A good thing, among many, about Bill Fahey is his singular focus on a specific goal. Which is not to say that there is necessarily a clear path to achieving that goal. In fact, there seldom is. When you work with Bill, the tasks to complete a given project are never easy because the goal is so worthwhile, the reward so dependent upon the work undertaken. This also means that the man is capable of completely exhausting you in ways you never knew you could be exhausted. You give yourself to the pursuit of the project because you believe. And if you believe, you believe until the undertaking is completed. And if you make it to the end of the project, you start working on the next vision on the horizon. And so in this way, if you believe you believe forever.

I am writing this from the coffee table of my friend Alex Baron's apartment in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York. Alex has kindly let me sleep on his couch and convert his table to a work station for my various freelance writing projects while I find that always elusive Brooklyn sublet apartment. As you can tell, I have little money at present. I eat slices of pizza and drink water. It was not a particularly frugal thing for a money-strapped 25-year old aspiring musician to spend $1250 on a plane ticket to East Africa. But such is my belief in Bill Fahey, the Andover Youth Services staff and the message that they, and by proxy me, are spreading not just to our hometown community but all around the world.

That's just to say there were reasons I found myself on a recent Friday afternoon, when most people my age were presumably gainfully employed at something, sitting in a tiny room in a brick house without electricity in a village of tin-roofed and mud huts 8,000 miles from my home amongst a few dozen Kenyans from the village of Kisii drinking Coca-Cola and eating white bread.

A village elder wearing a tattered fedora rose in the darkened room to say that as a child he had always run away when he saw white people coming. The sentiment, I am sure shared by many Kenyans of his generation, was that white people were in his country to take goods and land and, not too too long ago, people. The small presence of our group, and others like us, were responsible for a cataclysmic shift in the mind of this old man. We came to the village bringing art supplies and musical instruments and recording equipment. We were there to give and learn and understand.

There is a girl at the Okari School whose mother was a surgeon in Nairobi who died of disease. Her father was a soldier who was killed in Uganda. We sat on the soccer field one afternoon talking about the differences between American and Kenyan children. She asked me what was important to American youth and I stumbled to answer it (I think I gave a vague and rambling treatise on capitalism and why Americans can act very entitled and I would have forgiven her for falling asleep). But when I asked her what was important to Kenyan children above all else this 12-year old orphan in an impoverished region of a third world country told me, “love and kindness.”

Andover Youth Services helped me to realize that I was part of a community when I was a somewhat lost teenager who started playing music with my friends and was shown that there was a group of people in my hometown who wanted to help me allow that passion to grow.
That band developed into a lifelong pursuit. Slowly we began to play outside of our hometown. Then we made a record. Then we went on tour. The first time we played Cambridge, Mass.' famed rock club the Middle East, I wore my Andover Youth Services sweatshirt on stage. When we went on our first tour, it was Bill Fahey we called from a rest stop in Indiana. I think it was a way to simply say, we are out here in the middle of nowhere but we come from somewhere.

It was a similar feeling when the voices of the kids from the Okari School joined with ours on the morning of our departure as we performed alongside them in their dining room. A community can be a group of people in ones hometown. Or it can be two groups of people from across a very big ocean who share a set of beliefs. And if you believe, you believe forever.

-David Tanklefsky

The AYS all star team had some very specific goals that we wanted to accomplish while down at the Okari School.

The Okari Recording Sessions

Grimis, comprised of three of the Youth Services favorite people, Pete, Dave and Andy, agreed to travel with us to Okari to help record a CD. This may seem like a somewhat simple task; however it presented us with an array of challenges. We would need many things to make this happen, including but not limited to a sound engineer, microphones, mic stands, musical instruments, laptops, hard drives, cables, power strips, extension cords and much more. We were grateful to Tom Blanfard, also known as T2, for offering to taking time off from a very busy schedule at Notre Dame to travel with us across the globe as the AYS Crew sound engineer.

Our plan was to pack as much equipment as we could obtain in and around Andover and purchase the remainder of what we needed in Nairobi. On the first morning of our journey we headed into Nairobi and proceeded to haggle with a variety of local music shops. After 3 hours of endless bartering, the prices were agreed upon and thousands of Shillings were exchanged. The AYS crew then headed down a back alley with 4 guitars, an electric keyboard, 2 congo drums, a bass drum pedal and a variety of handheld percussion instruments. We were excited about our purchases and knew that once the recording was done and the children had learned a bit on how to use them, the instruments would be a phenomenal donation to the school.

