Senior Trip CAS reflection

Over the course of our Intercultural Trip, I was able to experience all of the aspects of CAS: we had the opportunity to participate in many different activities, such as snorkelling, using beach debris to make art, and helping a local community build a dispensary and a tree nursery.

The weeklong trip involved a lot of hard work, both physically and mentally: as a group, we started to excavate a section of ground where the dispensary would be built. This instalment is highly beneficial for the community surrounding the site where we were staying, as the nearest emergency medical facility is a half hour away from the village on a boda-boda. So we broke the surface of the ground and dug rectangular trenches around 2 or 3 feet deep and 1 or 2 feet wide. Over at the tree nursery, we learned about the community’s lack of water reserves, and also about their need for charcoal, or any type of cooking heat source: their surroundings are very sparse due to deforestation, which is why we’re building a tree nursery to provide shade, water and a cool environment for the community. We levelled and cleared the ground, mixed concrete, filled plastic bottles that would be part of the shallow trench walls and ground, and we covered the base of the two trenches in a sandy concrete mix.

The organisation we were staying with, Camps International, also talked to our group about their projects to re-use waste water from the camp, and cleaning it naturally by using a large pool filled with pond weed, which, by moving in the water, would clean the water passing through it.

Having the chance to participate in these life-altering projects was really inspiring, as it showed me once again just how privileged our lifestyle is, and how we have a moral obligation to help the less privileged in any way we can. Seeing some of the villagers, especially an old woman whose children had abandoned her, and whose neighbours stole from, was mentally taxing, as I compared my financial and social situation with hers. I think that our IC trips are therefore beneficial not only to us the students, in that it is culturally enriching, but it also allows us to make a visible amelioration in certain communities, which is really what the trips are about.

Even though our week was centred on providing our physical services to the community, we also had the opportunity to visit the beach of Diani and go snorkelling or diving. I went snorkelling, and on our way out from the port, we had an amazing glimpse of two groups of dolphins: 6 bottlenose dolphins and 2 humpback dolphins. We snorkelled around a reef, and though we saw a great variety of fish, anemones, coral and even a ray, it’s quite obvious that a large amount of the reef is dead: there is white and grey broken coral everywhere, and some areas are completely lifeless, whereas others contain only a small amount of life. I did have a wonderful experience, as the underworld is completely different from the world above the surface, and its wildlife is just as interesting and noteworthy as the wildlife on solid ground. But my experience also reminded me just how fragile the Kenyan coast ecosystem (amongst many others) is, and how humans have affected it more than any other animal in a negative manner, and now we need to reduce this negative impact.

We had the chance to participate in a beach clean up, where we collected parts of (or whole) flip-flops that had been washed up on the shore. We also collected general trash, and we mainly found bits of plastic, metal, glass and paper.

We put the flip-flops to good use, as we spent the afternoon on the beach, (which was a nice period for relaxing), doing a flip-flop workshop. In this picture, you can see a giant turtle made out of 1000+ flip-flops. It was made by the same organisation that taught us how to make objects, such as key rings, balls, turtles and fish out of flip-flops. It’s a good method of raising awareness of pollution and its effect on the environment.

Overall, this trip was really instructive and enriching, but the best part of it was that I knew that I helped in the amelioration of a Kenyan community’s way of living.