Geoffrey Tindyebwa wants to give a Kenyan village the gift of clean drinking water, and is raising money through a concert at the Metchosin community hall, tonight.
Tindyebwa, the dean of students and an English teacher at Pearson College in Metchosin, is the founder of KULE Foundation (Kumbuka Universal Learning Experiences).
Students from the college will perform music, dances and spoken word at the community hall. Admission is by donation and all the proceeds will go towards purchasing a well for the village of Mukangu, located in central Kenya.
Niklas Wammen, 18, from Denmark is performing an African gumboot dance with a group of students. He went to Kenya last year when the KULE Foundation sponsored building a new classroom.
“It was a mix of happiness and pain,” Wammen said. “It looks nice and it smells nice from the vegetables being sold on the street and then you see sewage on the ground. It’s pretty hard to understand.”
For the past nine years, Tindyebwa has accompanied students from Pearson to Kenya to help villagers in Mukangu. They’ve provided money and labour to build a library, a classroom, four homes, a science lab and revamped an orphanage.
“We started a chicken project and a miracle cow (for the orphanage),” Tindyebwa said. “For the first time the kids were able to eat eggs and drink milk.”
This year he has his heart set on raising $25,000 to build the community a well. Seven students from Pearson College will help lay the foundation for the well, but it will be dug and drilled by local workers.
Pearson student Laas Parnel from Haida Gwaii said she wants learn and witness how Kenyans preserve their indigenous culture.
“I have never been outside of B.C. I want to see how things are in their community and how they keep their culture alive and then I want to bring that back to my culture,” said the First Nations student.
Tindyebwa grew up in Uganda and moved to Mukangu, Kenya when he was 20. The work he’s done through KULE is his way of giving back.
“Last summer they said to me: you have given us life through education, can you give us life through health?”
For more information on KULE Foundation or to donate to the cause go to www.kenyakulefoundation.org.
When & Where
KULE Foundation Concert for Kenya is at the Metchosin community hall, 4401 William Head Rd. on March 30 at 7 p.m. Admission is by donation.
reporter@goldstreamgazette.com