We loaded up the van with the musical instruments and sound recording equipment, about 100lbs. of art supplies, 180 t-shirts for the school, underwear and socks for the kids, loads of school supplies and 7 passengers skillfully placed in and around the masterful packing job of our driver Alex. We were jam packed and ready for action, but we all wondered if we would actually make the 6 hour journey from Nairobi to the school.

Upon arrival to the school, we converted the tent, which is used for guests to stay in, into a recording studio. We did scout out other areas beforehand, including the dining hall and some of the makeshift classrooms, however, in the end, decided that the tent would give us the best sound for recording.

The musical instruments generated a lot of excitement and shortly after our arrival we began to organize groups of students that would practice, perform and record songs. From morning til night, the tent would serve as a wonderful space for this to happen. The students at Okari were excited to sing traditional Swahili folk songs, gospel songs, Paul Simon and original songs by Grimis and even a song by the infamous Mark Brickman of Andover, Ma. A huge addition to our team was a Kenyan songwriter and musician, Michael Wambua who Bill met on his last journey to Africa and who was invited to travel to Kisii to record with the students and help us create the Okari CD.

After four days of rehearsing, performing and recording we ended up with over four hours of beautiful music that we hope to transform into a CD that will be out in the very near future.

The Okari Art Attack

On the last visit to Okari, Bill and Glenn both noticed a lack of color in and around the dining hall and classrooms of the school. With limited resources and a tight budget it is very hard for the teachers to offer any music or art to the students. Along with bringing instruments, performing music and recording a CD, we also wanted to offer the students an opportunity to create various art projects, including a mural. As mentioned above we travelled with close to 100lbs. of art supplies, which included paint, canvas, construction paper, glue, markers, crayons, colored pencils, brushes, scissors and materials to make bracelets– none of which existed at the school prior to our visit.

Currently there is a construction project underway at the school to create a new dormitory for the girls, which will also include in it, a room that will house a library and an art/music space. We decided that this would be the perfect space to transform into an art studio during our time and would also be home to the mural. The room needed some prep work, including the scraping and painting of the rough concrete walls and the finishing of a few uncompleted tables. Bill also decided to do some electrical work to light up the room and now knows what 240 volts of electricity feels like running through the human body. He now proclaims to have super human strength.

With the space cleaned, arranged and lit up we could now offer some art to the kids of Okari. We knew it would be hard, because at the Okari School anything new always attracts the interest of all 150 students. With this, we needed the help from the school’s principal (T1) and the teachers to coordinate small groups (35+) of students to participate in specific art activities. Tony arranged drawing stations, canvas painting and collage work, while also utilizing the help of Bill and the boys of Grimis to work with students painting the mural. It was a chaotic scene, however once the students were engaged, they worked hard and had fun creating their own masterpieces for hours a day. Each student at Okari had the chance to paint, draw, cut, paste and create in any way they wanted. Each student took great pride in their work and the work of others. They were also happy to clean all the brushes at the end of each session.

In a very short time our AYS team had managed to engage the entire Okari community in music and art projects. It was a beautiful thing to stand back and watch kids working on the mural, painting on canvasses, practicing a Grimis song, banging on the new drums and recording song after song in the tent.

After many months of planning, everything had come together right in front of our eyes. Two communities, AYS and the Okari School, thousands of miles apart, were becoming one. We were very thankful to be a part of it all.

A Day in the Life

Jambo, we are sitting in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam awaiting our returning flight home. We arrived to rainy Amsterdam at 5:30am and spent the last 20 minutes looking for power to charge our devices and gain access to the internet. As has been the theme over the last 10 days, none of our wonderful technology worked according to plan and we were forced to shell out 28 Euros to purchase an adapter that fit the outlet. We have many adapters, but getting them to actually work is a whole other story.

As we sit on the floor outside of gate F2 China Airlines (it was one of the only outlets near us that worked) we are trying to put in perspective our thoughts and feelings in regards to the journey that is coming to a close. So much has been accomplished in such a short amount of time. Folks that have taken the time to read this blog must understand that 7 days in the AYS life cycle is comparable to two months in most other organizations. We went at it for 15 hours a day and were relentless, feeling that we had some much to do, with so little time to do it.

