World class

What do you do if you come face-to-face with a child wielding a machete? Challenge them to a game of football, of course. Zoe Ash hears how sixth-former Matt Webster spent a college break in Kenya SWIMMING with five-metre-long sharks may not be every student's idea of a relaxing break from his books, but for Matt Webster it was all part of the learning curve.

The Elizabeth College pupil's trip to Kenya also took in building a school, climbing a mountain and heading off on safari.

It was not an itinerary for the faint-hearted, as the project's name, Leading Edge Expeditions, suggests. But when Matt joined 27 fellow students from the UK and seven adults on the journey to Nairobi, he knew he was on a trip of a lifetime.

It was 18-year-old Matt's English teacher, Jo Flood, who encouraged him to get involved in the scheme to support local communities on the other side of the world. She took part in a similar expedition to Ecuador when she was around the same age.

But it wasn't just a case of applying for a place. The trip cost £1,800 and acceptance followed a rigorous selection process culminating in a weekend of team-building exercises in the UK. By the time they finally set off in August, the members were friends instead of strangers.

The real adventure began when they arrived in Chagoria, albeit bag-less after their luggage was lost on the way. It is an area on the outskirts of Nairobi and a base for all the schools for the surrounding shanty towns.

There were three projects in their sights - supporting a primary school in Guitara and, in the nearby town of Wiru, helping a secondary school and also a health centre.

Their work at Guitara was largely aesthetic. Most of the building had been done by a previous group, so Matt's team was left to put the finishing touches. 'We spent a lot of time playing with the children. Any language barrier can be overcome with the power of the football,' he laughed. 'They knew how to play: their only discrepancy was the offside rule.'

Matt said that because the area is so remote, working in the tea and drug trades is how most of the people sustain a living.

'Tea-picking is the most brutal work I've ever seen - it's back-breaking,' he said, 'though most of the people are just glad to have a job.'

And the children are prepared early. Basic schooling for seven to nine-year-olds in the village includes machete classes in which they learn how to cut down sugar cane, alongside the usual English and maths.

'Everyone walks around with a machete out there,' explained Matt. 'You don't feel threatened, it's as common as seeing a mobile phone here. They need them to survive, it's their way of life.'

But despite the traditions, the way of life is changing. Modern culture is seeping in, helped in some part by an increasing number of radios.

Everyone is trying to be like gangsta rap star 50 Cent, whose rags-to-riches story strikes a chord, said Matt. 'They see him as a black African man living the dream. He's a god out there.'Despite such musical influences, the areas in which Matt and the expedition were based were largely untouched by the Western world. He laughs, recalling how his digital camera perplexed the children. More unusually, a major fascination was the London Underground.

'They couldn't grasp it, it was so alien,' he said. 'They didn't understand why the trains needed to be under the ground.'

Another difference was decidedly more personal. 'They don't have any body hair at all,' revealed Matt. 'They were constantly stroking our arms and legs. Everyone, girls and boys, has short, shaved hair because of the risk of head lice.'

In-between the building work and global public relations, the expedition found time to complete a six-day round trip to scale a mountain. And not just any mountain: Mount Kenya.

Climbing to an altitude of 17,500ft, the results were a slowing of the heart rate combined with a light-headed feeling. It also meant they got very little sleep. On the last day they got up at 2.45am to climb the remaining few hundred feet and watch the sun rise at four.

Back down the mountain, work on the secondary school proved decidedly more strenuous.

The team had to dig out and lay foundations for an extension. They were not foundations as we would imagine, but huge boulders that had to be broken down and packed with ground. The project meant hard, manual labour.

But there were plenty of assistants. Even though the pupils attend school 340 days of the year, they all chose to skip their time off and turned up to help with the work.

And it was a mixed group. Although schooling is surprisingly similar to our curriculum, ages vary wildly within the classes. 'They don't turn anybody away,' said Matt, 'which explains why there might be a 22-year-old alongside much younger children.'

With the school building work behind them, the team's last big push was at the Wiru Health Centre. It had been built from scratch by previous Leading Edge groups, although some financial support is now starting to come through from the Government.

The biggest problem is staff. 'They spend a lot of money on nurses who get their qualifications and then move to London,' said Matt. 'They do an excellent job, but they need them to stay in Africa.'

Nurses are paid about 11,000 shillings, which equates to around £1,000. For the region, it is an excellent salary, but further medically trained people are needed to help stem the spread of HIV. Matt was told that, in the beginning, Africans were led to believe that it was a disease invented by white people to scare the black. 'It's heartbreaking, but they're really trying to get on top of it,' he said.

Invaluable members of their party were the local guides, who were paid two US dollars per day. As many of the adults on the trip had been to the region several times before - some as many as 17 times - they had built up a good working relationship with the guides. They proved essential while travelling through the Masai Mara where the group stopped off to visit a working Masai village. 'When we got there, they got all their trinkets out to sell us. Some villages exist purely for the tourist trade.' While there the group was invited to join celebrations taking place after a ritual that morning involving female circumcision. Some in their party strongly objected to what was happening to the teenage African girls but, said Matt, it was not their place to say so.

'We may not agree but that's how they do things. It's their culture, their way of life. My attitude is that these guys have been doing this for thousands of years.

'You might not agree with female circumcision at 14, but that's when girls are considered ready for life as an adult, eligible for marriage. It's a rite of passage.' Just as they wouldn't understand simple things we do, such as drive to work when there is a bus that can take us right to the door, so their lives can seem strange to us. 'They haven't seen our way of life. If they did, they wouldn't believe it,' said Matt.

Masai marriages are also very different from Western ones. Husbands have many wives who all live together. 'None of them cares, it's not weird for them.'

Before returning to their normal lives, the party had time to reflect on the trip in the more westernised region of coastal Mombasa - a far cry from the worlds of the tribes just a few hundred miles inland.

'It was pretty touristy. You realise what money and prosperity can bring to an area,' said Matt. Another thing that struck him in Mombasa was the lack of interest in work. 'I asked some of them, ?What do you do??. They replied, ?I sit here and sell stuff?.'

This is a trait of a nation that seems very laid back compared with our world. But that could be why it needs so much Western help. As the party was driving back through Nairobi, Matt said there was an overwhelming number of people just standing around. And the head teacher of Wiru School told Matt how amazed he was when he went to England and could not see anyone standing still. Everybody had a purpose, he said to Matt.

In his world, 70% of people don't have anything to get up for.

'Self-help is the way forward,' he said. 'And they're getting there slowly. It's all about motivation.'

* Matt would like to thank Alan Whales, manager at Maryland Service Station, Cobo, for allowing him time from his summer job to make the trip, as well as for his charity donation. It was however, as the picture shows, on condition that he donned a Maryland shirt when he reached the top of Mount Kenya.