While Kenya boasts beautiful landscapes, it has a complicated past and natural psyche. This coastal region is awash with luxurious beaches, wild animals, national parks and lake fishing. You’ll find yourself in the county of Kisumu, right next to Lake Victoria, in the small town of Muhoroni where you’ll experience the kindness of the Kenyans.
Kenya is stepping into the future. You can help with this process by volunteering in one of the many projects available in the town of Muhoroni, which lies 30 kilometers to the east of Kisumu city. It is mostly inhabited by the Luo tribe with a population of around 120,000 people almost entirely depending on subsistence farming (though there are 3 sugar factories). The people of Muhoroni are always warm and welcoming and the smiles on their faces tell it all. Muhoroni has a warm weather of about 25 Celsius all year round.
As a volunteer, you will have the excitement to gain an even deeper understanding and appreciation of a foreign land and culture through humanitarian service, language and intercultural training, and exploration.
Depending on the numbers of volunteers and the project currently most needed, you will be assigned to one of the following:
WORK PROJECTS
Help build a home for a family in need.
This program is the most popular in our community-based programs. Many families live in huts made of mud (soil) walls and have grass thatched roofs. These weak structures can wear out easily with time, get blown away by winds and leak during the rainy season. Grass thatched huts are also generally single roomed and shared with children as well as a cooking area. Even the privileged families with houses have rusted corrugated iron sheets which often leak.
Many families suffer from diseases such as pneumonia, coughs due to cold nights. We work with such families to upgrade them from a grass thatched shelter to iron roofed homes with 3 large rooms comfortable enough to provide a family with a simple privacy. Those with already worn out and eroded iron roofs are also upgraded to the modern type which does not rust nor corrode, even in rainy seasons.
‘Water for Life’
Clean and safe water is nearly impossible to find. Mothers search for it in vain and children gather dirty water when nothing else is available. As they do, hope is lost when inevitable sickness and poverty follow. Working closely with these communities, listening to their needs and providing much-needed water solutions will be a fulfilling experience to a volunteer. Our desire is to see more schools and communities have access to clean and safe water. Borehole drilling is quite scientific, but volunteers are welcome to help with building water ways and lay pipes with concrete to families who need water. They will do this with the help of local plumbers.
School Refurbishing
Many schools in our community are in deplorable conditions and they have long been neglected. Children must learn in classrooms with crumbling walls, floors with cracks and stone seats due to lack of desks. Be part of this community and help refurbish such schools and help keep the children safe while in school to enhance their learning atmosphere and chance for a better future.
Projects vary depending on the number of volunteers, which projects were finished (or not) with the prior group, what priorities have changed, weather conditions, which supplies are available, and often the interest and fitness level of the volunteers. For these reasons, specific projects are often not fixed until the week prior to your arrival and can even change upon arrival.
We welcome you to work with us on these meaningful projects!
FOOD AND LODGING
You will be settled together in a lovely renovated guest house with hot running water, flushing toilet and WIFI. Additional services can be arranged.
There are 6 bedrooms with twin beds so two people can stay in one room, and 12 people can stay at any given time. However, with a larger group, accommodation will be arranged at hotels that can accommodate larger groups. Information will be provided in such situations. Hotel rates will remain the same as those of the guest house.
Kenyan food is typically continental and comprises chicken, eggs, pork, beef, vegetables, lentils, and beans and is served with chapati, bread, rice and Ugali. Breakfast and dinner will be served at your accommodations, and lunch will be served at the project site.
LEISURE AND ACTIVITIES
You can enjoy a boat ride around Lake Victoria where you can see hippos swimming, visit the Equator Line, Kisumu Museum, and Impala Sanctuary. Our coordinator will introduce you to the local culture of the Luo tribe as well as invite volunteers to participate in an optional church service. Many volunteers chose to participate in a 2-3-day safari to the expansive Masai Mara Game Reserve known for its famous Wildebeest Migration after the program (paid for separately and at additional cost to a for-profit separate venture). Volunteers are encouraged to take this time off, cool off, and experience what Kenyan nature can provide!
