The New Hekima Place

I ventured over to the other side of Nairobi to visit the beautiful Hekima Place girls that I have spent the last 3 summers with. When I was there in November they were getting ready to move into their new home(s) which is where I happily found them. It is absolutely wonderful- but way out into the country, with nothing westernized around! Their old home, for the 60 orphan girls, was beautiful with plants and flowers, but it was rented land so now they own their land and homes and that makes up for the lack of trees and greenery.

I had a free ride with Megan over to see them, which would usually take over 2 hours on public transportation, so I was happy to accept the free ride! But I didn’t have time to tell them I was coming, which tuned out to be a fun surprise- considering nobody even knew I was in Kenya! When I got there the girls were all still at school but the moms saw me walking down the road, I could see them walking outside and pointing at me, saying is that her, what is she doing? As I got closer they all ran out to greet me and welcome me to their new home. I felt a little like the prodigal daughter, abandoning them for a new orphanage and then returning! They were so excited to show me around- now they live in 5 cluster homes, with 1 mom in charge of 12 girls in a house.

I barely had time to drop my bag as one by one they took me to their respective houses. They houses are color coded, and have beautiful paintings inside the houses (all your Pittsburgh fans, notice the picture, that is the guest house— a woman from Upper St. Clair donated that house so they decorated it in honor of her ). I was blown away by how beautiful the houses were, and what a cozy home they have become for the girls. It is such a brilliant alternative to the institutionalized living that my kids at Mogra are living in. I love the idea that there is a mom that can give more 1 on 1 attention and the girls live in a family setting to better aid in their development. It is so wonderful! The moms that work in the kitchen have had a burden taken off their plate too—they now have machines that cut the vegetables. This is revolutionary, they used to spend all day cutting the onions, tomatoes, potatoes etc for lunch and dinner, but now it takes 10 minutes. Americans come in and all the sudden tasks are completed efficiently, what do you know!

I was only there for a short 36 hours, but it was so lovely. The guesthouse was packed with volunteers, luckily there was a bed for me. It was seriously paradise, the house has a huge kitchen and living room, hot shower, and in the morning it was quiet- the first time I wasn’t waken up by 50 screaming kids in 1 month! It was refreshing to interact with other American volunteers and share with them about my time at Mogra- which is the opposite of Hekima! Maybe one day Mogra will be like Hekima, we can hope! The volunteers were a little older than me with their moms, so it was great to hear about their experiences in Kenya and their reactions to life here. It always puts life into perspective for me since so many things (like not having a shower!) have become normal for me but are so foreign to the average person.

To my delight, the girls didn’t have school the following day so I actually got to see them and hang out. We went hiking in the nearby Ngong Hills (if you have ever read or see the movie Out of Africa- it takes place there!) and they gave me a private tour of their new school. The school is attached to another children’s home funded by Norwegians, and boy do they have money. The school and orphanage are state of the art, beautiful building structures, desks and classrooms. I loved it- but the girls are still adjusting to the new school, they are starting their 3rd month, but not loving it yet.

We had a really fun day together, lots of singing and dancing and relaxing. As much as I love Mogra and will serve them as long as I can, the Hekima girls were my first Kenyan love, and I feel very much at home when I am with them. They are incredibly joyful girls and have a bright future by living at Hekima. It has been a pleasure for them to invite me into their lives and see them grow up so much in the past 3 years. I am thankful for all that the mums do to love and serve those girls, it is a huge witness to me as I continue to try and help the children here at Mogra. I would love nothing more than to share these children with all of you, so please save your pennies and make a trip out here, it is beautiful!

a fun weekend for the kids!

Last weekend we had a really fun weekend with some of the kids. On Saturday there was a fundraiser at a local international school and all of the proceeds went to Mogra. So we took the choir to the school and they performed beautiful singing and dancing, while there was a carnival type activity happening all around. The kids had a blast performing and seeing all the different people at this international school. It was unlike anything they have really seen before. And when parents found out who the kids were they were so generous to support them. They bought everyone lunch including coke (very exciting!) and gave them tickets to play games. It turned out a win win, because the kids had so much fun playing and people saw them having fun and more people came to play and spend money. They even had a few good laughs watching me and Alix jump rope, I don’t know why they don’t think we know how! It was really fun to be apart of that and see the community respond so well and support Mogra. My biggest complaint is always that the community here does not support their own people who are poor- and granted many of these people were westerners- but some were Kenyans and they were supporting the poor children. It was a nice afternoon.

