| | | | Kenya 2006 | Willow Wheelers in Kenya, 2006
| | by Catherine Phil MacCarthy April 2006, Photos: David MacCarthy | | | By April 30, the Willow Wheels will set off once again with Garda escort like a presidential procession, on their 100 mile cycle route from Blackrock College on the Rock Road, to Merrion Square through the centre of town via Clare street, Westland Row, Pearse St, 0 Connell St, Parnell Square, Nth Circular road, Navan Road, and Dunshaughlin. The vivid colourful tribe of cyclists that even the Masai would be proud of for their stamina, rest at Tara Cross for a short break, then continue on to Trim, Boliver, Ratharney and Kinnegad where they stop for lunch. Afterwards the long haul leads back to Dublin via Enfiled, Kilcock, Maynooth and Leixlip where the group are joined by up to forty fifth class cyclists, eleven year olds who lead the route home via Chapelizod and Islandbridge, down The Quays, through the East Link toll bridge onto Strand Road (Sandymount) past Merrion Gates into the last stretch along Rock Road to Blackrock College. The largest group are boys between twelve and fifteen years old. The Willow Wheelers is the biggest unaffiliated cycling club in the country. The boys and those adults who support them take one day out of their Cycling Calendar to give something back via their Club and the Holy Ghost Missions.
Their motto is: Water for Africa, Bricks for Brazil, Camels for Pokot. | | | | Last year the club managed to raise eighty thousand euro, fifty thousand of which went to Kenya. Each year a group of adults and boys at their own expense, travel to the projects to see where and how the money is spent and to assess new applications. As we left Amsterdam for Nairobi on the morning of February 9 there was a light blanket of snow on the ground and it was –2 degrees. When the plane touched down that Thursday evening at 8.30 it was a balmy 27o in Nairobi. We had flown from winter into summer and Dublin was only three hours behind on the clock. |
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| | | | | The group of about thirty Willow Wheelers (not a bicycle in sight; five transition year students, seven fifth years, one sixth year, and five past pupils, as well as fourteen adults) who travelled with Christy McDaid were met at the airport by Fr. Sean McGovern our guide throughout the journey, who helped us load our bags onto the truck before we boarded our bus for The Boulevard Hotel. |
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| | | | Twenty four hours later, with Fr. Pat O Toole at the Primary school (St Marys) in the compound in the middle of Makuru, on Friday afternoon, the smell of poverty, of rotting waste is everywhere. Streets run with open sewers and the fresh water supply is easily contaminated. Inside the school gates, small children, heads shaved in traditional fashion, the boys in blue sweaters and the girls in blue gingham dresses clamber to greet us with “How are you?” and “Welcome to Kenya.” It gave a tiny glimpse of how pop-stars are mobbed for their very presence. The children sang songs, their wide dark eyes shining, and danced in Class 6 (bidding us welcome and praying for water) and the group were offered - what must be the rarest treat for those children – precious sodas (Sprite, Coca cola, Krest, and Fanta.) | | | | There was a request for a fund for school supplies, medicines, and counselling. Then individual children placed their small hands in ours and led us through the suffocating streets of their village, part of a huge slum housing 250,000 people. They proudly named the streets we crossed and uncrossed to avoid sewage and strewn rubbish, as we quelled the urge to breathe. Of all senses, smell is the most involuntary and one of the most intimate. |
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| | | | In temperatures of over 35C, with no shade from the sun, the district that is home to children such as the nine- year- old child Este, dressed in kahki scout dress and cap, ready for her club on Friday afternoons, whose father died in 2003 and whose mother raises five children alone, has the foul, revolting stench of a rubbish tip. She pointed out with confidence the make-shift hotels, hospital, dentist’s, (all shacks of corrugated roof, mud-floor), the tiny shebeen with its Guinness sign, the distant train line, an imaginary escape route. | | | | If the squalor of that neighbour hood was the most intolerable any of us had ever experienced, there was no doubt in any of our minds about the dignity and courage of the children caught in that burning cauldron; five, seven and nine year old boys and girls spoke of their school, the shortage of clothing, food and water, to the privileged visitors from Ireland, articulate and eloquent in their need. The tall smiling Rock boys finished the 30 minute walkabout trailing three or four children from their hands, who never wanted to let go. Eleven-year-old Sarah, abandoned by her father, whose mother died in childbirth a couple of months before sobbed as the bus drove away. | | | | The facts are stark. According to a recent report from the Kenya news agency, two thirds of slum inhabitants are under thirty; over 35% of them never reach the age of 5 years. The ones we met are the survivors. They asked about the bicycle logo on our t-shirts. They heard about the 100-mile cycle with great wonder and hope. The boys distributed copy-books, pens, markers, footballs, sweets. They left Makuru determined to raise more money, and afterwards at a meeting were very clear about the priorities for funding and in what order. Water. Health. Education. Seeing the place would intensify the effort | | | | Everywhere we carried bottled water in our hands. We were constantly thirsty and mindful of the need to buy it in the mornings at the hotel at two euros a litre.
