Alright, these are the last of my videos for now. I will try get more videos that aren't just singing and dancing.
These kids are so precious to me. They are the kids from Empowering Lives Children's Home. This is the first place I went to on my first trip to Kenya in 2005. I am privileged to be able to watch them grow up. Over the past couple years they have slowly formed a choir. They were able to record their own songs, make a video, get some fancy outfits and perform out in the community. They have called themselves the "Tumaini children's choir" ('tumaini' means 'hope' in swahili). It is a special treat to watch them perform. Hope you enjoy (especially those who know these kids!)
This first video is my 22nd birthday. I remember being quite sad in the morning missin' my peeps back home but my classmates very quickly made me feel loved abundantly. My roommate made me a cake and we had a big party. However, as you will see, their version of 'Happy Birthday' is much...rowdier...than ours.
We went to a school just down the road to speak to them however just as we got there the rain came pouring down. The roof was tin so you couldn't hear the person next to you with the rain pelting down on the tin roof. So to kill time we sang. It was a blast!
We travelled to a slum on the other side of the city to attend one of their sunday services. The slum was a whole bunch of broken down cement buildings with extremely dusty and dirty paths seperating them. Then, all of a sudden, you see this bright blue tin church right in the middle of it. It was quite a lively church. We squished in like sardines in a can as beads of sweat dripped down our faces.
This was one of the most popular (and one of my fav) songs in Kenya this year. We organized a big youth seminar but before the sessions we had to do a little worship session with Senior, our talented musician.
When you pretty much spend every hour of everyday with the same people for 4 months, you grow really close to one another. This video I took while we went on a weekend camping trip. We all got on this rickety wharf (which looked like it would cave in at any moment) that was perched above a lake that was known for its dangerous hippos and we had a little impromptu singing session. These moments would happen all the time. They were so precious.
Yesterday, after another tough day, I decided to look through some of the short video clips that I had taken during various adventures this past year. They bring so much joy to me. They are more than photos. When I watch them, I can remember how I felt, what it smelt like, what the atmosphere was like, and so on. So I have uploaded a few of them and will be sharing them on here every few days or so. Most of them, if not all of them, are singing and dancing. I think my favourite part of Kenya is the singing and dancing and worship styles. Kenyans have such rhythm and these loud, almost boisterous, voices.
Ok, these two videos are of the 800 girls that we visited when we went to their high school in september. I love girls! I have such a huge heart for the young girls of Kenya so this weekend was so nourishing and amazing for me. Now, I guess this school has a special theme song which I had never heard before. Our first night there, they started playing the beats on the keyboard and all of a sudden all the girls went crazy. They started screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs and jumping around. It was so much fun. Imagine being in a room with 800 girls with such excitement.
