Wednesday 13th August 2008 Posted by Ricky
I�ve been in Nairobi working in Kenya Children�s Home (KCH) now for eight weeks and it�s been an incredible experience so far. KCH, which is still known as Thomas Barnardo House in Kenya, is home to 175 abandoned, orphaned or destitute children, from newborns to 18 year olds. The children are housed in 9 family units. House mums live with the children are on duty round the clock to reinforce the family environment, supported by House aunties.

The children are of mixed ages and sexes, with all siblings living together, recreating a more family-oriented environment. There is a dedicated Nursery unit to house children from birth to 2 years old, at which point the children move into one of the houses under the care of the House mums. In 2007 the Nursery was renovated to the highest standards and currently houses 37 abandoned babies under the age of 2.

It�s amazing to watch the other children, especially the girls, caring for the younger children. In many cases, this is natural to the older kids because often, before arriving at KCH, they will have looked after younger siblings as many of them have lost parents to AIDS and may have been living with elderly grandparents or other relatives.

The children attend the adjacent Jonathan Gloag Academy, which is also administered by the Balcraig Foundation. In 2002 the Jonathan Gloag Academy was opened to educate local children and the children of KCH. By 2007 this school had become one of the most successful primary schools in Nairobi. There is now a waiting list for entry into the school and all age appropriate children from the home are educated in Jonathan Gloag Academy. The classes run from kindergarten to class eight and JGA offers top class resources such as a state of the art computer laboratory, library, basketball court and access to a well maintained athletic field. The basketball court and athletics field are available for the children at KCH during weekend activities and school holidays, although the growing Westminster Events business (see below) uses the field as a Wedding Venue, with great success to date.

However, although we care for 175 children directly at KCH, the Home is also the administrative centre for a number of other projects, both Social Projects and Income-Generating projects. My job in the Commercial Office is to provide admin support to the Income-Generating Projects, but I want to highlight 3 social projects that are benefiting children both in Nairobi and Kenya as a whole:

Soila Maasai Girls Rescue Centre, Suswa:
The Suswa Project was launched in November 2005 and its aim is to provide for the welfare, security and education of Maasai girls who are rescued from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and thereby empowered to change their lives and those of generations to come. Suswa is located on the edge of the Maasia Mara in the Rift Valley, 2 � hours from Nairobi, and is currently home to 47 Masaai girls. The girls are housed and educated in a compound with no running water or electricity, although both of these issues are being urgently addressed by KCH staff. Funds raised by Bank of Scotland have been used to build permanent buildings and extend the girls accommodation and a medical clinic has been built, but has yet to open on-site.

In all cases, the girls� parents have given their permission for their daughter to embark on this new way of life. The Suswa Centre is run as a partnership, in which the local community provides infrastructure and support. KCH contributes staff, medical and educational supplies, and Balcraig Foundation provides the set-up and running costs, and manages the Suswa Project.

I visited the centre during my second week and was deeply moved to see these bright young girls thriving and benefiting from the opportunity that Balcraig has given them. We deliver supplies from KCH every week and on Tuesday 12th August I was lucky enough to travel back up with another some KCH staff and 15 of our older older girls to attend the Suswa Sports Day. The girls at Suswa are so disciplined, hard-working and ambitious, yet also incredibly warm. After the sports, one of the older girls Margaret gave a speech, where she outlined her determination to become a University Professor or a Doctor, and I hope and pray that she succeeds. She also mentioned that she believes the first woman President of Kenya will come from the Soila Maasai Girls Rescue Centre, and she spoke with such passion and determination that I believed her. The girls really seem to appreciate the chance they have been given, as did the colourful Maasai parents that were in attendance. I was honoured to be asked to present prizes for one of the races and also took part in the KCH staff vs Soila parents Tug of War, which KCH subsequently won, which means I am tougher than a Maasai warrior.

Outreach Project:
During my last trip to Suswa, Michael, a social worker from KCH who manages the Suswa project, allowed me to accompany him on an outreach visit near Suswa. The KCH Outreach Project supports children in cases where they have living relatives but those relatives cannot afford to support them. In Kenya, primary education is provided free of charge, but secondary education must be paid for. In cases like this, KCH will provide expenses to ensure that children�s living and education costs are met.

We currently support around 150 children in this manner. On this occasion, there were 5 siblings being looked after by an elderly grandmother as the children�s mother had died of AIDS. The youngest child was taken into KCH and another organization had taken in 2 of the older siblings. The reason for our visit was that we had decided to pay school fees and upkeep for a 4th child in the family. We visited the proposed school to get comfort that it was in an acceptable condition and we spoke to the Headteacher. Although some of the buildings were temporary, it�s regarded as the best school in the vicinity.

