Written by Canadian SportWORKS Officer, Jenna Sherrington
Jambo! (Hello)
Naitwa Jenna! (Swahili slang for “I’m called Jenna”) Special thanks to my coworkers; Phiona, Kate, Maya and Wangechi for teaching Luna and I some Swahili!
Before I officially start this blog, I would like to acknowledge that this experience and practicum would not be possible without the support of the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship, Commonwealth Sport Canada, the National Olympic Committee of Kenya, Commonwealth Games Association of Kenya, Rideau Hall Foundation, Mount Royal University and Mount Royal International. I would also like to give a special thank you to Ryan Pelley, Gisele Marcoux, Jessica Mossiere, Tony Karuru and Dr. Julie Booke for facilitating this experience and for all their effort to make this possible.
Okay, now let’s begin! I am one of two Canadian SportWORKS Officers, currently in Nairobi, Kenya for our practicum placement with the National Olympic Committee of Kenya working on a project called CHEZA Healthy (Cheza means “play” in Swahili). So what does that actually mean because that sentence really only makes sense to a select group of people. Essentially, Luna and I are here for the next few months to help develop and continue the CHEZA Healthy project. Our mission, (which we did choose to accept), is to help encourage kids in and around Nairobi to engage in physical activity as a mitigation strategy for non-communicable diseases (NCDs). NCDs are diseases that are not transmissible to another individual, these can be anything from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, malnutrition or stroke. NCDs are now the leading cause of death worldwide and surpass all communicable disease deaths combined – a terrifying thought. But the overarching mission of CHEZA Healthy is to uplift our communities through promoting sport and active movement to improve health and wellness.
I know that this has been mentioned by all the previous Canadian SportWORKS Officers in their blog posts but I figured it would be good to give anyone who is new to the blog an idea of what this project is and even to just drive home how vital and important this project is. NCDs were the cause of 74% of all deaths worldwide in 2023. Of those, 86% occurred in low and middle income countries. NCDs have five major identified risk factors; tobacco use, physical inactivity, harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diet and air pollution. I’m no billionaire or politician so I can’t fix pollution, nor can I stop people from drinking or smoking, so what can I do? What can Commonwealth Sport Canada and the National Olympic Committee of Kenya do? Well, we can get kids moving! We can educate young people about the benefits of physical activity and the harmful effects of a sedentary lifestyle. We can bring days of fun and activity to the schools and communities of Nairobi! That is what CHEZA Healthy does and that is why we’re doing it.
Another key component of our work with CHEZA Healthy is implementing and teaching the Olympic Values Education Program (OVEP). Through this initiative, we aim to establish Olympic clubs at the schools we visit, providing students with a structured way to engage with Olympic values and sports. Our goal is to host debates with the help of the Debate Association of Kenya (DAK), allowing students to explore and discuss topics related to OVEP and the Olympic movement. Ultimately, we hope to culminate these efforts with a final debate on Olympic Day, June 23rd, where students can present and debate issues related to the Olympics and its values.
So what is it like living and working in Nairobi? Well, Luna and I have only been here for three weeks and of those three weeks I was convinced that I was dying from the plague for one of them. But I’m happy to report I survived with minimal complaints (just kidding, I’m sorry Luna). But alas, we persevere. We started our adventure by spending 27 hours getting here from Calgary. I am never doing two 9 hour flights back to back ever again, my hamstrings will never be the same. But once we got here, that didn’t seem to matter too much anymore, we were in Nairobi! The first thing we both noticed was that it was super HOT and humid! Which was a lovely change of pace from Calgary in the dead of winter. As much as I love skiing, I love feeling my extremities more. The first few days here were a blur of getting sim cards, going to banks, getting settled in our apartment and basically just getting our sea legs under us as we stared down the barrel of spending the next few months in Kenya.
It took us a while to get over jet lag but we got there eventually and got into the swing of things at the office and beyond. As the avid outdoor enthusiasts that we are, Luna and I took our first day off as an opportunity to hike Mount Kipipiri with the company Outdoorer KE (huge thanks to Syd for the suggestion!). Getting out of the city and seeing more of this incredible country was exactly what the doctor ordered for our morale and general excitement.
In terms of the actual practicum and living in Nairobi, I am so grateful to have such friendly and welcoming coworkers. I’ve been missing home and my dog, Tuzo, quite a bit but they have made the transition here feel a lot smoother. I also recently learned that ‘Tuzo’ is a milk brand here, which I think is hilarious. We have our first CHEZA event coming up next week and I am so excited to see how they run and learn as much as I can from everyone. This past week the National Olympic Committee of Kenya hosted and facilitated a Gender Conference, with a theme of disrupting and redefining the gender narrative. The goal of the conference was to promote gender equality, create awareness on gender based violence, improve portrayal of women in sports and empower women leaders in sports. As a female athlete it was so impactful to see how much effort is going into bridging the gender gap in sport and how much emphasis NOC-K is putting on female empowerment. I’m very grateful to have been a part of the team that made such an exceptional event happen. There were many inspiring individuals present, I felt very lucky to have attended this conference. Unfortunately, I got food poisoning (or something of that sort) and had to miss the second day of the event. But the first day of the conference was very special and something that I won’t soon forget.
