Mondo's volunteers in Kenya

Challenges force me to be creative...

 

Habari (Kiswahili way to greet), my name is Eugenie Probst and one month ago I came as a Junior EU Aid Volunteer for psychosocial and organisational support to work with Wefoco (Western Focus Community Organisation) in Shianda, Western Kenya.

 

Besides our apartments at sunset

 

The first month was full of new experiences and went by very fast… and I feel like I have been living in Shianda for a long time already. I enjoy the nature around! My surroundings are not full of buildings – like in Germany – but full of trees, grass and crops, as nearly everyone around Shianda uses land to grow vegetables and fruits. I also love the fresh fruits like bananas, mangos, and papayas, which they sell at the market and which taste here so much better than back home. Somehow, I even like the “slow” lifestyle. Everyone is busy, but not in a rush. Of course, sometimes I start to be impatient when waiting for participants arriving to meetings one hour later, but at the same time I admire the patience and ease of the people. 

 

 

Dance teacher and students after practice

 

 

Gym at Shianda

It took me only 2 weeks to find my comfort place in Shianda… the local gym, filled with self-made training-accessories and lots of sport-loving and welcoming visitors. That is where I found people to dance with and as dancing makes me happy, this place with its people makes me happy, too.

 

 

 

 

 

Two of the apartments for the volunteers

 

However, there were of course also challenges in adapting to the new environment. For example, getting used to washing clothes by hand, which I am really bad in as my clothes seem to be dirty all the time (but at least they smell good because of the washing powder). Or to figure out how to shower with a basin and a plastic bottle, which in the end, is more convenient than it sounds…  (and even more environmental friendly due to less water usage)… I do not even miss the shower anymore! Somehow, all challenges force me to be creative and this is the part I enjoy. For example, it made me giddy when I was able to steam my own wholewheat bread and a banana chocolate cake in a self-made “steam-oven” with the pots I found in my kitchen.

Self-made steam oven

 

 

 

 

 

If it comes to work, I have to be creative, too. My work focuses on the area of guidance and counselling (g+c). As a social worker with additional counselling education, I am supposed to develop and conduct trainings on basic counselling skills for different groups in the communities. 

 

One of those groups are the g+c teachers at the 28 Secondary Schools around Shianda. While working with previous volunteers on gender-related topics at the schools the g+c teachers voiced that they have a need for counselling training as many of them were assigned to be g+c teachers without educational background in counselling. Following this request my EUAV position was opened. 

 

For me this is a very interesting project, as I see talking about problems and emotions as an essential process to maintain mental health. Doing lots voluntary work with youngsters before I see especially a huge value for the youth on their way to adolescence to have the opportunity to talk to adults which can listen and guide them to cope with daily-life and emotional problems and to form their personality. 

 

In my first month I spent lots of time talking to local actors in the area of psychology and social work about counselling to understand its context in Kenya. All the people I have met have been amazingly welcoming and helpful. They made themselves available to share their knowledge and experience with me to make me better understand the perception and local value of counselling. 

 

Counselling is not yet fully established in Kenya, but – as I learned – becomes more and more valued and important. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the awareness about counselling and mental health, especially in the rural communities in Kenya. 

 

Besides that, I started to work with the gender-based violence (gbv) ambassadors, trained by WEFOCO in a project of previous EUAVs. Since their training on gbv last year they have been doing valuable work in Shianda to raise awareness on this topic and support community members affected by gbv. They also expressed interest in a counselling training as it is important for their gbv-related work. However, they also voiced demand to learn more about counselling of youth. Together we decided on the topics that should be covered in their counselling training. The outline of the 3-day-seminar is ready to be filled with life and the training will be hopefully conducted in the end of July or beginning of August. 

 

Sometimes I feel like my work is not progressing fast enough. I have still a long way to go to reach my goals and train local community volunteers, the g+c teachers, and – hopefully – create a training of trainers. At the same time, I know that I have to be patient AND that I need the time to observe and understand the local context to be able to develop appropriate counselling trainings. I am motivated to do so!

 

WEFOCO's gender-based violence ambassadors