I have been in Kenya for a little over a week now and am grateful for every second spent here. This week has been extremely rewarding. As fond as I am of safaris, I am glad that I took a week from my vacation to volunteer at an orphanage. For starters, I was under the impression I would arrive, spend time with the children to help enrich their lives a little and help create a happy childhood memory. The truth is that they are the ones that enriched my life. The orphanage I was placed at has about 43 smiling children. Many of them were either rescued from abusive homes, abandoned, without parents due to HIV/AIDS, or simply sent to the orphanage because the family could not afford to keep them. Walking into the children centre, I was expecting to find sad and gloomy faces. Instead, I found laughter, kindness and love. Most children were outside playing soccer, (the used soccer ball is now blackened, torn and soft), others were helping with the dishes and the meals. The older children were keeping a watch of the younger children. I was immediately greeted with smiles, karibou (Swahili for welcome), big hugs and was quickly asked to join the fun. I received a tour of the establishment, which is made-up of a small office, a boys dorm with about 20 beds, a girls dorm with about 30 beds, a small kitchen with giant pots set over a fire which is used for cooking meals, a dish washing area (by hand in buckets of water), and a small washroom. I have been spending my days getting to know the children, reading with them, letting them style my hair, playing duck duck goose, etc... I have heard some of their stories and it is heartbreaking. However, over the course of six days, I have not seen many tears. I have not heard one complaint about the meal, the children have volunteered to help the mamas (their caretakers) without being asked over and over again. On World AIDS day, I went along and watched the children perform a song in the village. I was so proud of them. They were really excited to be signing in public and they did a fantastic job. This morning, we packed the van full of children and headed to church. I sang songs in Swahili. Today was my last day with them and I miss them already. They have taught me more about life, love and strength than I could ever have taught them.
Mid-way through my volunteering week, I helped at a local feeding program for elderly ladies. So when I arrived at the location, there were about 500 people outside the building waiting to get in. This feeding program is run by Pat, a 78 year old women. Pat was born in Kenya, and started the program on her own. She receives limited funding support from churches in Australia, US, UK, etc... but at the end of the day running this program costs her $2500 per month. She does this out of the goodness of her heart. The program feeds about 300 elder ladies that have no other means of support, meaning either they have no children, or their children have passed away leaving them with no source of income, nobody to take care of them. Some of them have taken-on the responsibility of are taking care of their grandchildren. There were more than 300 women at the door, however the program can only support 300 at this time. It runs every second Wednesday morning. Their package consisted of 1 loaf of bread, matches, salt, $20 shillings, beans, corn meal, cooking fat, and 1 page of paper to use either for burning or for toilet paper. This is their supply for the next two weeks. The picture below is the end of the line. Others that remained outside were granted access at the end to grab what was left, mostly cabbage.
