Turning Negativity to Positivity- Tsavora Fencing Club Is Giving at-risk Youth in Kenya an Elegant Alternative to Street Violence

In a difficult part of Kenya’s sprawling capital city of Nairobi, an unlikely sport has taken hold of the passions of young people, offering them an alternative to drugs, violence, or crime.

That sport is fencing, and despite the fact that the Tsavora Fencing Club sometimes struggles to keep well stocked with the necessary equipment, Africa News reports it is having a huge impact in the community, keeping adolescents busy, and sending some of them to the national team.

The club members routinely hold bouts in the street, where they strike a dramatic scene thrusting and parrying in their snow-white uniforms across the reddish ground.

Tsavora Fencers – credit Tsavora Fencing

The Club was founded by Mburu Wanyoike, a former gangster turned athlete and eventual coach for the Kenyan National Fencing Team.

Both 17-year-old Jemimah Njeri, and 16-year-old Allen Grace, echo the same sentiments about the importance of Tsavora in their lives that Wanyoike does: it keeps them busy and eats up the hours outside school and housework.

Tsavora at the Olympic Elite Youth Training Camp-2023- credit Tsavora Fencing, permission granted to GNN.

Wanyoike said that they use their “enthusiasm and obsession” to compensate for the lack of high-quality equipment, especially when competing with other nations—like in the African Olympic Qualifiers in Algeria this year.

“Sometimes it is tough when it comes to competing with well-equipped international countries that are well organized, so what we do is just to move on with enthusiasm and obsession

Tsavora Fencing Club has a mentorship program called Mtaani, which provides training and guidance on how to cultivate virtues like integrity and discipline. Their 45 members are now beacons within their community.