Ikue Matsumoto
The Ljungstrom Brothers Musical Evening
Fundraising for The Kipungani Schools Trust
Story
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When my brothers and I went to Kenya, we expected to do little but stare at the fantastic sights the plains, beaches and the Kenyan people have to offer. But once we arrived we realised the reality was very different.
The people clearly lived a completely different life, both socially, with completely different (yet no less spectacular and rich) traditions and cultures, but also the people lived in communities that most of us cannot conceive as human living quarters. This is in no way saying that they lived in squalor in tiny government-built housing parks, but their lifestyle paradigm was far more basic. The houses were built out of bricks consisting of dung and straw, and had the same acrid smell that can only be compared to a cattle farm on a hot day. But the people wore the biggest smiles I had ever seen- though their lives were not perfect, they were happy, and that, in my opinion is beautiful.
Once our journey left the Masai Mara, we travelled to Lamu, a coastal region of Kenya, the austere, quaint conditions changed drastically. The flat plains were exchanged with familiar hotels aimed at tourists. On the surface, and through my naive eyes, it looked as if the people were treated well and that they had a fairly high standard of living and education. But of course this was not the case. The following day we took the short boat ride to a real Kenyan Village in Lamu. It was there that we saw the work that The Kipungani Schools Trust was doing to help and better the lives of the people. The School we visited was mainly for young children, approximately six years old on average, and the pens and pencils we had bought in a Sainsbury's at home for, in reality, the price of a nice lunch, an inconsequential sum for most in the UK, seemed to make a real difference to their lives. Their faces lit up with joy and, unsurprisingly, it felt good to make their day.
After this fantastic journey I have travelled to many different places across the continents, and met with a plethora of faces, and visited many schools in many developing countries. But none have struck me as equally genuine in their plight for development and education. I remember vividly a school outside Phnom Penh in Cambodia where the headmaster specifically requested that we give all donations we have to him, so that he could 'distribute them fairly'. Judging by the dilapidated state of the school, and how fine his attire was, it was clear that he was being more fair to some than others. This sort of corruption is inevitable in countries struggling to develop relying on top-down charity. What distinguishes Kipungani from the other charities which support Africa is that it spends no money which it receives from donations on funding its own administration (that is done pro-bono by the charity), and that all its projects are funded bottom-up. This means that the money is spent hiring local workers to use local materials to make schools- there is no series of middle-men to take their cuts.
I know that in reality, the pens I gave out, will not have changed Kenya, or even that village, but fixing a leaky roof in a schoolroom, or building a whole new facility, or even making sporting facilities available could. It could bring Kenya out of stagnancy and bring Africa into the international world, as a real international competitor, as a continent united, prosperous, and most importantly, happy.
Lukas, Leo and Ludvig Ljungstrom
When my brothers and I went to Kenya, we expected to do little but stare at the fantastic sights the plains, beaches and the Kenyan people have to offer. But once we arrived we realised the reality was very different.
The people clearly lived a completely different life, both socially, with completely different (yet no less spectacular and rich) traditions and cultures, but also the people lived in communities that most of us cannot conceive as human living quarters. This is in no way saying that they lived in squalor in tiny government-built housing parks, but their lifestyle paradigm was far more basic. The houses were built out of bricks consisting of dung and straw, and had the same acrid smell that can only be compared to a cattle farm on a hot day. But the people wore the biggest smiles I had ever seen- though their lives were not perfect, they were happy, and that, in my opinion is beautiful.
Once our journey left the Masai Mara, we travelled to Lamu, a coastal region of Kenya, the austere, quaint conditions changed drastically. The flat plains were exchanged with familiar hotels aimed at tourists. On the surface, and through my naive eyes, it looked as if the people were treated well and that they had a fairly high standard of living and education. But of course this was not the case. The following day we took the short boat ride to a real Kenyan Village in Lamu. It was there that we saw the work that The Kipungani Schools Trust was doing to help and better the lives of the people. The School we visited was mainly for young children, approximately six years old on average, and the pens and pencils we had bought in a Sainsbury's at home for, in reality, the price of a nice lunch, an inconsequential sum for most in the UK, seemed to make a real difference to their lives. Their faces lit up with joy and, unsurprisingly, it felt good to make their day.
After this fantastic journey I have travelled to many different places across the continents, and met with a plethora of faces, and visited many schools in many developing countries. But none have struck me as equally genuine in their plight for development and education. I remember vividly a school outside Phnom Penh in Cambodia where the headmaster specifically requested that we give all donations we have to him, so that he could 'distribute them fairly'. Judging by the dilapidated state of the school, and how fine his attire was, it was clear that he was being more fair to some than others. This sort of corruption is inevitable in countries struggling to develop relying on top-down charity. What distinguishes Kipungani from the other charities which support Africa is that it spends no money which it receives from donations on funding its own administration (that is done pro-bono by the charity), and that all its projects are funded bottom-up. This means that the money is spent hiring local workers to use local materials to make schools- there is no series of middle-men to take their cuts.
I know that in reality, the pens I gave out, will not have changed Kenya, or even that village, but fixing a leaky roof in a schoolroom, or building a whole new facility, or even making sporting facilities available could. It could bring Kenya out of stagnancy and bring Africa into the international world, as a real international competitor, as a continent united, prosperous, and most importantly, happy.
Lukas, Leo and Ludvig Ljungstrom