Fashion, Football and Farming

The past few days have been pretty hectic but also given me a great sense of pride in the work that we are doing at Vision Africa.

On Friday afternoon, we did a photoshoot for Crafted clothing. I had offered to help out with this and take the photographs as we really needed the pictures to try and promote the work of Crafted. Up until this week, we only had photographs of the jewellery range but there is so much more to the Crafted brand. I knew our Seed of Hope graduates had made some nice clothes but I was really pleasantly surprised at the range of outfits that our model appeared in! The clothes were a fusion of Western and Kenyan influences and ranged from stunning dresses for special occasions to tops that could be worn with jeans. Knowing that these clothes had been made by Seed of Hope graduates made me realise how talented they were and what great training they had had as students.

Saturday was a completely different setting as I attended the finals of the John Packard Family Cup tournament hosted by Kibera Mpira Mtaani. This was held at Woodley Stadium on the outskirts of Kibera and I walked there with Elimu FC. This is the football team made up of children who use Kibera Mpira Mtaani’s resource centre for after-school tuition and we met up with them when we took two visitors to the resource centre before heading to the football event. As I watched the football matches and took more photographs, I listened to the MC announcing that 119 teams had taken part and over 450 matches had been played in the tournament. He was full of praise for the work that Vision Africa has done for the Kibera community and the support given to Kibera Mpira Mtaani. Watching the determination on the players’ faces, the tension as penalties were taken and the absolute joy as teams won their final match, it was an honour knowing that Vision Africa had made it possible.

 There was no time to rest as on Sunday I headed up to Kandara Children’s Home for a visit. It’s always great to go back to the place where my Kenyan adventure began and as always I was met with small children running down the hill to meet me for their hugs. What I hadn’t expected was the tour I was given by some of the boys. A group aged between about 9 and 14 years old had taken it upon themselves to grow some crops. A couple of years ago, some of the older children had been taught about growing things in old tyres – how to use manure, what would grow etc. A few weeks ago, the younger ones decided to try this themselves and planted seeds for maize and sukuma (kales) and also some beans. One of them had even planted the stones from 3 mangoes he had eaten and now has three seedlings for mango trees. I was so impressed as they showed me their own small gardens and they were full of pride and asked me to take photos and send them to all the people who had volunteered at the home over the past few years. I was more than happy to do this and am proud to share the story here.

Thankfully Tuesday was a public holiday so there was time to catch up and finish editing and posting some of the 750 photos I took over the weekend. Let’s see what the next week has in store!

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