In April, Katharina Weiland-Zejewski, volunteer director of the widows’ project, Anne-Kristin Henker, programme manager, and Nicholas Koech, former sponsored child and now member of the board of Dentists for Africa (DfA), travelled to Kenya with their families. As volunteers, their destination was the St. Monica Village widows’ cooperative in Nyabondo in the west of the country, around 300 kilometres (about eight hours’ drive) from Nairobi, which also houses the DfA sponsorship office. They spent a week here working on new projects, distributing donated goods and supporting their own projects. Over the next few days, Katharina Weiland-Zejewski will report here on the eventful days and encounters within the dental, sponsorship and widow projects.
Project trip part 1: Arrival in Nyabondo – How our journey began
Finally! After eleven years, the time has come for me to travel to Kenya again. My first project visit in 2001 as a dental assistant was to the dental project. Since 2008, I have been coordinating the widows’ cooperative on a voluntary basis from Germany and have visited the country several times in this capacity. This time, I am not travelling alone. My two children are the reason for my long absence and now also the reason for the upcoming trip. For me, in addition to my work for Dentists for Africa, this trip is also about teaching values, gratitude and thinking outside the box, to show my two boys that the way we live is not the norm for everyone and should not be taken for granted.
We are setting off on 10 April 2025. The children have been given a day off school, and the headmaster and their teachers are enthusiastic about our plans. My husband, the children and I are flying from Düsseldorf to Frankfurt, where we will spend the night before meeting up with our small ‘travel group’ the next morning.
Our travel group consists of Nicholas Koech (2nd Chairman of Dentists for Africa), his wife Sandra – a long-standing DfA volunteer as a practising dentist and former manager of the DfA sponsorship project – with their children Zola (6) and Zuri (2), Jenny Kühn (Sandra’s sister), Anne-Kristin Henker (DfA programme manager) with her children Eleni (9) and Jakob (6), and us, Katharina Weiland-Zejewski (DfA widow cooperative project manager), my husband Marco and our children Laurenz (9) and Leander (6).
Project and arrival
We have a long list of tasks to complete, as well as more than 210 metres of fabric which we used for our projects. Somewhat uncertain as to whether our plan will succeed, with six children and such a large travel group, we arrive in Nairobi in the evening. There, our group grows by one more person: Collins, Nicholas’ brother, joins us and accompanies us for the next two weeks.
Even non-medical professionals can volunteer with DfA in local projects. Katharina Weiland-Zejewski’s group will be active in the widows’ cooperative and the cooperative’s own kindergarten, building playground equipment and helping to create a cooperative medicinal herb garden, among other things. In addition, Katharina Weiland-Zejewski, as project manager, will launch and supervise two new projects in collaboration with the widows: firstly, the distribution of the medicinal plant Artimisia Afra and training on its use as part of the Easter tombola, and secondly, the production of washable nappies and sanitary towels, as well as training and distribution.
After a night in Nairobi, we travel to western Kenya in a rented bus. The children are thrilled, riding without seat belts and even running around during the journey – they have never experienced anything like this before. This relaxed way of travelling makes the eight hours pass quickly. We stop at a viewpoint and look out over the Rift Valley, the East African Rift Valley and the cradle of humanity. The view is indescribable, and the first animals are already in sight. Rock hyraxes, monkeys and wild cats greet us during our short break.
Towards evening, we arrive in Sondu – a bustling town with a huge market that stretches along the main road. It is located four kilometres from Nyabondo, where there is accommodation for all of us. Each family moves into a small cottage in the middle of a large garden before heading to the first meeting at the St. Monica Village Widows’ Cooperative the next morning.