I also was invited to attend an event at the High Commission of Canada to Kenya which was a great opportunity to meet some fellow Canadians who are also currently in Kenya. It was wonderful to make some new connections and chat with some very interesting people! They were also serving poutine so I felt right at home! I’d like to thank Ryan for giving me all these wonderful connections and encouraging me to go, it’s been so helpful! As a bit of an introvert going alone to this event felt very intimidating, I wasn’t sure what to expect and did spend the first few minutes wandering aimlessly and snacking. Thankfully, the wonderful woman who invited me (via Ryan) came to my rescue and introduced me to a few people and talked with me for a while (If you’re reading this thank you Janine!!). It was a great experience and I hope to attend another before my time here is over.
As part of my practicum I have to come up with a project that will contribute something significant to CHEZA Healthy and that they can benefit from long term. The goal of these practicum projects is to blend academic knowledge with previous life and work experiences. I thought long and hard about how I could contribute something meaningful to this project. This past summer I officially retired from professional sport to pursue academics and start a new chapter of life. I was on the Canadian National Biathlon Team for the better part of 2 years and had been on youth and junior national teams consistently since I was 14. So this past fall was my first time stepping out of the world of competitive sport in almost a decade. Racing World Cups, World Championships and Youth Olympics were some of the best experiences of my life and I’m forever grateful to have had the opportunity to pursue sport at the level I did for as long as I did. Maybe one day I’ll circle back and see what I’ve got left in the tank in terms of racing, but for now I need to step away, gain perspective and recalibrate my values and goals. When this opportunity to go to Nairobi and work with the National Olympic Committee of Kenya presented itself it felt like fate, because it was exactly what I felt like I had been missing as an athlete. With that said, I’ve realized that while my experience as a professional athlete was great, my current passion lies more with environmental sustainability, getting people outside and active, and enjoying nature. So rather than focusing on my previous experience as an athlete for my practicum project, I’m going to try to lean more into my love of the outdoors and the friluftsliv philosophy.
This is my first time with a platform where I can write and people might actually read it so I’m going to tell you all a story that may help give some background on me. In the fall of 2023 I had a serious mental health crisis, I asked the wrong people for help and ended up in a situation that was entirely avoidable but deeply traumatizing. Shortly after the same people had me meet with a psychologist who told me that the only thing I would ever be able to handle in this life would be sitting on a beach. That struck me to the core and has stuck with me more than I would care to admit. It rattled my perception of who I thought I was. I had always seen myself as someone adventurous, brave, and who could handle most of what life threw at me. But here was this “professional” telling me that I would never be able to handle being an athlete and I should give up, go sit on a beach and read a book. For a long time I let what she had said to me dictate how I moved through life, for almost a year I was paralyzed by uncertainty and self doubt. When Luna told me about this opportunity after class sometime in September, that spark, that fearlessness that I used to move through life with, stirred in my chest. I knew I had to try, even if it was hard, even if I heard that psychologist’s voice in my head every step of the way, I knew this was a way to grow past what had happened. So I applied, I got the scholarship, and now I’m in Nairobi doing something that feels so meaningful. With all that said and done, I hope you have a better understanding of why I’m doing this, who I am, and the incredible work that this organization does and continues to do. And while I’m still figuring out the nitty gritty of my practicum project and my role here, I have an idea of the direction I want to take it and I’m very excited to share it with you all soon.
Luna is currently hiking Kilimanjaro so I’ll be tackling life alone in Nairobi for the next week or so. But we’ll be busy prepping for an upcoming CHEZA event so it’ll likely fly by. Our first event is at Kanjeru Girls School Kikuyu. The teachers seem very excited about the CHEZA project and since they already have very active sport programs and clubs, our job will be to recruit girls who aren’t already involved in sport and to present the benefits of physical activity and the dangers of NCDs. I’m really looking forward to this event and excited for all the preparations we will make leading up to it.
Phew, that was a long first post, but if you made it here, thank you!! Luna and I will keep you updated via this blog of our going-ons and on how the CHEZA Healthy project is going!
Cheers!
Jenna
PS – Dad, Mom, Fiona and Troy please take Tuzo skiing, he needs it. And lots of cuddles and treats too!