If you have been following the blog, you know that I am working on a hygiene campaign for a local school. The focus of the campaign is hand washing and one of the most important parts of hand washing is using soap. It seems simple, but at a school where running water is a luxury, soap is not exactly readily available. Coincidentally, we got wind of a women's group in one of the slums who is making their own liquid soap and selling it for profit. We tracked them down and made our way to the Korgocho slum so we could learn the art of soap making as well. After getting ahold of a woman named Tina (soap-maker? booking agent? we weren't really sure) the day before, we set out in search of our soap-making lessons with nothing but the hard to pronounce name of a church (Careo Bungy??) and the promise that we would meet a man there who would take us into the slum. Kenya does not cease to surprise me. All according to a very vague plan, we were dropped off at the church, met by a delightful man named Bernard and guided to what turned out to be a soap-making workshop for the community. We had told the soap-maker that we would pay for the chemicals she needed to teach us....turns out we were the workshop sponsors. We were introduced to all the teachers and parents at the local school, shown a video about hygiene in Swahili and then taught how to make soap. Now we can teach the teachers at our schools too. Hopefully this will make hand washing sustainable. No worries, I will run a soap-making workshop when I get back to the states so all of you can learn :)
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