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.