Tahir Ahmad Machengo, Kenya Correspondent
From 16 to 18 August, Majlis Khuddam-ul-Ahmadiyya Kenya and Majlis Atfal-ul-Ahmadiyya Kenya held their 37th and 6th National Ijtemas respectively.
Both events took place at the Jamaat headquarters located along Murang’a Road in Nairobi, Kenya. The theme for this year’s Ijtema was, Salat is the Key to Success and Fortune.
At approximately 10am, on Friday, registration began as both Khuddam and Atfal arrived at the mosque and the Ijtema marquee. Kenya, as a nation, is divided into 12 regions. These are North Coast, South Coast, Taveta, Voi, Nairobi, Eastern, Nakuru, Eldoret, Nyanza, Kakamega, Shianda and Mabera.
The Jumuah prayer and Asr prayers were jointly performed followed by lunch. Then, members attentively listened to the live Friday Sermon of Hazrat Khalifatul Masih Vaa.
At exactly 4:15pm, members gathered for flag-hoisting and proceeded to the Ahmadiyya Hall for the joint opening session. During this session, Sadr Majlis Khuddam-ul-Ahmadiyya Kenya, Mr Farouq Zaid Sahib, welcomed all attendees to the Ijtema. He explained that this was one of the events for the tarbiyat of Ahmadis and that everyone should take this as an opportunity for their spiritual upbringing by participating fully in both academic and sports activities.
This was followed by academic competitions for Khuddam, including tilawat and hifz, while Atfal proceeded to the mosque for their separate Ijtema opening session chaired by Sadr Majlis Khuddam-ul-Ahmadiyya Kenya.
The two sessions proceeded till Maghrib, which was performed jointly with Isha prayer.
This was followed by First Aid training session, after which dinner was served. On the second day after Tahajud, Fajr and breakfast, all Khuddam and Atfal proceeded to the field for sports competitions. These included football and athletics. Teams were formed region-wise and they competed strongly. Some regional teams were combined due to attendance from those regions. This went on till Zuhr time, which was jointly performed with Asr.
After serving lunch, the second session of religious competitions continued for Khuddam with speech, nazm and qaseeda competition. At the same time, Atfal had a session with the Amir and Missionary-in-Charge of Kenya, Imam Tariq Mahmood Zafar. Atfal read out speeches and poems.
Thereafter, the sports competitions’ second session commenced including volleyball and shotput for Khuddam and arm wrestling and musical chairs for Atfal. This continued until Maghrib and Isha prayers.
Thereafter, Khuddam proceeded to the Ahmadiyya Hall for an open forum, where members were given the opportunity to talk about challenges they faced as members of MKA and the way forward. During this, Atfal remained in the mosque where they watched a short video about the history of Islam.
On Sunday, after Tahajud, Fajr and breakfast, the last session of academic competitions began for Atfal. Khuddam engaged in table tennis and other competitions.
The closing session for both Khuddam and Atfal was jointly held in the Ahmadiyya Hall and was chaired by the amir and missionary-in-charge Kenya.
After tilawat and poem, Sadr Sahib read the Khuddam progress report for the period of November 2018 to June 2019.
This was followed by the prize giving session to winners of both academic and sports competitions. Thereafter, Amir Sahib delivered his concluding remarks and closed the Ijtema with silent prayer.