On Sunday we had a BBQ for our college scholarship students. We were looking forward to this because most of our time with the students is strictly business and giving them policies and regulations, so this was an afternoon for us to have fun and relax together. We ended up grilling hamburgers and corn on the cob, a good old American treat! The kids were great, I don’t think most of them had ever had hamburgers, at one point they asked if the meat was “Ham” so we began calling them beer burgers instead! We also had to show them how to put the meat on the bun, and eat them together, not separate- with all the works of ketchup, mustard, onions and tomatoes! But they loved them in the end. I pounded the meat into paddies with one of the students, while Alix and a couple other students did the grilling. There were certain things that would have been nice but we didn’t think to buy like a flipper and nonstick spray, but it went well.
After we ate, Forrest, the head of Change Lives Now played music on the guitar and we did some dancing. I have gotten used to being the laughing stock of Kenya, and my reputation stood strong while dancing with them. I attempted swing dancing with a few of the students, which is not like anything they know how to do. It was quite the sight, but they had a good time!
The whole day was just a lot of fun, with a lot new experiences for the kids. We are really proud of them, as college students here study and spend way more time at school than any college students in the US. I am excited to see how they do and how they are able to change their lives for the better after this program.

Growing Shamba

This week we started a very exciting project that I previously had zero knowledge about! We began, and will hopefully complete the construction of 2 green houses on the shamba(farm) tomorrow. This has been a long talked about project, but at last an angel was sent to guide and begin it.

For a brief background let me explain once more what the situation here is like. There are 140 children living at the orphanage and 860 additional children at the school that we are trying to feed daily- free of cost to the families. That is 1000 mouths to feed and I am sure you can imagine that is a lot of food and even more money to spend. We started a feeding program back in October that guarantees 1 meal a day at school for all of the children for 2 years. It has totally transformed the school attendance and the quality of learning. But it is limited to 2 years, so in order to look to the future, the reality of a greenhouse started to surface.

This is when Nimrod, our brilliantly smart, motivated, economical and caring angel came into the picture. He cannot be more than 28 years old, and has the most impressive resume including being the head farmer at 2 major farms and a university degree in agriculture. He is the farmer down the road from us so we went last year to see how his greenhouses were constructed and the rest is history! He jumped right on board the Mogra family is volunteering his time to plan our 3 acre farm. He is here everyday, for at least 5 hours making estimates, plans, and now planting in the farm. I could go on for hours about how sweet he is!

But the crazy part that I am learning is how incredible green houses are. Nimrod has it planned so that within 2 months the greenhouses will pay for themselves, which cost about $3,500. The tomato plants he is planting will provide 1000 kgs of tomatoes every week, providing enough for the school, orphanage and even more to sell! Within 1 month, there will be enough onions for an entire year, so the rest is excess to sell. He is planting broccoli and cucumbers to export, and give to the children, along with watermelon, mangos and banana plants. The spinach-like plant that the children eat will never have to be bought again. He is planning for life stock, once we can afford a few cows, goats, fish etc. We already have 40 rabbits, and his plan is by August to have 300 in order to eat them! His plan is incredible, we will be completely sustainable within months, and able to make a living by selling items. It is so exciting to see that the children will be cared for, and they will be helping the process and learning. He is teaching them how to properly farm the plants and watch the growth.

The biggest problem is the water, right now it is so hot and dry here I thought there is no way we could afford to water all the plants. But Nimrod has that figured out! He installed a system to take the water from a nearby river and water the plants… free!

I am not at all an agriculturalist, but it is interesting to see what an art this is, and how much you can actual formulate from seedlings! Stay tuned and I’ll let you know how it turns out by the time I leave!

Toto Emily

This is Emily, our youngest girl at the rescue center. She is just darling, 4 or 5 years old. Like any kid, she will have a beautiful dress on, and within minutes it is destroyed with dust and dirt, but doesn’t take a notice to it. She mostly plays with the small boys, who are very rough and dirty, but there are always laughs and giggles, and Swahili words that I don’t understand! Her English has gotten tremendously better since I got here in September; she is a bright girl, learning quickly. When I see Emily, I see light and love, she is a true joy to have around. Sometime I forget about the environment she is growing up in because she is so happy. It is hard for me to know these kids don’t have mothers and fathers to continuously care for them, but they care for each other very well.

