Friends of Marich Final reflection:

Friends of Marich is a meaningful community service group at ISK, that I recently joined this year as a member in the fundraising committee, because of all the good things I heard about this club and how they help the Pokot people living in the Marich region.

Why do we help the Pokot people? Pokot people Inhabit an area in Western Kenya and Uganda, their Society based on extended family and clans. Men dominate decision-making process and Council elders are responsible for maintenance of law and order, security, social disputes, and ceremonies. Friends of Marich has been a club at International school of Kenya for a really long time and In my opinion is a really great community service group, a worthy cause and worth all the time you spend planning and fundraising to help these people in Northern Kenya.

As I said earlier, Friends of Marich works closely with the Pokot people living in the Marich region. Our goal is to raise money and awareness throughout the year to support the community living there and providing necessary aid. I was also hoping to achieve the same things this year, to help this community and make their lives better.

This year, for our high school intercultural trip week, a small group of people from the club “Friends of Marich” ( a community service club at ISK) went to the northwestern area in Kenya. Since the beginning of the year, we have been working on several fundraising projects and events, and the money was used for projects we did in the Marich region where we went.

The group that went last year built a bridge over the river to help the locals. This year we went there and fixed it a bit, but our main project was to build a library (and we were working with the local school).

We had a book drive for this library and we were able to take more than 800 books which we catalogued and organized that week. The only work we were able to do was help carrying sand and bricks to the actual building site. Our main project this year was to build a library, which we have been working on with the local school. The foundation for the library was supposed to be completed in December but it wasn’t, so the only thing we could do to help was carrying sand and bricks up a hill to the building site, and that took an entire day of work.

The trip was a great experience, it was also a lot better than what I expected, the whole group really enjoyed it and some are even considering coming back next year, and even some people that were there last year came this year as well. We enjoyed working with the people in Marich and learn more about their culture and lives. 

As I said earlier I was hoping to learn more about the Pokot people, their religion culture beliefs and really everything about them, but most importantly actually be useful and do whatever I, and we as a group can to help them and improve their lives. We have accomplished some of these goals, we several bake sales throughout the year, we had a logo competition, which we used to make t-shirts that we are actually selling right now for 1000Ksh each, we built a library in their region in Marich ( haven’t completely finished it but we did our best) and we had a book drive and collected as many books as we could to give to the Pokot people in that library.

Difficulties I have encountered, or that we encountered as a group are the fundraising plans we weren’t able to get through with, like for example the basketball tournament we were planning for a really long time but weren’t able to actually make it happen for some reason, also the tshirt selling isn’t going as well as we thought it would because of the simple fact that people don’t actually know the Pokot people like we do and they don’t think it’s worth the money and everything, so its obviously hard to convince them. I think as a group we have been pretty successful, not as successful as we expected but we raised quite some money for a really great cause. Working as a group was really helpful, it was like a motivation and determination to achieve our goals, when one doesn’t have an idea someone else can contribute and help, and someone else can make that idea or plan ever better. I have learned that sometimes you have to think about other people and not be selfish, that you, even though you cant do much, but any input and any help whatsoever can make a huge difference in someone’s else’s life in the world.

Friends of Marich meant a lot, being part of this group and meeting the Pokot people in January got me really close and I feel like now I am involved and I really want to continue helping them.

If I get the opportunity again I will definitely join the club in my senior year and this time I will try and do my best to make more fundraising plans and do as much as we can, and my friend Nandi and I were actually thinking of going to marich again for our IC trip next year, but nothing is sure yet.