THE MAJI SAFI PROJECTS
Registered charity no. 1106384
How the Maji Safi Projects Started
Lin Greenland and Mike Radford went on holiday to Mombasa in March 1999. They quickly befriended the locals
and saw villagers who were very poor, as most relied on jobs in the only local hotel where
they stayed. The village had seen a stormy past, with homes destroyed and families torn
apart during violent clashes in 1997. Linda and Mike were won over by the villagers'
warmth and generosity, and also noticed that many children were running around all day
because the only two local schools were very expensive. Major problems in that area are
child prostitution and drugs. Some children were orphans, raised by other members of the
family with no income to provide education for them.
At that time primary education was not free in Kenya, and even now government schools are
overcrowded and private schools are very expensive. The children would just sit outside
the classrooms looking in. With unemployment so high, schooling is almost impossible for
many families. Linda and Mike wanted to do something but didn't know where to start.
Fate took its course and as they sat outside the hotel on the last night of their holiday
a strong gust of wind dislodged a palm branch from a tree above, knocking Linda unconscious.
They missed their flight and Linda woke up the next morning to find scraps of paper on her
bed wishing her a quick recovery left there by the village children who had walked miles
to the hospital.
The accident kept her in Kenya for an extra three weeks, but it was long enough to see what
was needed and the idea of building a school began to take shape. Within a week of
returning to the UK Linda was back in hospital, this time with the fatal strain of malaria.
She had plenty of time to think and it made her realise that this was happening for a reason
and that she could help these people. In Kenya if you don't work you don't eat, and that
kept going over and over in her mind while she was in hospital.
In June 1999 Linda and Mike returned to Kenya, met with Miriam, who is now a project
worker for the charity. She showed them a small wooden hut that acted as a nursery/primary
school for 40 village children. Linda and Mike started fundraising in the UK to replace the
nursery with stone classrooms so the village children could learn to read and write.
Within a few months they had raised enough money to build two classrooms and Linda said
“when we moved the children, it was one of the happiest days of my life and the
children didn't want to go home at the end of the day”. By May 2001 eight classrooms
had been built, together with a toilet block and a borehole for water, and then they
continued to build offices.
All the children are desperate to go to school and work really hard when given the opportunity; education is the way to break the circle of poverty. There is no chance of employment without education, and such a small amount of money makes a huge difference.
In 2002 work started on their second school, “Inspirations School” and so the story continues ...