My kids are just so great

I was totally overwhelmed about my kids' reaction to my return to Motherly Care this afternoon. I was only away for 1 night and I definitely did not expect for them to miss me too much but the moment I arrived I was welcomed by so many smiling faces and hand shakes and "So nice you are back" comments... It was so lovely. Samuel - a boy with whom I spend quite a lot of time as he is always around the guest house (where I am staying) feeding chickens and attending to other chores - seemed the most happy with my return - he did not want to leave my side and was very keen on showing how much he missed me - by bringing me some sliced tomatoes with salt (which he prepared on his own), by emptying my bin, even by ensuring that the leftover water which I boiled to make some tea was covered in case I needed it later... And he is only 11... He loves to read so whenever he is free I give him a story book to read in my room.
All this made feel absolutely great and definitely helped me overcome yet another low spell lasting since beginning of last week.

Today, again, we were visited by John Bravo - a scout who is helping us to introduce some more activities at Motherly Care, i.e. working with beads, sports and scouting. He is the one who is currently teaching me and providing a lot of materials about the whole process of rescuing children from child labour and the streets... I am very excited about all of this as I want to be able to reach out to as many children as possible.

John wanted to show our children the "Stolen Childhoods" documentary (we have already seen 2 different videos in previous weeks) so we proceeded to Motherly Care. Again I was greeted by many children running from all sides just to hug me - an absolutely amazing feeling. I spent the entire afternoon with children in my arms and on my lap, by my feet... it was a great end to quite a challenging week. I cannot describe the feeling but I did not want to let go of any of them and was quite sad when they eventually had to go to have their supper...

I brought some banana cake with me today and since there were many children around me this afternoon, it was finished in seconds but my children were so happy with such a small gift... I am now very excited about organising my delayed b'day party for next month - I am definitely bringing a huge cake, there must be hotdogs as children absolutely love it and I am thinking that I should also arrange some ice cream for them... I want this celebration to stay in their memories for a very very long time... :) yes, it is making me feel really good when I can treat my children to sthg they might have not tried before or sthg that they get very rarely and that might be perceived as a selfish reason to be doing that but I love the feeling I get when I see so many happy faces around me. I have been very strict with them lately and since we are so severely underfunded I cannot be doing things like this very often but on this one occasion I am going to spoil them as much as I can :) After that I will have to concentrate all my energy on fundraising and learning all about helping children living on the streets...

Rescuing Emmanuel (Len Morris, 2008): USA

Rescuing Emmanuel (Len Morris, 2008): USA

Form 4s day trip

As our Form 4 students have been working very hard recently revising and preparing for their final exams, I wanted to reward them a little. As very soon they will be leaving Motherly Care I wanted to do sthg with them that they will remember for a long time – they wanted to go on a trip but I knew they didn’t have the funds to do so. I am trying to rally economise while I’m here to make sure that my money can last for a long time but I couldn’t resist paying for the trip for them – it will probably be the last reward that they get from Motherly Care. Obviously we will now be helping them to find work or funds for college but most probably they will not get an opportunity to do sthg as a group.

I hired a people carrier and we set of to town on Monday morning. We started with the National Museum – from what I could see the students (I keep calling them kids but they are adults already!) really enjoyed it. At the museum we also went to the snake park – this is not sthg that I particularly enjoyed but as they really wanted to go there so I gave in – after all it was a treat for them J

After the museum we were supposed to go to the National’s Park Animal Orphanage but we stopped at Uhuru Gardens on our way so we could have some lunch. It was really nice there and we decided to take some photos with the monument. After only taking a couple of shots we were approached by the park’s security and told that what we are doing is illegal as we are supposed to pay Ksh5000 (that’s sthg like £45)! This was absolutely ridiculous – we argued with the guard by he was not really listening. He asked one of the teachers to follow him to the office. When they returned we were told that indeed, in order to take photos in that place you must pay the fee – everyone was really outraged and we decided to talk to the guard again. For some reason he would not come close enough to us so we could talk it over. I then decided that if he doesn’t want to come to talk to me then I will go to talk to him. When I approached him with one of the teachers I asked why he just doesn’t come and tell me what the problem is (it was pretty obvious that the reason why he was so persistent that we pay the fee was the fact that I was white and he assumed that I had money). I was then told that he cannot speak English but if we give him some cash he will let us go. I was not really shocked – sthg like this is very common here. I did not cave in though and told him if he really insists that we pay the fee then I will just delete the photos that we have taken. I think he realised that he would not get any money out of me that he could use for himself and all of a sudden he let us go without paying the fee or deleting the photos.

As we already finished the snacks that we had, we decided to leave that place before they try to charge us for anything else. We proceeded to the National Park. As usual, because I am a foreigner – regardless to the fact that I am a volunteer not a tourist – I was really ripped off when it came to pay for the tickets – the children paid Ksh50, the teachers Ksh100 and for me? Well – Ksh1240! To be honest in my opinion that place is not worth paying so much money – it is much better to go to the elephant orphanage as you can interact with the animals much more there, but hey, it was the treat for the children and they wanted to go there – and they really enjoyed it.

