Rhapsody of Hope
How Music Changes the Lives of Forgotten Kenyan Children
By DENA GUDAITIS
KARIOBANGI, Kenya, March 5, 2007 —
Beads of sweat form on the foreheads of the nearly 100 students attending Kariobangi Community Outreach school. The students are crammed into a poorly ventilated, tin choir hall. They wave their arms and tap their feet as if to a metronome. The room reverberates with the sound of their voices singing in succinct harmony.
The choir hall provides their refuge from the outside world. The children's homes are shacks and makeshift buildings. They jump over open sewers and trash-filled alleys on their route to school. Even the slum's name, Kariobangi, is a drug reference to marijuana in the Swahili language.
Despite their hardships, the students persevere. Enrolled in Kenya's free public education system, the 375 Kariobangi students are also part of the United Nations' World Food Program, which serves 84,000 children in Nairobi's slums.
"Students [need to] build encouragement and self-esteem," choir director Tobias Omondi-Otieno says. "They need to be motivated from the teachers and have a feeling that they are appreciated. Music plants the seed for [the student] to do his or her best and sing from the inside."
Prize-Winning Chorus
During their practice session, the students work on a song called "The Lullaby." The piece is one of Omondi-Otieno's original compositions. In a country where offspring are central to a marriage and those without children are stigmatized, Omondi-Otieno, at 34, has no children of his own but happily serves as a paternal figure to all his students, a quarter of whom are HIV-AIDS orphans.
"I tell them that the life they are currently living or the lives that their parents have lived are not the life they will live," Omondi-Otieno says.
Their facial expressions reflect this mantra. They chant the chorus and cry the refrain.
Under his three-year tenure, the choir achieved national recognition and top awards. In 2006, the students won first prize against private schools who had more funding and educational resources. Kariobangi Community Outreach school plans to defend its reputation in the district competition this June.
"Students are not practicing only to win, they're learning to appreciate working together," Omondi-Otieno says. "Performing is an experience, not an end goal."