Time to say goodbye again...

"Mum!"
I hear the voice calling across the yard and even though that is really not a title I should be responding to at this stage in my life I know they are wanting my attention. I turn and see Tom's face broken into a wide grin. He sees my hands full with things to pack and his face falls. 'Mum... don't leave us!' 
I try to smile at him and tell him not to worry- I will come back! 
Some of the smaller girls gather around and join the catch-cry 'don't go Tabby, don't leave us!'

I walk around the compound going through the motions of packing up my stuff, sorting out clothes to give to the kids and finishing up some random chores.There is a big farewell today and all the kids are hard at work, peeling potatoes, chopping up a goat and rolling out dough for over 100 chapattis, there is such a feeling of camaraderie around the place that it makes leaving so much harder.


Yes Kenya is unthinkably frustrating, there are so many sad things, so many difficult things, so many tears, so much corruption and so much anger... yet there is also so much need, so many people to help, so much good that can be done! 

Once again as I leave here to head home for family weddings, I don't know when I will be here again or what God has planned for me, but I do have a feeling in the pit of my stomach that my feet will be back on Kenya soil in the future. 

Building!

Collecting timber.

I have gone with a bunch of the teenage boys to collect timber for a building project. After a brisk walk we arrive at a forest area with some very recently felled trees scattered about. I am quick to partner with one of the stronger boys and we lift the tree onto our shoulders and begin the 3 km walk back. I can’t help but giggle at how my partner is texting on a borrowed phone, the tree casually balanced on his shoulder while I awkwardly shift my end from side to side trying to watch my step on the tiny track through the field whilst not dropping the weighty tree!

This time in Kenya has seen me doing a lot more practical work, building, painting, varnishing, clearing wood and concreting. The building is always heavily complicated by availability and quality of materials- wooden posts in actual fact being whole trees as a prime example! So many times we will stop, look at our work and realise- despite our careful measuring and use of the level and square- things don't quite line up. But at the end of the day, it always works out good enough :) 

Construction of our rabbit cage

The highlight of this has been the animal projects that we have been working on at the coastal children’s home. Zero graze cow shed, sheep and goat pen, rabbit breeding cage and hen house- with the last two being built by just me and Abi (in a stubborn effort to prove that girls can do physical work!).

Our rabbit breeding cage is an awesome learning tool for the kids here- they are required to fetch food for the rabbits and clean out their cages and in return will benefit from their nutritious meat from the offspring of the breeders- a prospect they are all very excited about!

Our finished hen house :)

Maja cleaning out the cages

Before and after- our rabbit breeding program :)

Alone.

Imagine your parents had died. 

You are left alone with your two young sisters.

All three of you are placed in an underfunded orphanage and you receive barely a scrap of food. You sleep on the ground. You hate life, you try not to let your younger sisters see your tears, you try to be strong and yet it seems life is so futile…

Then one day a visitor comes for you. A man you know helps out people, you know he has orphaned kids staying at his house and you beg him to take you with him, you plead and cry and explain how bad the situation is. You see that it affects him and he wants to take you with him, but he can’t. He is not permitted to just take children from the orphanage at a whim.

The kind man leaves with a sad look in his eyes.

You discuss with your sisters and together you scheme, you bide your time and then one day you do it, all three of you run away together. You travel for days, over 70 kms, until you finally reach your destination.

The kind man sees you walk in his gate and he laughs, he giggles and smiles and he welcomes you, as he hasn’t taken you himself there are no repercussions from the orphanage, they don’t even know where you have gone. You now have a safe place to stay. You are asked questions about your background, photos are taken of you, you receive news you are now ‘sponsored’.

This means you now get food everyday, you stay in a comfortable dormitory, you have your own bed, you are surrounded by other people your age, you go to school, you go to Sunday school, you can now live like a 10 year old should be able to, surrounded by security and care.

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress” James 1: 27

Wounded :(

I look up into her face and see that her eyes are brimming with tears, yet she doesn't make a sound.

I ask her softly 'unahisi uchungu sana?' (do you feel a lot of pain?). She is quick to respond with a whispered 'yes', her brimming eyes spilling over and tears running down her cheeks. 

She is young, maybe only 7 years of age and yet her resting face is sad, her beautiful chocolate skin marred by a scar across one cheek and a bruise on the other. This girl has dealt with a lot and she is tough. She quickly brushes her tears with a grimy hand and turns her face away. 

I turn my attention back to the large open bleeding gash on her leg and after finishing cleaning it I use butterfly stitches to close it back together and bandage it securely. After a painkiller and a lollypop she is soon smiling and hobbling around with her friends.

Her mother has many children, a mental disability and a quick temper. It had taken this little lass most of the day to wrack up enough courage to come and ask for help- her mother had become rageful this morning and lashed out at her with a kitchen knife, slicing her leg open. 

Why does this kind of thing happen so often? Why do people who clearly can't provide for offspring have so many children that are simply born into a life of poverty and hardship? Why is it ok for the youngest and most vulnerable to be the ones that suffer?

I know that it is not fair. I know that it is not how God designed families to be. I know I will not be able to fix the situation for many of them. 

