East African Orphanage

March 10th, 2010 by Sonja Benterud

Habari!

So, the latest update on my Kenya trip is that I decided to send 11 orphaned children to an orphanage with the money that has been raised in Canada for the IDP camp. These children were living with relatives that couldn’t afford them, and in some cases don’t want them. Many of these children had their parents die in the political conflicts in 2007 and quite a few have had their parent’s die recently (in the last year or two) from HIV/AIDS. Only one of the children has confirmed HIV status but a few of them haven’t been tested and it’s quite possible that they are infected.

The orphanage is called “East African Orphanage”, and it is approx one hour from the camp; a half hour from the town of Nakuru just in the opposite direction. We went there today and it is so beautiful! It’s run by an Australian couple and it’s clean, well taken care of, and very organized – this is rare and almost unheard of in Kenya. They have about 180 children right now, ranging from babies to 19 years old. They guarantee that the children will have three meals a day, education up to graduation from high school, a bed of their own, clothes, medical care and the ability to stay clean. That’s really huge compared to what these children have come from, and what they could have expected for their lives.

The orphanage is charging 5,000 kenyan schillings per child, which works out to about $70 US dollars. This cost is for the beds to be built, mattresses to be bought, as well as some clothes for the children. When we were there today my heart felt so happy that we are taking the children there. The children that we met are very happy, well behaved and you can tell that they are given love and affection. It struck me that while we were there many of the children cry because they know that their needs will be met – this is not the case with many/most of the children in camp.

We are busy at the clinic, trying to help decrease the amount of medications that is being dispensed. Yesterday there was a division in the camp. The two groups that comprised the camp (molo and makigani), have decided that they can’t agree on a community building (that a donor wanted to fund) and that has escalated into them not being able to do anything together any more. Yesterday they deconstructed the only two communal buildings in camp. I’ve never seen anything happen so fast, or be so organized in Africa and it made my heart hurt. It also made me really glad that I didn’t fund the chicken project, as it gave me a visual of what could have happened to that.

I feel really frustrated that these people can’t even work together on something simple like community buildings. There was an outside donor who wanted to build a community center (worth 3.5 million schillings, a HUGE amount of money in Kenya) and one of the community spokespersons had the deed to the community land wouldn’t give it over. Alas. now no one has anything and the community’s are even further set back as they won’t be working together at all any more. I am beginning to understand why things never get done, and never change in Africa. Yesterday I was thinking that there was maybe no point to trying anymore, but seeing the children at the orphanage today made me realize that the point is that there is hope for a better tomorrow when you look into the eyes of a child and see that people can change and everywhere there is some good in the world. I think it also made me realize that you can’t come to another country with ideas of how you are going to change things and make it better. Really, we are never going to solve the problems of a country; but, you can change the situation for some people and in the end it’s worth doing.

Kwherini!