I am currently in Kenya due to my dad’s work. But my dad has been given the green light to work online from Indonesia. We were planning to leave Kenya for good and return to Indonesia on the 10th August.

Before leaving Kenya, I wanted to do something beneficial for the community one last time. And so I decided to do my service here in Nairobi.

I chose The Mama Fatuma Children’s Goodwill Foundation, it is an orphanage in Kenya that was established on 17th November 2007 with the aim of providing children with a safe home to live and learn from. They have 85 children at the moment, with ages ranging from 1 to 17 year olds.

My personal goal was to help out with any pending chores in the orphanage and put a smile on everybody’s face.

When I first arrived, I was warmly greeted by the Manager who then showed me around the place and introduced me to their staff members.

The first task I did was helping out to fold the clothes. There were a lot of them. It was fun and while doing so the kids taught me a lot of Kiswahili (the native language). During this time, one of the staff members told me that this was the one of the happiest moments she saw. I was touched.

Secondly, at lunch time and I was the server! I happily scooped up spaghetti onto plates while also being laughed at for my Kiswahili pronunciation. But I was happy that I put a smile on their faces. Then it was time to do the dishes. There were a lot! It was quite exhausting but I pushed through! After that I rested a bit before committing to my next task, which was to mop the floor of the dining hall. The mop was quite big and mopping the floor proved to be quite a challenge.

I went back the day after and another day as well! 

I achieved my personal goals and also managed to achieve some of the CAS outcomes (initiate & plan, ethics of choice & action, global issue engagement). 

 

Nabil Ahmad Wafiuddin – Grade 11 DP