I’ve torn up my ticket and it feels good!
3rd November 2020
My flight for France was booked for this evening but with everything that is happening in Europe, I decided to change my plans and put my return on hold, for now.
I’m writing this while sitting on a small terrace which is completely shaded by a puce pink bougainvillea which, with every waft of wind, is dropping its flowers like confetti! The sun is shining, and as well as the palms rustling, I can hear the noise of hammers chipping at stone as builders are renovating in the adjoining streets. This is interrupted by the occasional ‘hee-haw’ of donkeys as they labour under their paniers of builder’s rubbish or go about their daily business of porterage – there are no motor vehicles on Lamu island.
After just over six weeks in Kisumu, where the activity is always full-on, rather than come home, I decided to take a bit of a break; a bit of a breather, to get my thoughts in order and plan the next steps for Kenyan Kids/Familia.
This place is the ideal spot. No wifi, no alcohol (with a largely Muslim population), no distractions at all apart from the occasion call to prayer which echoes from one mosque to the other around this 6 metre square of island. I needed this respite from all the emotional ups and downs of Kisumu life.
This last year has been a roller coaster of achievements for Kenyan Kids. Less than a year ago a donor from the US came forward and offered to buy us land. Then another donor came forward to fund the building of our very own girls’ home. We now have a 4 bedroomed home for the girls plus an adjacent apartment for overspill or when the time comes to welcome more volunteers.
Since acquiring the land, we’ve established a working farm, growing maize and local vegetables to supplement our own needs. We have more cucumbers and coriander than we know what do with! Cabbages and carrots look like they are beginning to sprout, lettuce too. It’s only the tomatoes that we can’t get right which appear to rot before they ripen… if anyone know what we need to do then please advise!
Already, amongst our small group of livestock. we’ve birthed three goat kids but sadly only one has survived so far – we’ve called him Chèvre Chaud. So far, we’ve had a few roosters for the Sunday pot but ...... if anything were to make me a vegetarian then it would be the gentleness of our cow Brunetta who always welcomes being scratched behind the ears.
Our girls are thriving; they are growing fast but I find that, in an environment where online learning is impossible, instead they are harnessing different skills. Digging, planting, carrying 20 kg bags of cement. When the builder needed to buy in a tank of water, they were enterprising enough to suggest they were the ones to supply it, charging him 10/- (less than 1 centime) per full gerry can. The girls would join their neighbours at the local watering hole, draw the water then carry it back, African style.
At the end of the week, when they were paid, I would get requests to buy cheap body lotions or ‘designer’ loofah sponges from the supermarkets in town. Faith, who has ambitions to be an electrical engineer, worked alongside the electrician as he planned out our lighting and power points. Where some of the girls were quick to spend their hard-earned money, that wasn’t for our Maasai girl who saved up until she could buy herself a watch!
Yet amongst all this, in what might appear to be an idyllic lifestyle, sadness presents itself too. Many of you will already know the story of Isaac and his family. Like many others we know of, this family of 2 adults and 4 children shared one room in Nyalenda slum, no running water, no electricity. The baby, scared of the dark, would go to sleep by the light of one candle. Unfortunately, while Isaac was on a night shift, the candle must have caught fire and the mother awoke to the whole house ablaze. Unable to reach the door, she began squeezing each child through the tiny spaces between security bars on the one window, meant to deter intruders. Evelyn saved her children, Grace, Joy, David and Gideon but she, herself, died two weeks later, most likely in terrible pain.
Isaac, not only losing his wife, lost his home, his business. All he had left was his young family who still needed so much care and attention. As we sat with Isaac and cried alongside him, we resolved to do something. I put his story on Facebook and within 24 hours we had raised enough to replace his rented piki piki (motor) bike with his own bike. In the days that followed, money continued to come in and we were able to advance him 12 months’ rent on a two-roomed house which we then furnished. With the money he will earn from his piki piki business, we’ve further advised him to set up an education fund so his older boys will be able to continue in school and Grace and Joy will be able to join nursery school as soon as they reopen.
Whereas nothing will ever replace his wife, Isaac is certainly on a more secure financial footing than he’s ever been in his life. We’ll stay close to him and watch this family’s progress. Isaac is eternally grateful to people on the other side of the world and who he has never even met. Once again, your compassion has astounded me!
What else keeps me busy?
