be too close with the boys, don´t, don´t, don´t…”, but nobody actually cared for example to tell me where I was supposed to eat and at what time until I asked. It continued when I came late from town another day during the second month because I misjudged the traffic. I happened to arrive late in the darkness and because everybody had always told me that it was dangerous I feared to walk home alone. Therefore I called one of my friends from Bosco boys (not a boy himself anymore but aspiring to go to university) and asked him to pick me up from the road so that I don´t have to walk alone. Five minutes later he called me back, saying that the father he had asked for permission to come and pick me had told him that it was my own problem since I was late. So I walked the 20 minutes in the darkness alone…
During my last three months something else started: stealing. We were a lot of women in the house and there were not enough keys for all of us and because of that we left the backdoor of our house open. One day I realized that something in my room was missing. I didn´t take it serious. But it continued. Until I realized that somebody actually came to my room repeatedly and stole my money and other thing. I never even bothered to tell father since I knew that he would or could not help me anyways. But I told the one brother about it, who was in touch with the boys most, who knew their tricks and who could in my opinion maybe help me. In June then we had a one-month volunteer from England. Somebody stole a huge amount of cash out of her locked suitcase in room by cutting it. She told father but nothing happened. Only one month later when one of the important sponsors of Bosco Boys came for a visit and something valuable was stolen from her room as well, suddenly the investigation started and within four days the stolen property and the thief (it was a boy, because they are also no angles) was found out. Such things made me think about how people are valued in Bosco Boys.
Throughout the year I seldom had the feeling of being supported or welcome (I am not talking about the boys). I rather always felt a wall of unwillingness and aversion towards me from the fathers. I really hope that the girl who will be in Bosco boys this year will have it a bit easier since some of the fathers went and new ones came because at times it was hard for me to keep smiling since the boys always noticed when something was not ok and I didn´t want to tell them about my problems.
I suppose Bosco Boys is better for older volunteers, male as well as female, but with a certain life experience who can do something with the boys. What I think those boys actually need is somebody to talk to since they can´t or at least they don´t trust anyone. They have a psychologist who regularly comes to the project and whom the boys must! talk to but he is so untrustworthy and indiscreet and the boys dislike him so much that they wouldn´t tell him anything important. They could need a pedagogist who can do with them professional workshops to help them find out who they are, what their talents are, to help them accept their past, to find out what they want….in short to give the guidance in finding a realistic direction in which they want to go in their lives. I´ve talked to a good number of boys and asked them questions about their future, what they want to be, which profession they would like to have and what I realized every time again is that they have absolutely no idea of the possibilities there are and that they don´t believe in themselves. And I suppose it is obvious that somebody who has no aim in life will not do much to improve himself since he has nothing to achieve.
I witnessed the boys being told to study well and to behave well and such over and over again but if a boy knows that no matter how much he studies he will not reach the marks of going to Sec school and he sees people coming from Technical school and not getting a job, going back to the streets, which hopelessness does it create in his mind.
Then he looks around and sees about 100 other boys with the same problems and asks himself who will assist him personally to find his way because he will not be able to do it alone.
This is what I learned about Bosco Boys. They need an aim in their life and if a volunteer can help one boy or two to find out what he wants than he or she has done a lot, even though it is not noticeable for other people.
That´s why even though I had some hard experiences of which I am sure that everybody had his I am not regretting even a single minute I had in Kenya because I might not have learned the things I learned there anywhere or anytime else. My good memories are for example the friendships I built, the trust I gained from people, that I saw the beautiful country Kenya, that I had a lot of fun with Bosco Boys, that I liked the music of Kenya and Tanzania and so many other things.