The dry red dust of Keyna spoke of the draught everywhere, and the knowledge became palpable under our skins. |
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| | | | The need for the mapping of ground water, the drilling of bore holes, the installation of pumps and water tanks, and the development of irrigation systems is great and should be the first task of any government. So that people are not dependent on the annual rains that fall between late March and June. | | | | Everywhere people spoke of the government’s corruption, of the need of the west to realise that no aid sent via government agencies, the EU, World Bank or UN reaches the people of Keyna. Word on the street says that it’s siphoned into private accounts in Swiss banks by corrupt ministers. By the end of the following week, we would meet someone who grew up in the slums and is now building a Community Centre to teach vocational skills in another part of town. Hope occasionally springs eternal | | | | If the group were ever in doubt as to how the funds might help, the following week would banish the slightest one. Next came the stunning rural district of Pokot overlooking the Great Rift Valley, over seven hours by road, the last couple on an un-surfaced rocky track. Barpello is hilly and stony (home to snakes and mosquitos) with tall spreading acacias dotting the landscape overlooking an immense plain with hazy blue mountains in the distance. We were welcomed by Fr. David Conway and his team. The district is blessed with a good fresh water spring. We were invited to see the camels that the Willow Wheelers funded (a camel to each of twenty families in Pokot.) The tribe are a pastoral people who depend on herds of goat, cattle and camel. In times of draught, camels are the most resistant and provide nutritious sustenance by way of milk and cheese. After a barbeque under the stars around log fires hosted by the intrepid Sr. Rebecca from Texas, we rose next morning to attend a community mass on Sunday, a colourful traditional affair that involves drums, tambourines, chants, ululating and dancing over a couple of hours. Again the children and young mothers in vivid colourful clothes, were heartfelt in their thanks for the gift that means life to them. Behind their happy faces, lurks the struggle with severe malnutrition, anaemia, malaria, and aids. The young teacher Nadumo (one of two whose training was sponsored by the funds) showed us round a new boarding school that is only four months from completion and has a catchment area of about twenty-five miles. Next year the school will open with fifty new pupils. (It costs 300 euro to sponsor a child for one year in that boarding school. The money pays for tuition, and accommodation.) | | | | We went to Marigat to visit a kindergarten run by Sr Joan from Manchester, fifty-two years in Kenya along with five sisters who teach everything including English. It is no small source of pride that their African pupils speak English like Jack Charlton with a strong Lancashire accent. Next the group donated medicines volunteered by Irish pharmacies for the dispensary and Aids clinic, in a district where high numbers of the population have aids. Outside the door, three or four teenage girls sat waiting for anti-retroviral drugs for Aids treatment, the same age as the fifth year boys, or younger. |
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| | | | Outside the door, three or four teenage girls sat waiting for anti-retroviral drugs for Aids treatment, the same age as the fifth year boys, or younger. Inside, the pharmacist in the group was a bit shocked to find that the only medicines in stock were a few packets of asprin and paracetamol. | | | | At the community centre in Marigat we were visited by a young Holy Ghost priest Fr Arnold from Tangulbai, West Pokot who requested funds for a water pump reminding us that “water is life.” In his district the well has been drilled and people travel for days for water. At the moment even though there is no shortage of food (maize and beans are traditional food) people are starving because there is not enough water to cook it. A water pump would supply water to 11,000 people. The project needs careful assessment and research and lies in a remote district. Later in the week we were left in no doubt as to the benefit of such a project at a school run by Sisters of the Precious Blood in Nairobi. The school is proud of its water tank funded by Willow Wheelers that holds an abundance of clear cold water for three hundred pupils at the school. Since the visit two years ago, Mother Hildegaard and her sisters have transformed the school and developed a thriving vegetable garden that includes a banana plantation. We viewed another water tank and girls boarding school built by funds from Willow Wheelers in Kebwezi at a Community Training Centre near Tsavo. The skills developed include Carpentry and Joinery, Metal work, Shoe-making, and Dress making. That day outside the school, the carcasses of fifteen cows lay bloated and rotting along the roadside. The young men and women sang their welcome and their appreciation of funds showing us that life goes on despite dire conditions. They would graduate in a year with valuable skills. | | | | | Every year since1991 the Willow Wheelers Cycling Club has embarked on a 100 mile cycle led by Christy McDaid to raise charity funds. In 1991 £3000 was raised by about twenty cyclists and donated to The Holy Ghost Mission in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then humanitarian projects in Brazil, Angola, The Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya have been supported by Willow Wheelers. |
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| | | Last year about one hundred and fifty people took part in the cycle. Every euro raised is given directly to projects that raise water, supply food, medicine, education and training. The long rains are due. By late April hopefully they will be falling on the red earth and immensely wide plains, and high distant mountains, unequalled in beauty and greatness.
| | | And hopefully the people of Kenya will have reason to sing and dance once more. You can help by sponsoring a cyclist. Or by joining the cycle and cycling yourself. As the sponsor card says:
| | "Get your spoke in!" | | | Copyright © 2005 Willow Wheelers Cycling Club
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