Around Town

FAFU: An Oasis Amid ‘Rotting Food, Human Waste and Burning Charcoal’

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On our first day in Kibera, Facing the Future, or “FAFU,” was likened to an oasis, and I’m not sure we fully comprehended the comparison until we had the opportunity to visit a couple of the students’ homes today. The first day we arrived we had taken, what appeared to be the main roadway through Kibera, and walked a side path the rest of the way to FAFU. I truly thought that we had gotten a glimpse into what Kibera was like, but today I see how truly naïve that assumption was. The slum is approximately the same size as Central Park, and the deeper you go into the mud and corrugated tin maze, the worse the living conditions become. There was a small trench that ran alongside the footpath, and it was filled with sewage and garbage.

Around Town

New Canaan Y Reps Welcomed at FAFU in Nairobi

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There are so many things I could write about today, and honestly, to look back and reflect on everything is somewhat overwhelming. Instead, I’m going to focus on one small part of the day that had a powerful, and I’m sure lasting, impact on the group: Our immediate arrival at Facing the Future in the Kibera Slum of Nairobi, Kenya. FAFU is not accessible by vehicle, as it is located on a very narrow dirt pathway. In order to reach the school, you need to have your vehicle drop you off and then walk the remainder of the way. It’s only a 5-minute walk, but in that short time you step across active railroad tracks and jump across a trench filled with waste.

Around Town

New Canaan YMCA Group Arrives in Nairobi, Kenya

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[Editor’s Note: This week, we are publishing posts from Julia Douglas of the New Canaan YMCA as she writes from Nairobi, Kenya, where she’s volunteering with a team to build a playground in the world’s second largest slum, Kibera.]

We arrived at Jomo Kenyatta Airport after more than 24 hours of travel, and the exhaustion quickly shifted to excitement as we stepped off of the plane. We had finally arrived in Kenya, our flights had been fantastic, and we were ready to begin this adventure. The initial visa and passport checks went smoothly, and we proceeded to fill the carts with luggage and duffle bags full of school supplies. We had 12 bags in total, most of them labeled with New Canaan YMCA logos, to say we stood out a little would be a gross understatement. We continued our preparations to leave the airport, and feet from the exit we were stopped by a customs official asking to speak to the leader of our group.

Around Town

Doing Good Abroad: New Canaan YMCA Reps Leave Friday for Africa’s Largest Slum

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[Editor’s Note: Starting Monday through next week, the New Canaan YMCA’s Julia Douglas will publish daily updates and photos of her observations and experiences from Kibera, the world’s second-largest slum, located outside Nairobi, Kenya. Sign up here for our daily newsletter to receive her posts first thing each morning, along with New Canaanite’s always-local news feed.]

Mary Coleman, membership director at the New Canaan YMCA, said she’s always wanted to participate in Peace Corps-type work. An especially well-traveled person already, having visited places such as India, Japan, China and Korea, in addition to Europe, Coleman believes that volunteering to provide manpower abroad would be “very fulfilling.”

“To participate and give back and learn and understand, and to better relate to the community again what it is we are doing here at the Y,” Coleman said Thursday afternoon from a meeting room at the South Avenue facility, with four other women who on Friday will leave together for a 10-day excursion to the largest slum in Africa. “I’m hoping it will be very sobering, life-altering, and that I will bring back some important messages to my family and the community.”

Coleman—along with 10 other people including the YMCA’s Nicki Jezairian, Carolynn Kaufman and Julia Douglas, as well as Anne Goebel, a Stamford Hospital nurse who serves as the Y’s wellness nurse coordinator—on Saturday night will arrive in Nairobi, Kenya, and travel the following day to Kibera, a slum of one million people living in an area about the size of Central Park. Under a partnership that dates back to 2007, the New Canaan YMCA has worked with a child development center in Kibera that provides food, clothing, classroom materials, medical attention and other essentials for hundreds of kids who live there.

Government

YMCA Exit Onto South Avenue To Become Single-Lane

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The New Canaan YMCA’s exit onto South Avenue soon will change from two lanes to one, following a recommendation from state transportation officials. A consulting firm that’s conducted a traffic study of the driveways and parking lots in the expanding facility will install shoulders and stripe the exit lane so that it’s 18 feet wide, “removing the signing that goes with two lanes—left-turn and right-turn only,” according to Michael Galante, executive vice president of Fairfield’s Frederick P. Clark Associates Inc.

“And that is accommodating their [Connecticut Department of Transportation officials’] concerns,” Galante told the Police Commission at its Feb. 25 meeting, held at the New Canaan Police Department. “The state looks at it like this: They would rather have the cars waiting longer in the driveway, rather than have the cars processing more traffic on two lanes.”

The change arises as the YMCA undergoes an expansion and Galante’s firm studies motor vehicle volumes in its driveways to determine the project’s impact on traffic. State officials recommended a similar change from two lanes to one at for the exit driveway at Saxe Middle School, which is set to undergo a rather large capital project next door.