Excerpt from a letter by Bruce

Categories: Diary

Let me tell you about the Orphanage. I farm near a little town cum village called Njoro which caters for a rural community where many of the people are not far from subsistance, living on small farms producing barely enough for the family to live on and with not much left over. There is no welfare state in Kenya, so if you are out of a job you are out of an income of any kind, which can lead to immense hardship in the family.

About two years ago members of the Faith Holy Church in Njoro were finding a number of children hanging around their congregation complaining they were hungry and that they had not eaten for a while. They said they had no parents and their relations, if any, were too poor to nourish them The Church started a kitchen to help them out but soon found they were feeding children from the whole community, who had flocked in when they heard of free grub being given out.....

After much heart searching the Pastor and his Chuch Committee decided to try to raise funds from their members and to provide some form of shelter for the more needy cases. The Pastor himself donated his plot of land in Njoro, extended his small mud house into two rooms to act as dormitories, tacked on a tiny kitchen and so the Faith Holy Orphanage was formed. Forty of the most needy cases were selected, housed and fed. Their ages ranged from four to twelve years old. All had come from families where the parents had died of Aids and where the relations were too old or poor to help them. Financing came from members of the Church themselves and from what they could get the community to contribute.

I became involved about eight months ago when the Pastor approached me to see how I could help. At that time the children were sleeping on the cold earth floor - there were only two beds in which slept the smallest ones, four to a bed and sharing one blanket. At times the children were going days without food as there was no money to buy it. The Pastor was at his wits end and ready to give up ... but looking at the children he knew he just couldn't abandon them. As he said, it was not their fault that they were in this position and everyone deserves a right to live.

Since then, with the help of donations from friends and acquaintances, the children have been fed every day. Beds and mattresses have been bought and all the children are off the floor albeit still sleeping four to a bed until we can acquire more beds. Never mind - the children think they have gone to heaven. They have never been so snug and warm and sleeping several to a bed is what most rural children would be doing anyway. It is more I than they who seem worried about the overcrowding. Before the rains started all the children got new shoes to try to reduce the coughs and colds of previous years. This is not expensive to do out here as there is a very good second hand market of clothes etc donated from luckier countries through organisations such as Oxfam. We have got a rain water storage tank and guttering on the rooves and hope soon to buy another water tank. Until now all the water has had to be bought and transported on the back of bicycles.

There remains a long way to go. The Church members themselves still fund wages, medical needs, school uniforms and desks. As many of the children had had no early education and cannot get into the free primary school setup until they have reached a certain standard, a nursery school was necessary. Originally the teachers for this had worked on a voluntary basis but could only do so for limited periods as they too needed an income to live on. This has now been solved by taking in fee paying children from outside the orphanage, a service much appreciated by the neighbours who are all living in a very underprivileged area. The "nursery school" building is tiny and doubles up in the evenings as the room were the older students do their homework. There are no windows and one side is open to the elements so when it rains it is pretty unpleasant. It is only recently that we have got chalk, exercise books and pencils. Books for learning and for recreational reading are still a dream but we are working on it. There is no electricity for lighting. The toilet is a basic longdrop and the 4'X4' washing plinth is used by both the boys and the girls. It is far from ideal but does work. The boys and girls do sleep in separate dormitories though this is rather a grand word for these rooms - earth floor, mud walls, no windows or ceiling and beds filling all the space. But every child now has a teddy bear or similar toy to take to bed and love, kindly donated by British Airways!

I never cease to be amazed at how happy the children seem to be. The discipline is excellent, the children are kept busy and whenever I go there they all pour out of wherever they are and sing and dance for me - a great African tradition.

The biggest problem I have encountered in raising funds is to find donors who are prepared to give money for the day to day food and maintenance. Beds, blankets, clothes, buildings, etc are the preferred choice from most donors. I appreciate that this stems from the fear that the money given, if not for a specific project, may end up draining off into the pockets of the administrators and friends and not going to where it was intended. For this reason all money for this Orphanage is now handled by and passes through me. I dish out only as it is needed and strict accountability is maintained. The Church Committee is happy with this and so far it has worked well. Presently we can get by on �£200 a month for food, firewood, water and phone card - a remarkable achievement, I think, for 40 children!

For the future .... I feel we have got to relocate to a bigger piece of land, our own, that we can put up bigger and better buildings that meet the health and safety standards that should be imposed. We want to think of some form of training to give the children skills that will help to give them a living when they leave school ( which is only two years away for our older orphans). In the short term I should like to get windows and ceilings into the current buildings, get another eight beds (that will go on top of the existing ones as bunks) and mattresses (we already have the extra blankets), double up the water storage capacity, get books and learning aids, home clothes and warm jackets, perhaps a radio and some games. It all depends on financing. I am daily more humbled from the generosity displayed by those approached for help and I can see this project eventually helping far more than our current forty.