But I also know I can try with each and every child I come in contact with, I can try to love, to care, to show them there is good in the world. I can be confident that many others I know here are doing the same.

And I can pray that Jesus returns and fixes the world for ALL of them. 

Even so, come Lord Jesus. 

Are you trained for that?

Unfortunately DIY culture hasn't quite made it to Kenya yet. 

A lot of Kenyans have the attitude of 'if you aren't trained to do it then you can't do it'. 

Abi and I with one of our murals.

From building to baking, painting to plumbing, book-covering to bandaids. 
If you haven't specifically trained to do something skilled there is great shock that you are even attempting it. 
I think it may be partly due to the lack of exposure, if you haven't ever seen a band-aid before, how do you know how it works? If you have never held a paint brush, how do you paint a mural? 

Girls covering books with mosquito net bags

Whatever the reason, it is something I have found both humorous and also at times frustrating. 
I have found myself doing quite a myriad of tasks and the amount of times when in the middle of doing something I have heard a shocked voice 'Madam! You never told us you were a builder/artist/typist/plumber/ tailor/doctor!?"
My favourite one was when digging a trench for a overflow pipe, one of my colleague teachers came up to me in shock 'All this time, you never told us that you are a water engineer!'

Form 2 boys mending their uniforms.

Some of the boys fixing the gutters.

After seeing how tatty some of the students uniforms and schoolbooks were, Abi and I decided to run some after school DIY classes for sewing and book-covering. Initially a lot of students were under the impression that we were going to do it for them, however when they arrived at the classroom they instead found us with a pile of needles and thread, staplers, sticky tape and carefully cut up recycled mosquito net packaging plastic. We instructed them that they were capable and we would show them how they could do it themselves. Much to our delight, the students got their heads around the concept and spent hours and hours carefully stitching their clothes and covering their books. 

Likewise when fixing the school gutters, I wasn't tall enough to reach the down-pipe that needed capping, but when I explained what needed to be done to some of the taller lads, they were only too keen to hang out the two-story window and do the job. On completion, proudly declaring to their classmates 'I am now a plumber!'. 

Filling in a form.

Its something that would usually be a simple administrative task.

A form with student data- address, parental contact details, fee paying information etc  for all the students in the school, it is usually done on admission but there are a number missing and hence it is decided that a new form be developed and all students fill it in. 

I am unsure exactly what information is required and so I team up with some local teachers to determine what such forms usually look like in Kenyan schools. 
As we get to the parent particulars, one of the teachers says in a matter of fact way - 'there must be a box to tick, if they are dead or alive'. I nod my agreement and note it down, but inside I feel terrible. The fact that for many of the kids their parent will just be represented by ticking a box labelled DEAD is just horrible. 

When it gets to the students filling out the form there is a whole new set of questions I didn't expect, opening up to me again how difficult the backgrounds of these kids actually are.

A child from the most nuclear family that I know of asks me 'I don't know what my mother or fathers name is?' I am shocked and respond with what I think are her parents names- people who I know well from the ecclesia, she laughs and replies 'he is not my father! I have never met my parents, I think he is maybe my uncle." 

A number of students struggle with the section on their parents...
'Madam, my mother is dead- am I still supposed to fill in her phone number?'

"For my fathers occupation, I guess I just put 'drunkard?'''

"For my mothers level of education, can I write 'zero'?'

Siblings is also an area of confusion for many, one student telling me he is one of seventeen siblings and many others with similar large figures and complicated families... 
"It asks how many brothers I have, is that just from my mother and my father? or from my fathers two other wives as well?"

This 'simple-filling-in-a-form' has once again showed to me how complex Kenya is, it is just so different from the 'normal' at home and the lack of nuclear families is one of the key reasons why life is so difficult in this country. 

Malaria...

Even though it is a warm day he is rugged up in a heavy sweater and uncontrollably shivering. 
His usually cheerful face is creased with pain and instead of a friendly greeting he struggles to talk... 'madam, I am feeling somehow bad".
I sit him down and take his temperature, it is unusually high and so I take some blood and do an in-vitro malaria test. 

It takes less than 2 minutes to show up positive.  

Despite being preventable and easily treated, malaria kills almost 500,000 people in Africa every year. 
It is not uncommon for students here to get malaria but fortunately I have testing facilities, medication is relatively cheap and in most cases, effective.
Malaria medication takes around three days to have full effect and generally the students surprise me with their quick recovery. However, there is something about this case that has me unsettled and I decide to go up to the boys dormitory to checkup on him.

The dormitory is crowded and noisy and it takes me a while to make my way through the morass of bunk-beds to find him. In the very back corner he is curled up on his bed, semi conscious and incoherent. I take his temperature and can't help but gasp when I see the reading of 40.6, his body is literally burning up. I ask some questions to his bedmate and find out that he has vomited all the medicine I have given him and hasn't eaten or drunk all day. 

There is something so alarming about being responsible for someone who is so unwell, has no one to care for them and is unable to help themselves. For the next few hours as I work to bring his temperature down and try a different malaria medication I feel ill myself, tossing up whether I should drive him into hospital but knowing that they will not be able to do much more than I can.

