History of LUTSS

“Paths are created by walking them.”

Erich Kästner

The idea for our association was born during a backpacking trip through Kenya in the summer of 2013.

The two theater enthusiasts, Fanny and Anna, were traveling around the country for several months when they met Josefe Maina, an unemployed truck driver full of stories. He invited them to his family, and they ended up in Mali Saba, Dandora, a slum in eastern Nairobi.

Spending lots of time with his parents and siblings, they stayed with Josefe in their corrugated iron hut. In the evenings they were discussing various global political issues and the problems in the Mali Saba slum. Living conditions were difficult because fear, unemployment, crime, and poverty formed a part of everyday life. The way out of these conditions seemed clear to everyone: education.
A friend of Josefe’s mother, Joyce, had started a school as kind of a neighborhood initiative. In this way, she wanted to provide education for Mali Saba’s children. Fanny and Anna were immediately captured of the work of Joyce. This strong woman spared no effort in helping to shape the lives of children and providing them with opportunities they would otherwise have never had. Joyce gave Fanny and Anna hope. They offered to practice a play with these school children and Joyce was very pleased by this idea.

some insights into the school and its surroundings

So it happened that Fanny and Anna rehearsed seven intense days with 30 children, which took on the task with confusion as well as enthusiasm. Among the topics, proposed by the children, were “Being in love”, “Reading and writing” and “AIDS”, but eventually, the decision fell for “Singing and dancing“.
The premiere took place in the courtyard of the Maina family, during which the assembled neighborhood followed a superstar performing “Read the Bible, pray every day”. The children bowed and everyone had lots of fun. However, the most vital and long-lasting result of this theater project was the friendship between Joyce, Fanny, and Anna. In the course of the following days, the idea emerged to support Joyce`s School from Berlin, for the school to be able to grow and accommodate more children as well as to improve the precarious teaching conditions.

Back in Germany, Fanny and Anna started collecting donations for the school in Mali Saba with friends and family in various ways. A former teacher of the two donated as much as to enable the school to relocate from a corrugated iron shack to a stone house. In December 2014 the association “Living Under the Same Sun eV” was founded with the aim of ensuring the provision of reliable and lasting support for educational projects in Kenya.
The Maina family, without whom all this would never have happened, was able to leave the Mali Saba slum. In Igikiro, a village in Muranga County, the parents are currently building a house including an extra room for guests from Germany.