It might be helpful for you to understand how the Okari community operates on a daily basis.

3:30am

Undomesticated dogs bark endlessly at what appears to be nothing. This continues, along with the occasional chicken and rooster for close to 2 hours.

4:30am

The sound of Okari School children beginning to stir as they leave their small metal clad dormitories signaling the start of another day

4:35am

The rooster located 20 feet from our tent proudly lets us know that it is time to lift up the mosquito nets, crawl out bed and get ourselves moving.

5:30am

The sun starts to creep over the beautiful land of Kisii.

5 – 7am

The kids are in their makeshift 10x10 classrooms constructed of wood and corrugated metal studying and preparing for the academic day. If we are awake enough, we try to assist. It is an awesome way to begin the day, as the kids are so alive, running, skipping and singing as the move from one classroom to the next – imagine if we all started our day that way.

7am

The cowbell rings signaling the start of breakfast, which typically consists of porridge and is prepared and served by the Okari cook Naomi. For the next 20 minutes the children mill about campus, eating, laughing and sharing stories of the previous day. Upon completion of their breakfast the children are required to wash their bowl and cup and return it to its place by their bunk in the cramped dorm. Each child has a very small trunk where they keep and store their personal items, which consists of very little. Can you imagine keeping everything you own in a two foot by three foot box? It’s hard to comprehend.

7:30am

Breakfast is over and the children congregate in the dining hall to sing a few songs. We notice that most of the songs that the children and teachers sing one way or another are praising their reverence to the God of their understanding. It is amazing how truly close the children are to one another, their teachers and to God.

7:45am to 12pm

The students are in their classes studying and learning from the teachers. There are roughly 150 students at Okari ranging from Preschool to Standard 8, which is equivalent to our elementary through middle school in Andover. The students are truly impressive because they speak in 3 different languages. Most students speak their tribal language, Swahili (the national language of Kenya) and very good English. It also should be noted that most teaching and learning is done in English. Despite their lack of resources, their educational focuses are very similar to those of ours in Andover; math, science, history, reading and writing. The main goal of the teachers is to prepare the students for a test that they will take at the end of 8^th grade. If they pass the test, they have the opportunity to move on to high school.

12pm

The students convene back in the dining hall to have lunch. After they have eaten the students are given roughly an hour break where you can find them running, playing and being social with each other. During this time the teachers can often be found kicking a ‘soccer ball’ or sitting in the shade of a tree with a group of students. The teachers are incredible people, who are truly dedicated to educating their students.

2 to 6pm

The kids are back in the classroom to continue the day’s studies. We were always welcome to sit in on the classes and participate in which ever subject was being taught. The students focus and ability to retain and learn was outstanding. Thank God they don’t have laptops, cell phones and Ipods.

6pm

The kids arrive back in the dining hall to have dinner – which seems to be the same each night, a plate of plantains and greens, with a cup of water. There is never any complaining and we have yet to see leftovers anywhere. We have to give a shout out to the Okari staff, as it is an amazing task to feed roughly 175 people, which includes the students, teachers and school staff on a daily basis on what is a very, VERY limited budget. As is with every meal, the children begin and end with singing, dancing and being thankful for what they have.

7 to 9pm

Here is an amazing fact…after dinner many of the teachers leave Okari to walk up to 5 miles back to their homes. Even more amazing, the class time spent after dinner and before bed is typically independent, with older kids teaching younger kids. It is a sight to behold.

9 to 9:30pm

The dining hall is packed with each and every student and whatever teachers and staff remain as the students perform a variety of songs and dance routines for each other. Obviously music is a huge part of the students’ lives, and Kenya as a whole. Every child can sing and dance – as they were born with the gift of rhythm in their soul. Their spirit, determination, laughter and songs has shown us that God truly is great.

10pm

The kids go to bed and within 15 minutes are ALL sound asleep…

10:15pm

The security staff at the school makes sure that we are safe in our tent and have all that we need for a peaceful nights rest.

We shall meet again at 4:30am.

At this point, you might be wondering where the AYS crew has been during this very busy Okari school day…stay tuned we shall let you know the very good news. As Tom, better known as T1, the principal of Okari continues to remind us, “Hakuna Mattata, no worries my friend…it is no problem”

Sawa Sawa, we shall talk to you soon my friends.