That night I wake up many times stressing about his state and as soon as it is light I race back up to the dormitory to check on him. Fortunately my prayers are answered and he is on the mend although it takes four more days of care before he is back walking around and cheerfully greeting me again. 

Two weeks later, thanks to some donated funds a large parcel arrives and we are able to provide mosquito nets for all the boys in the dormitory, hopefully now this situation does not have to be repeated in the near future. 

Household Blitz!

When living in a country surrounded by poverty it is difficult to know how best to help the many needs you see every day, you can't assist everyone and therefore its hard to know who you can help, however sometimes the circumstances add up right and it is possible to get in there and really make a difference in someones living conditions...

Joyce is a widow who has been part of the Agape in Action widows program for a few years. She lives with her daughter in law Mary along with Mary's husband and four children. Unfortunately both Mary and her husband are somewhat simple, the kids are also rather developmentally delayed and their living conditions were horrible. 

When we went to visit the family it was disturbing to see... the kids were dirty and malnourished, they sleep on rags and sacks on the floor and the house was filthy. Neighbours had expressed their concerns about the family to the coordinators of the widows program and it was decided we organise a blitz day to help turn their situation around and give them a good head-start. 

A team of two older girls from here, three sisters from the ecclesia, Abi, Kiri and myself headed round to their house one sunny Friday morning. The house was emptied completely, piles and piles of filthy dirty, ripped and mouldy clothing and rags sorted through, the worst burnt and others all scrubbed clean, stitched up and neatly folded into new storage boxes. Thanks to some generous donations we purchased new kitchen equipment and pantry supplies, bathing basins, soap, clothes, mattresses, blankets, sheets, mosquito nets- an entire refit for the whole house. We even scrubbed the kids clean and put them in fresh new clothes- much to the babies displeasure, she screamed the entire time! 

The kids were so cute, proudly showing each other their new undies - which they were wearing for the first time in their lives! Upon seeing their new mattress they were so shocked they wouldn't believe that it was for them- discussing amongst themselves about how these visitors must be staying the night and that was why there was now a bed where they usually sleep. It took a while and a fair bit of convincing before they realised that it was where they were going to be sleeping from now on. No dirty sacks on the floor, a mattress, sheets, blanket and even a mosquito net!

The locals agreed to continue to pay visits to the family to make sure they have a good understanding of how to maintain their new things and follow the advice and example of cleanliness and hygiene. We left the house with the kids giggling and running around excitedly in their new clothes and Mary outside already using the new basins to do some extra washing. 

A heartwarming day for all involved! 

Starved.

Starved. Babies. Children. Teenagers. Adults. Absolutely Starved. 

I am not talking about physical starvation, although there is definitely a lot more of that in Kenya than anywhere else I have been. I am talking of a different type of starvation, one that I didn't really realise existed until I came to Kenya. But one that is just as destructive and painful as starvation of food. One that leads to messed up lives, to underdevelopment, to lack of achievement, to sadness, to fear, to violence, to low self-esteem, sometimes even to death. 

A starvation of love. 

Coming from an Australian background where love and care is the norm its hard to understand what it is like for many Kenyans. To be born into a family where you are not really wanted, where you are just another mouth to feed, to grow up with extended family members or neighbours, to shift from place to place, for no one to really know or care whether you are here or there. 

I noticed it at a children's home when I went into the boys dormitory to check on a lad who had a wound on his leg, instantly 3 other boys poked legs and arms out from under their dirty sheets to show me various wounds they had. They hadn't told anyone because there wasn't anyone who would care.

When I told one of these 13 year old orphans that I loved him he looked at me in a puzzled way, like he had never heard those words before.


Probably because he hadn't.


Showing one of my students some photos and videos of a good friend's newborn baby in Australia, he pays close attention to the screen and then looks up at me with a startled expression- 'this is very different to here in Kenya. Here the father says 'You should have used family planning!' or 'No, this isn't my child''. But this father... this father really loves his baby!" 

Upon return back to the school here in Kamukuywa I was greeted with an enormous overwhelming display of excitement and joy from all my students I taught last year. One thing I totally hadn't expected though was the shock on their faces when I greeted them, when I addressed one student by his full name and asked how he was going, he responded  'Madam! surely you don't actually remember an insignificant person like me?!"

Another student after asking me how my time in Australia was and hearing about my home life and family stopped and looking me in the eye said 'Madam. Thank-you for returning. Thank-you for loving us".

I don't think I have ever thanked anyone for loving me.

I have never felt the need, because love has always been there. But for Ferdinand being loved was something out of the ordinary. 

One of the high school students here expresses her feelings about her sponsorship in a letter..'I sincerely appreciate for the love that you have to me, I was wondering how a person I have never seen could be paying for my school fees!' when you don't experience love from people around you, it is hard to comprehend love from someone who doesn't even know you.  

Of course this isn't the case for some, there are exceptions and there are children who have very good relationships with their parents. But the fact that this is reality for so many is heart wrenching. 

Not having the security of being surrounded by loving people is something that affects humans more than we would realise.  Supporting these kids and showing them some of the love of God is something that does and will totally change their lives.