Mashimoni Squatters Schools - Kibera
Kibera is the largest shanty town in sub-Saharan Africa and is just across the road from the volunteers� accommodation, 10 minutes walk from KCH. Kibera is home to around 1 million people, over a quarter of Nairobi�s population. A typical home in Kibera measures three square metres with an average of 5 people in each house. Although there is some access to electricity, there is no running water or sewage system. In addition, the HIV infection rate in Kibera is 20 percent. Against this backdrop of deprivation, in 2007 Balcraig assumed administrative responsibility for Mashimoni Squatters School in Kibera. There are currently 540 primary aged children and over 200 secondary children in this non-formal school. In September 2007 Balcraig began a programme of reconstruction to transform mud classes into brick built classrooms with desks and blackboards. I have visited Mashimoni twice during my time in Kenya and the transformation has been astonishing. The new facilities will allow the children to be educated in safe and secure surroundings and a landscaping project is nearing completion, which will provide the children with a dedicated games area and a school to be proud of. Monday 11th August is the start of the school holidays in Mashimoni and two volunteers from Scotland will be travelling there daily to deliver Arts and Crafts lessons during the summer camp. This camp also allows children to attend and get at least one proper meal a day, which they may not otherwise have access to. The two volunteers, Doris and Pauleen, have been trialing their Arts and Crafts lessons with the children at KCH during the past week, with great success. The children have made bookmarks, cards, face masks, chatterboxes and stencils and have absolutely loved it, although I think initially the two ladies were overwhelmed by the number of kids that we need to keep amused.

So when you take into account the number of children that we support via KCH and Balcraig it�s over 1,000 and not just in Nairobi itself. This is something that I certainly wasn�t aware of and I�m sure no-one reading this would have been aware of. But that�s not the end of the story, because we also run Income-generating projects that are designed to reduce our dependency on donations so that in a 10 or 15 year time-frame we will be self-sufficient. One of these is a very successful Bakery project that produces 2,000 items of baked goods daily (loaves, queen cakes, buns and birthday cakes for the children). Over 500 loaves are distributed daily to other Children�s homes in and around Nairobi during the daily bread run and there are over 40 homes that have benefited from this project to date. I visited one such programme that had requested our support, which was run by a woman who has set up a feeding programme to assist local families in Rongai, not far outside Nairobi. She takes in kids during the day from abusive or destitute homes. Many of them are HIV positive or have lost parents to HIV. She was hoping we would donate some bread as she has no funding and uses her old house as a base, although eventually she would like to start a small school for them. We said we would drop some bread off maybe once a week. I really admired her commitment and I wish we could do more to help. There are many other needy causes around Nairobi that we try to support. So the true number of children that KCH touches is several thousand and it�s a privilege for me to be involved in the delivery of projects and to directly benefit the children in our Home.

The project that generates most income for the Home is Westminster Events, which was set up to offer a one-stop Wedding Service. This has grown in scope and now caters for 3 events every weekend, catering for up to 1,000 people over the course of a weekend. There are two venues within the complex, the well-tended field or the school hall, and marquees are set up by a dedicated team, who also offer decorations, catering, cakes, wedding dress hire etc. It�s an amazingly successful and professional enterprise, and plans are afoot to build a new kitchen to meet customers growing requirements. There is a downside to this success, which is that the sports field is not available for Games at the weekend, which can make life difficult for the volunteers as were try to keep over 100 children occupied.

My role
As I mentioned above, my role is to provide admin support to the Commercial Manager, who is responsible for the Commercial Projects. However, I�ve also recently bee tasked with analysing the cash receipts over the last 6 months, since there have been real issues in the Accounts Department. This is proving a time-consuming task, given that there have been over 800 cash receipts in that period. Once this task has been completed, I will then start analysing the Westminster expenses over the same period, so that should keep me busy. During term-time, my only interaction with the kids is either at the weekend or during homework supervision. Children from KCH in Class 3 an above do homework from 4 til 5.30 in the JGA hall. There are around 15 kids to supervise, and they�re scored on Punctuality, Effort and Behaviour. Weekly records are given to the Social Worker in charge of Education and prizes are awarded to the best performers each week.

Younger children are supervised in the Activity Room, and this is usually a more boisterous experience as there are far more children to supervise and the attention spans are of course much shorter.

At weekends volunteers are on duty for Clubs at 11 am on Saturday, Games at 4pm on Saturday and Church Duty on Sunday morning. Clubs can take many forms, such as Arts and Crafts activities (face masks, bookmarks etc), although our standby activity is photocopied colouring-in books. The older kids tend to do their own thing and have devised a game whereby two people throw a ball to each other with the goal of hitting people who are standing between them. To be honest, most of our time is spent trying to make sure none of the children are getting injured, but you very quickly become attuned to the sound of a child crying from hundreds of yards away.