As we didn’t have any money left in our budget, it was time to go home. However, the children really did not want to go back just yet. Instead we went to do some window shopping at a new shopping mall. It was so funny when I asked them to go up the escalator – they have never seen anything like that and were really afraid ;) the same thing with the lifts – they found it really amazing and we went up and down several times attracting a lot of attention. At least they were dressed in school uniforms so people knew that they were students and not a bunch of crazy adults ;)

I was absolutely shattered when we returned. I just wanted to shower and go to bed – and it was only 7.30pm! But there was another challenge waiting for me: about 20 min after we returned the power went off so I had to shower (and when I say that I mean bathe in a small plastic basin and 1 small bucket of water) just with candle light. The joys of simple life… ;)

Last night the Form 4s stayed up all night praying for good results in their exams – they start tomorrow. I wish them best of luck.

Today is a national day in Kenya – Kenyatta Day. Kenyatta Day is a day celebrating Kenya's freedom, named after their founding president Jomo Kenyatta.

Daily challenges

I cant believe I have been here 7 weeks already, the time is really flying by. I am so glad that I have decided to spend more time here and to get even more involved with day to day running of this place. There are many challenges here, money is always the top one but not the only one. At Motherly Care there are children from many different backgrounds; some of them only come to attend the school during the day, some are staying during the school terms but go back home to their relatives during holidays, the others are orphans or those whose mother’s are prostitutes… Those with relatives are admitted to Motherly Care as otherwise they would not go to school because the families cannot afford it. There are also few children coming from the IDP (Internally Displaced People) Camps.

Just before I arrived in Kenya, a little girl – Rebecca, was brought by the police to Motherly Care – she was found abandoned on someone’s doorstep. She is cared for well here by the staff as well as other children.

Every time the children misbehave I try to talk to those involved and make them understand their mistakes. It is not easy as they are scared that they will get beaten – this is the most common way of disciplining the children in Kenya – especially in schools. I do assure them that I will not beat anyone but I can still see the fear in their eyes… I now have the challenge of coming up with meaningful punishments for the most severe offenders and I can tell you that it is a huge challenge for me.

I am very happy though because I can see that I am getting through to some of the children already – they now started to come to me to share their concerns and to tell me if there is sthg going wrong or someone planning to do sthg wrong. It’s only just the beginning, as some of the children are not so happy about me being here now that they realised that it’s not all just about fun and nice food. I really wish I could just have fun with them every day but ensuring that they are brought up in a proper way and educated well is my top priority. I hope that they will understand it sooner rather than later. I care about all of them very much and I am determined to succeed in making this place better.

I have also decided not to fly back home for Xmas and stay here until April. That will of course depend on whether my visa can be extended by that much. I am quite hopeful as I know that there are many volunteers coming to Kenya for 12 months and they are able to get their visas so I should also be ok :)

Our kids just completed their midterm exams and have the half term holiday for few days… The Form 4 students will start their final exams on Thursday – they have been working very hard revising in last 2 months, preparing for the exams. I hope that they all do very well. We only have 7 students in Form 4 which means that they have to take their exams at another school as there need to be min of 25 students to be counted as the examination centre.

This month we were really lucky - we were very short of money to pay the salaries and just as I was about to start panicking I noticed that there was a substantial sum of money paid into the MCCH bank account in UK. And although we were still short of the full amount needed, it really helped us this month with the expenses - THANK YOU SO MUCH JAY for all your help. I cannot even begin to explain how much your support means to us.

Cultural Day at Motherly Care

On 24th of September we celebrated the annual cultural day at Motherly Care. On that day many of the children create various groups and perform different songs and dances according to which tribe they are from. There are many tribes in Kenya and tribalism is a major problem in political as well as the every day life.
At Motherly Care we celebrate the roots of our children though and very often kids from one tribe help to perform the others – this year we had Kisii, Louhya, Massai, Kikuyu and Embu tribes performing. The children were all dressed up in kangas and had their faces painted. Those that weren’t taking part in performances were the spectators. We had a lot of fun. This year though I was not able to take part in the dancing due to my ankle still giving me problems (and Thank God for that excuse! I am not a very good dancer ;)

To make the day a little nicer I bought the ingredients for maandazi, some juice and biscuits. The kids were very happy with that :) The unfortunate thing was that due to the lack of funds we were not able to organise the cooking part of the Cultural Day – normally the children, apart from performing, would also have an opportunity to cook different dishes from their tribes – the food varies depending where in Kenya you go. Nevertheless, it was a lovely day and the kids had a lot of fun.

I will post some videos on the children dancing and singing when I manage to get a better internet connection – I am using a pay as you go service and uploading a video would be very expensive… Hopefully I can arrange sthg soon.