Ndugu Mdogo Launches ‘Amka Kenya’ Music Album in Kibera

Children from Ndugu Mdogo Rescue Centre nobly launched their much awaited Amka Kenya music album on Friday 27 April at an event in Kibera that mainly appealed for peace and harmony in the country. The event was held at the centre’s premises in Kibera, Karanja Rd area.

Graced by former long-distance runner and peace champion, Tegla Loroupe, the event pulled crowds from the neighborhood, members and staffers of Koinonia community among other dignitaries from the government and organizations working with children.

Light showers that tendered at the morning onset saw delay of the event for about an hour from the earlier scheduled 9 am kick-off. The cold weather could not daunt the programme as planned. Activities of the day begun with a symbolic peace march along Karanja Road up to the venue, led by Koinonia founder, Fr. Kizito and area councilor Mohammed Gore who both waved high peace flags to set out the peace procession.

A brass band from Baraka za Ibrahimu School led the procession behind the two principals with joyous tunes from their instruments, as the crowd thronged to the venue. All in similar fashion waved rainbow colours striped peace flags daubed with inscriptions of peace on each written in different world lingos.

Those who attended were entertained by children from Koinonia centers and pupils from two neighbouring primary schools. They performed enthralling folk dances, choreographed bops and oral poetry. This later was followed with a treatment of refreshments after the ceremony that had attracted many in hundreds.

On delivering her keynote speech, Tegla Loroupe commended the boys on their good job and expressed how honoured she was as chief guest as they unveiled their new album. Her words were of encouragement to the Ndugu Mdogo children of how bright their future holds, calling them to exercise good conduct as they are blessed with having their sponsors.

Touched by a poem narrated by one of the pupils from the attending schools, Loroupe called on children to be front-runners of peace and let it prevail amongst them.

“It’s up to us [children] to build our nation. We should learn from history and never forget,” she said.

Narrating her experience with conflict in her home area of West Pokot, Loroupe reminisced on the sort of hardship and many setbacks that she had to go through while growing up back before her breakthrough in sports. In her later life in athletics, wide and vast traveling made her observe how other western countries were developed and this had her ask questions ‘what was wrong with us’.

“Why do we have to be used? And that is something that has been hitting my heart. I said one time, I would go home and talk about peace and I would not be alone, I will be with other people. That is when I used sports to talk about harmony.”

She called on the children to be front runners of peace in their homes and urge parents to value need for educating children as an essential need for development, urging children to explore their given talents and reject engaging in any other unwanted practices.

Loroupe, a renowned international long-distance track and road runner has dedicated her achievements to promote peaceful co-existence and other developments of the poor and marginalized communities in the greater Horn of Africa Region through her Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation.

Loroupe holds the world records for 20, 25 and 30 kilometres and previously held the world marathon record. She is the three-time World Half-Marathon champion. She was the first African woman to win the New York City Marathon, which she has won twice. She has won marathons in London, Boston, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Berlin, Rome and many of other cities.

She is also a global spokeswoman for peace, women's rights, and education and through her foundation, she has helped champion for peace and gender equality mainly in her home area through activities such as peace races and forums and education for peace in Pokot, a region plagued with conflict and poverty due to poor development.

Amka Kenya a Swahili word which loosely translates to rise up Kenya is the main song, a patriotic song that forms the theme of the nine track album, alongside and eight other gospel songs that are already in the market, but redone melodiously by children from the centre, formerly living on the streets and have been rehabilitated back to the society.

The Ndugu Mdogo Rescue Centre located in Kibera slums, operates rehabilitation programmes for children rescued from the streets, who are gradually molded back to the society through self-realisation activities. The centre currently home to about 200 former street children, many now under full-time formal education programmes.

George Ndikwe, a music director who has been working with the children in the project since last September in training them on vocals and recording the music says the main reason of redoing some of the songs that were already in the market was a way of proving to the society that these children can do better that we do and even possibly we don’t do right.

Before coming to work with the children Mr. Ndikwe an experienced music teacher, then was a volunteer project manager at Kenya Community Media Network, an initiative that voices issues mostly forgotten in society. He says him being around in Shalom House where the organisation has its offices saw him a great deal where he discovered much about street children programmes undertaken Koinonia Community, which had him interested in trying to do music with them, something everybody never imagined they could do.

“I felt that possibly there was an area that was being forgotten, and that’s the children [street children]. In the month of August I approached Fr. Kizito and requested that if it was possible to work out a programme with the children on music, which he gave us a go ahead.”

The musical idea saw him work with ex-street children who were now under rehabilitation at the center through rigorous training sessions on vocals during that period that ultimately saw them record in December Christmas carols.

Though the carols were never produced into an album, but were well received from those few who got the opportunity to access them, bearing it was a festive season well suited for them at that time.

“Unfortunately, Christmas songs are very seasonal and end of the season would mark end of the music until the next one, so we thought together with the children about the need of coming up with something that can be listened to any time.”

The requirement for them to do all season songs brought him to another discovery of how these children were affected by the post polls violence of 2007/8 through their experiences on the streets where most of the violence was taking place. This prompted need for caution of never such a scenario should occur and thus realisation of the Amka Kenya patriotic song which Mr. Ndikwe composed with the help of the children.

“These children gave me stories as we chatted during our breaks in training and we had a lot along those lines of the violence and its results and thought it would be better if we shared the same with the whole nation.”

Among other songs in the album include one done in Congo language and also another in Latin both religious with messages of peace, an aspect Mr. Ndikwe terms as a way of using religious force, going universal with the same message of peace.

“It’s when someone realises they are needed in society that they start contributing towards the same society positively. Music is one form of the things that we try to bring forth to give them visibility,” he concludes.