Games is also very unstructured, due both to lack of space when there is a wedding on and the fact that the coach who is supposed to turn up never does. At times like that we just use the swing park in front of the nursery and again supervise the children and join in with their games. It can be a little frustrating because I know that if the kids were exposed to structured training in sports then they would thrive but there are so many practical issues in the way, such as the number of kids, lack of volunteers, lack of space etc, so we just do what we can to provide a relaxed, friendly environment for them. Their lives are so structured that sometimes they just need to blow off steam. In the morning, they are up very early and have breakfast and morning chores, then school all day, homework, more chores and then dinner. The children have to hand-wash their own clothes and also have chores on Saturday morning, so time to relax is limited.

Over the course of the last 2 months, I have been involved in many activities with the kids, and a brief summary follows:

Football
These are the winter months of Kenya., but 3 football matches were played recently with other local groups, with results as below.
KCH 0 � 2 Pearls Youth Group (6/7/08)
KCH 4 � 2 Mary Immaculate (8/7/08)
KCH 1 � 1 Legi Ndgo (26/7/08)
The matches have been enjoyed hugely by the kids and well done to the team.

Outings
On the 20th June all the children visited the Kenya Wildlife Service Park. They enjoyed the day, where they were able to see many of the animals in the park and relax in its natural beauty. It was a busy time of year and the chance to have this kind of trip was appreciated by all. The next day, twenty of the children visited Nairobi Chapel for the Bible Olympics where they came second out of seven teams based on quizzes, recitals and art and design activities.

Pearls Youth Group
Pearls Youth Group, based in Kibera, have been great supporters of KCH and on the 28th June they visited to perform some songs, plays and poems. Afterwards they had some fun playing football with the children.

Happy Birthday
On the 29th June, all the children were invited to the birthday party held by kind donors of the home, Mr and Mrs Khamis. This took place in the Sorsbie Hall after choir practice, and all had a great time at the party which involved lots of singing and lots of cake for everyone!

Shopping Spree
On the 4th and 5th July we conducted a Shopping Spree in ten Nakumatt supermarkets around Nairobi. For this event we collected kind donations of food, household items and cash from shoppers which, once valued, came to over 500,000 Kenyan Shillings. Also we are conscious that awareness about Kenya Children�s home was raised by the event. Many people were involved, including drivers, loaders and of course the volunteers who gave their time and effort tirelessly to help at the event. It was an absolutely hectic weekend and incredibly hard work but the stores were filled for the next 3 months so it was hugely worthwhile.

Dinner and Dancing
We were lucky this year to have another group from Kelvinside Academy visiting this year. Two volunteers from last year�s Kelvinside group have been out during my time here so hopefully this pipeline of volunteers will continue. Their presence and help was very much felt by everyone, and everyone was grateful for all they did. On the 6th July all the children took part in a barbeque and dance in the Sorsbie Hall, courtesy of Kelvinside. It was a fantastic evening, enjoyed hugely by all who attended. Kelvinside were duly impressed by the children�s dancing skills and went home very happy and exhausted, although I don�t know if the children were that impressed by the Kelvinside dancing, which left a lot to be desired.

Sports Day � JGA
The Jonathan Gloag Academy held their annual sports days on the KCH field on Friday 11th July. This of course involved a large number of children and staff from the Home. The day was a great success with Mount Elgon (red) house winning the day. Parents participated as well and won the tug-of-war. It was a great way to have fun before the pressure of exams that started at the end of July. However don�t worry � term ended on the 31st July and all the children have a well-deserved month of holiday! This, however, means that I am getting no work done in the Commercial Office, since the children�s holiday schedule is Work for No Pay from 9 to 11, Clubs from 11 to 12.30, lunch from 1 to 2, Holiday Homework from 2 to 3 and games from 3 to 4.30. It�s a long and demanding day for the volunteers, and calls for plenty of patience. However, it�s also a huge amount of fun and apleasure to spend more time with the kids. Work for No Pay involves allocating the children tasks to help round the Home, such as working in the Bakery, Kitchen, Grounds, Laundry or picking leaves up off the field. It can seem Victorian, but generally the kids enjoy it and muck in and the main problem is trying to find work for 150 children, which is almost impossible, especially as the projects generally only want a small number of older children to help out. One of the advantages of having the older children home for Boarding School is that they can help �persuade� some of the more difficult children that they need to work. Again, volunteers are supposed to keep full behaviour records for Work for No Pay, but with so many children to manage and only 1 volunteer, this becomes rather hopeless.

Training
Last, but not least, I joined a gym soon after arriving in Nairobi. I�ve been going regularly, and have also recently started training in the evenings with a friend who is training for a triathlon, so by October 15th I should be in peak condition. I�ve also managed to find time for a 3-day trip to Uganda to white-water raft on the Grade 5 rapids on the River Nile, which was incredible fun. This weekend, I have 2 days off and hope to join a 2-day mountain bike tour near Lake Natron. I also hope to have a few days off in October before our exped to travel to Aberdare National Park (where Queen Elizabeth II learned of her accession to the throne), which has a couple of peaks just under 4,000m, which would provide excellent acclimatisation prior to our exped.

This article was posted on 14-Aug-2008, 07:39 by Hugh Barrow.