Around 2 years ago my father had to travel overseas to Nairobi Kenya for work. He had to stay in Nairobi for about 6 months so during his time there he asked if me and my family would like to go to kenya to visit him and check out all of the fun things that the country had to offer. Unfortunately at the time when my mother and sister were able to travel i was still in school so we decided that i would come visit him alone at a later time. When my mother and sister came home from their trip they had many many wonderful things to say about the experience, however they also told me a lot about the poverty and hardships that they saw in the daily lives of a lot of the people there. This got me thinking so I began to do a little bit of research finding out that over half of the population in Kenya lives on less than one dollar a day. While I was looking into this I came across habitat for humanity's global village page. That is when i decided that if i was going to go to this country i was not only going to go and experience the fun i would go and do my part to help improve the bad, i applied to join a build in kenya through habitat and a few months later i was off.
During the trip I got to experience so many different things I had never done or seen before, bustling marketplaces, delicious food and drink, animal preserves, and new cities, but I also saw poverty, pollution, children starving and people of all ages fighting just to make a living. About 3 days into the trip I met up with the rest of the habitat build crew, each of them a different person from a different place with a different and interesting story. I learned so much from each person and to this day i still talk with many of them. As we traveled together to the site of the building we learned a lot about the area in Kenya we would be building in, Nayuki, and we learned about the family we were building for. It was a young family of 4 the oldest and primary caregiver of the family was a 21 year old woman named Jane Akeno she lived in a small mud hut with her two younger sisters and her baby. The father of the child had left her and the kid behind and the hut that they lived in was about half the size of a small dorm room, But they had a place to live. One monsoon season the mud structure became unstable and half of the house collapsed when this happened. Habitat decided to put a team together to help this family and give them the house that they needed.
The build itself was the most incredible experience of my life to date when we arrived in the village we were greeted by a welcome ceremony and treated as though we were honored guests by all of the villages. The work was hard and dirty but the cause was good and the people were wonderful so the build flew by so we actually completed so much of the house that a second team, which would usually finish the house, was not even necessary. I left that country with countless precious memories and a greater respect for what I have. I also learned more than I could have ever dreamed, but I believe the most valuable thing that I learned is the importance of creating joy. During the build when i was on breaks i would often find myself with the local children who would try to get all of the build crew to play with them we would kick around a ball or play tag and the kids would have the time of their lives. I also brought along a small sketchbook and some pencils ,to draw or write about my time there, so during breaks I would let the kids draw and color using my art supplies. The look on their faces when I held out my sketchbook and colored pencils was enough to melt my heart. That small second thought gesture had meant the world to these kids so much that by the end of the trip I left my supplies behind. In those experiences drawing with the kids i learned something that will stick with me for the rest of my life and influence me in everything i do from my day to day life to my design life cherish the things we have no matter how big or small and always strive to create joy for every person that you meet because a simple good time like 5 minutes of playing soccer or coloring in an old notebook could mean the world to someone and change there whole life.