Many years ago, when I used to help pay school fees for Sheila (our current house mum), I was asked to help one of her classmates. Ann was about to drop out of school after her father had died. Kenyan Kids, at that time, paid for her remaining year in high school. However, once she had graduated, we were unable to help her with the high cost of university fees. All we could afford at that time was to enrol her on a rudimentary IT course. Shortly after that, for Ann, who continued to live with her family in Nairobi, we lost touch.
That was in 2014 but more recently, she has been in touch with Sheila. It seems, the years following school were not easy, the family were repeatedly being locked out of their house for non-payment of rent, often going to sleep on an empty stomach. Then Ann believed her fortunes had turned around when she was approached by an agency who were recruiting girls for housework in the UAE.
In First World, probably we’ve all seen the news reports about trafficking girls to places like Saudi but Ann accepted an offer of work because she believed this job would financially help her mum and younger siblings. Finding herself in Jordan, it seems hard to believe her situation deteriorated very quickly. The family she was living with, told her they had paid ‘good’ money to fly her out of Kenya and consequently, they were insistent to get good value for their money. Ann’s hours of work stretched from 6 am until midnight. Often, there would be no food provided for her. She told me how they would inspect her work and one time a strand of hair was found in the daughter’s bedroom. She was beaten but then managing to barricade herself in her room, utterly helpless, all she could do was pray to God for perseverance and patience, and to be able to leave. She told me how she considered herself lucky that (unlike one of the friends she’d made), she wasn’t having to endure rape by both the father and the son. It took Ann two hard years before her passport was returned and she was finally allowed to leave.
Ann’s story is the second I’ve heard in the last two weeks. One of our girls, whose mum was living in Nyalenda, has also recently disappeared. Motivated by the prospect of earning money in Dubai, this mother of four, agreed to sign up so could earn money to fund a desperately needed operation for one of her 12-year-old sons. On an occasional What’s App call back to a relative who is looking after her youngest child, a 5-year-old girl, she says she was not flown to Dubai as promised but is now in Saudi doing the same work as Ann.
It’s fortunate that we can continue to care for her eldest girl child who is desolate at the news of her mum, but at least, she is one of the lucky ones and is safe with us and can continue her education whilst her two brothers fend for themselves in the absence of their mum. Like Ann, sadly this young mum’s prospects will be grim over the next few years.
My heart aches (on so many levels) to see this kind of exploitation. I’m sure yours does too in hearing this account of real life here in the poorest parts of Kenya.
However, let me try and end this newsletter on a brighter note
Whilst we can’t help everyone; our job is not to fight governments or those criminals who exploit vulnerable women and girls. All we can do is help one person at a time – the starfish story as I often tell. I still believe the best and only way of helping children here in Kenya is to give them access to education.
And so, while I remain in Kenya, I’ll be launching a fund to buy another small piece of land close to our new home in Holo. We’ll build a simple two-roomed mbati (iron sheet) structure. We’ll take advice from those who’ve gone before us, Madam Evelyn, who we trained up as a teacher; Madam Rose who (in our opinion) runs the best nursery school in Nyalenda. Ezra, our Mexican volunteer, has done his homework and reported back on how desperate our local community is to have this facility. We’ve visited the local government-run nursery and during the last school term, over ninety 3/5 year olds were crowded into two rooms; no running water, no electricity and pitiful educational resources.
Ezra’s tree!
Once again, we can’t do achieve any of this, without you, our donors. Maybe I will be back in France sooner than I know but my current motivation is to use this period of ‘confinement’ to stay in Kenya until we have, yet again, another success story.
Whilst Isaac’s fund is now closed, over the coming weeks/months, I’ll be asking for seed money to launch a new Kenya Kids project, this time to establish a nursery school so we can provide a foundational education to those who, without us, would have none. I feel sure that even in these tough times for everyone, I can rely on you and your resources to, where necessary, ‘dig deep’.
I’m so proud of what we (you, our donors) have helped achieve, whether you’re new to us over the last few months or have been faithful to our causes over the last 10 years. Together, we’ve proved we are a force for good, most times, we can avert tragedy, and unknowingly have touched so many lives that without us, would be destined for despair. As so many of us go into confinement now, I urge you to confidently look to the future and acknowledge the part you have played in our stories of success and building that legacy for our global family.
If you want to know more of how you can help be part of our future, check out our website on www.kenyankids.org.
As ever, with heartfelt thanks, Julie, Small, Sheila and Ezra!