Last week I had the opportunity to be Emily’s mother, and I was not quite ready for the task! She was playing with the other 2 small boys, Karioke and Brian and I am pretty sure one of them pushed her, though they won’t admit to it! And she fell hard, so hard that her front tooth was nearly knocked out. Blood, screaming, crying, pain. Ahhh it was a horrible sight, and I was the only one around to care for her. I ran to pick her up, blood pouring out of her mouth, and took her into the office to clean it up. Flashbacks of my own teeth being pulled out came to mind (thank you mrs march!), and I remembered the pain and agony of that, not an enjoyable time. So I tried to be very gentle with her but she did not want me touching her mouth one bit. Her limited English did not help my cause either. Finally I was able to get a good look at her mouth, and immediately started freaking out, it was a permanent front tooth that was hanging on by the root. That is why she was in so much pain. Getting a bit nauseas myself, not handling the blood and the idea of a permanent tooth falling out, I just rocked her until she stopped crying so I didn’t have to make any major actions. By this time it had caused quite the scene, and the cook was told to come and yank the dangling tooth. As soon as he walked in with a rubber glove Emily was hysterical again. Not giving much thought to it, he pinned her down and jerked the tooth out. Simple and quick. Oh but she was not happy. We gave her a drink of water and a pain killer, but she wouldn’t allow a cotton swab or anything to clean her mouth up.

With the combination of the painkiller, crying and being rocked, she fell right asleep and I took her to bed. At this point we had examined the tooth and decided that it was NOT an adult tooth. PHEW! She was too young and had just lost her other front tooth in a playing accident so this one was bound to come out soon. That was a huge relief for me, I had no idea what to do about a lost adult tooth, but a baby tooth was no problem at all!

Unfortunately, the tooth fairy does not visit Kenya so there was nothing exciting to wake up to the next day. But she was totally fine and proud to show off her new gap to me in the morning! Who would have known what had happened the night before. It was quite the experience for me, I guess for those of you who are teachers you have similar experiences of dealing with such trauma and not always knowing how to handle it.

It’s always an adventure here, living with 140 kids, many issues come up! It is fun for me, but I am definitely still not equipped to be a mother of 140. One more lesson to check off my list!
love to you all!

Poverty & Education

If you have been to Europe in the last 10 years there is something very strange that you will notice. There are no children. This is due to a few cultural reasons that I do not need to rant about now. But it has made me think a lot this week because I have experienced the exact opposite here in Kenya.

There are children, and babies, EVERYWHERE!

It’s beautiful, obviously, because it is life. But unfortunately these young children and babies are not being cared for properly. The reasons for having babies varies, but the overwhelming majority are not able to provide for their children in the poverty stricken areas, that is the biggest poverty.

When I walk through the Mathare Slum in order to get to school I cannot help but notice the huge number of children that are roaming the slum and not in school. So I did a data collection and study in Mathare this week on why children are not in school to try and see what is necessary to get the children to go to school. I studied 2 major neighborhoods, and interviewed children themselves and parents of children who are not in school. The result was an overwhelming answer that I could have guessed: POVERTY.

Well, obviously, poverty does affect every aspect of life. But to be more specific the 2 major reasons that I found children were not in school were,
1. Young girls, as young as 5th grade, become pregnant and they are forced to stay at home and care for their baby. In our school alone, we have 6 girls that are mothers, and were able to come back to school after their baby grew a bit, 5 girls who left school because they couldn’t find anyone to care for their baby, and we have 2 girls that we know of who are pregnant now. This is huge. In the areas that I collected data from I interviewed 5 other young girls, 6th-10th grade who left school after having a baby and have not returned. Now many of them think they are too old to return to the class where they left, and probably will not return.

The 2nd reason is that mothers cannot afford to send their children to school. This results in keeping the children home to run the local business, watch over other children while the mothers go to work, or simply having children roam the street for scraps to sell. This happens way more often than I could get realistic stats for. The teachers in my school said that in the 4th grade and below they know of at least 15 students that this happens to. And they said as the children get older they begin to cover up what they are doing and won’t tell the truth so they have no real idea of knowing how often it happens. But as I walk around the slum, I can tell you it happens VERY often.

I was very frustrated with these results because Kenya has issued FREE government education for all primary students in order to encourage children to go to school. However, it is not really free! The government schools add on small fees, books, uniforms etc that add up to nearly $45 a month for 1 student. This may not seem much for us westerners, but for a family of 6, living on $1 a day, that is unreasonable.

I believe education is absolutely the key for these children to escape poverty. However, when education has not been valued in their families, and poverty is ruling the family, the cycle of uneducated children will continue.

But, with all things, there is hope! I am very excited to report on one of the families I visit. It was a single mother of 3 children, she is HIV +, and I suspect the youngest 2 yr old child is as well. The 2 oldest children, ages 9 and 6 just received a sponsor from the UK in order to attend school for the FIRST time, ever. They were admitted to our school on Friday, in the nursery class (with 3 yr olds) since they have never been exposed to structure, discipline or education. We are hoping they will be bright, quick learners so we can pass them on through the lower grades and hopefully catch up with their proper age mates. I am just excited that we got 2 children off the streets and into the classroom. Hooraayy!

You may only be a drop in the ocean, but without your drop, the ocean would be less. Mother Teresa