Please inform us ahead of time if you are interested in the safari so we can prepare the necessary arrangements.
Safari to Maasai Mara Game Reserve itinerary - This is an ADD ON OPTIONS: 3 days/2-night Masai Mara Safari, adds $990 per person, not operated by Globe Aware but we can help you book.
The Massai Mara reserve charges $200 per person per day for park fees as of July 1st 2024. These costs have been added to the overall cost of the safari.
DAILY ACTIVITIES
Day 1
Arrival and pick up from the airport and check in at the hotel. Depending on the time of arrival, Volunteers will have breakfast in the hotel or have 10:00 am tea/coffee at the site at 10:00 am then proceed to start work.
This day we are building a house for a family with very few resources. They are a family of 5.They have three little children who share with them their little grass thatched house. All building materials and local team will already be at the site when the volunteers arrive. Building work starts immediately after the 10:00 am tea/coffee and will be followed by lunch break between 12:30 - 1:30 pm.After lunch we will get back to work and break for the day at around 4.30pm and the house is handed over to the family and just in time to prepare for dinner to be served at 5pm and thereafter drop off to the hotel for the night.
Day 2
Being a Sunday, it will be free time for the volunteers to have leisure. After breakfast in the hotel, we leave for Kisumu town and arrive at the Dunga beachfront at around 8:30 am to take a boat ride tour of Lake Victoria locating and spotting Hippos that roam the beaches in the morning hours.
The Lake Victoria boat ride will be for 2 hours till 10:30 when we proceed back to the village for our Sunday church service starting at 11:30 am. If there is a minister/pastor/priest among the volunteers then he/she is most welcome to minister/preach the word. At the end of the service, volunteers introduce themselves so the congregation gets to meet them. Lunch will be served between 1:30 - 2:30 pm when we head back to Kisumu to visit Kisumu Museum, arriving there around 3:00 pm. On this day dinner will be at a restaurant in Kisumu followed by a drop-off at the hotel around 6:00 pm for the night.
Day 3
On this day we leave the hotel at 8:30 am after breakfast and head to the site and work starts to build a house for a widow (Mary 50 years old) who lives with her two grandchildren sharing a dilapidated house. This house was built way back in 1992 and has stood the test of time but it’s now old and the iron sheets are rusted and have holes which leak whenever it rains causing their beddings and the floor to be wet even with light rainfall. The local team together with all the building materials will be ready at the site.
At 10:00 am tea/coffee will be served and thereafter volunteers continue with work. Lunch will be ready at 12:30 pm and thereafter we proceed with work with another tea/coffee break at 3:00 pm. This day’s workload finishes around 4.30 pm. The house is handed over to the family. Dinner will be served from 5.00pm and volunteers dropped off at the hotel around 6pm for the night.
Day 4
This will be the toughest days of volunteer activities as we begin to lay down our church slab construction. Currently, it’s a tented church with a congregation of more than 200 people. It’s always very hot sometimes 92 degrees and holding services at times becomes difficult so the plan is to build a new and better church. The church will also serve as a resource center where locals come to find information and free community meals are provided there. Volunteers helping to build this church would be a huge blessing to the congregation as well as to the communities around. They will have a better place to worship and there will also be a dining room, a kitchen, and a computer library where people can come to learn computer skills which are currently being offered only in cities and towns. There will also be two separate bedrooms where families whose houses have been destroyed by floods during heavy rains can stay temporarily before getting a new house. There will also be two bathrooms a laundry area and two adjacent rooms to give shelter to vulnerable children and children living with HIV/Aids. These are children who are orphans, neglected and abandoned.
All building materials and simple tools will already be available at the site. Volunteers should take a lot of precautions to avoid any injuries.
Day 5
- 8:00 am: After breakfast head to the site from where volunteers will be briefed on the tasks they need to do. Volunteers to clear the site of all grass, shrubs, and the like, cart away or burn arisings, dig out the thick top vegetable soil, and spread on site.
- 10:00 am: Tea/coffee break and a little rest.
- 10:45 am: Dig normal soil 2 feet deep perimeter foundation trenches starting from the ground level.
- 12:30 pm: Lunch
- 3:00 pm: Tea/coffee break.
- 4:00 pm: Dinner
- 5:00 - 6:00 pm after which volunteers are dropped off at their hotel.
Day 6
- 8:00 am: Depart the hotel after breakfast and head to the site. Volunteers will mix concrete blinding (Insitu) 50mm thick insitu plain concrete grade 15/20mm; mix 1:3:6 in blinding poured on the foundation trenches and column bases.
- 10:00 am: Tea/coffee break and a little rest.
- 10:45 am: Volunteers are guided on using High tensile deformed bars for reinforcement (assorted bars to Strip Footing) to Ditto; but to Column Bases and Ditto; but to columns.
- 12:30 pm: Lunch.
- 3:00 pm: tea/coffee break.
- 3:30 pm: Sawn Formwork work to Vertical sides of strip foundation footing, Ditto; but to column bases, Ditto; but to columns, Horizontal sides/edges of ground floor bed and mix concrete insitu reinforced concrete grade 20/20mm; mix 1:2:4 to be poured on the Strip Foundation, column bases, and Columns.
- 4:00 pm: On the final day, we'd like to dedicate some time to review all the activities accomplished by our volunteers during their time with us and express our sincere gratitude to this wonderful group of volunteers!
- 5:00 pm: Dinner served, and volunteers dropped off at the hotel.
Safari to Maasai Mara Game Reserve
Day 7
After early breakfast, at around 6:30 am depart Ahero to the famous Maasai Mara and arrive at the Fig Tree Camp in time for lunch around 12pm. Spend your leisure time enjoying more wildlife adventures game drives. Set inside Masai Mara National Reserve, Fig Tree camp blends perfectly with its surrounding landscapes. The accent here is on the Maasai people and the fabulous wealth of wildlife, birdlife, and natural flora to be found in the fabled Masai Mara Game Reserve. Enjoy the game drives and locate the Big Five wild animals. Head back to the camp at around 6pm for dinner and rest.
Day 8
Spend the day in Masai Mara, Kenya’s most popular game reserve where you will have the best opportunity of spotting the Big Five – lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino and elephant, Game drives are flexible, with the option of going out with picnic lunch boxes to spend entire day in the park, or you can choose to have early morning and late afternoon game drives. You will also have the option of visiting a local Masai village (at a cost of US$25 per person charged separately and optional).All animals found in Kenya among the “big five” are found here. The Great Wildebeest Migration is one of the “Seven New Wonders of the World”. Nowhere in the world is there a movement of animals as immense as the wildebeest migration, over two million animals migrate from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to the greener pastures of the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya during July through to October. The migration has to cross the Mara River in the Masai Mara where crocodiles will prey on them. This is one of the highlights as the animals try and cross the Mara River alive. In the Masai Mara they will be hunted, stalked, and run down by the larger carnivores. The Masai Mara also has one of the largest densities of lions in the world.
Day 9
Being the last morning in Masai Mara, we start with early morning game drives from 6am and thereafter have breakfast at the camp at around 8:30am and then embark on the return journey to Nairobi with lunch en-route arriving around 1600 hours’ time with a drop off to the airport for flights back home.
End of Kenyan stay!
ARRANGING YOUR AIRFARE
There are no direct flights to Kisumu International Airport, so you will have to land in JKIA-Nairobi, then connect and arrive to Kisumu in the morning/afternoon hours. This is perfect for pick-up. We meet the volunteers at the airport passenger arrivals and there we will hold a PAGER with a Globe Aware sign.
All inland transportation will be provided to and from the program activities. It’s about 20 minutes’ drive to the accommodations and depending on the work site, at most 30 minutes from the accommodation. There is pickup and drop off to the airport
Return flights should be from JKIA-Nairobi if you do the Safari to Masai Mara, otherwise, you can book your return flight from Kisumu.
SAFETY AND SECURITY
No vaccinations are required but you can check with your personal doctor. The Aga Khan hospital and the Nairobi Hospital are the private, major hospitals available in Kisumu.
Volunteers are advised to stay together as a team and always consult us in case of any other needs/interests.
