Thursday was like a bitter sweet symphony.
We did community day on Thursday and visited the New Life Africa International children's schools. The few nights before we gathered all the toys and clothes that our team members had brought for this purpose. I collected before the trip some toys from my nephews, friends and neighbors' children to give the toys new happy owners in Nakuru.
First we went to the New Hope Nursery school, which is about 1 km from Nakuru junk yard. People actually live in the junk yard at tents made from plastic or caves dug into the trash pile.
They have 3 classes there, 58 children between 3-6 years of age. The school provides the kids school uniforms and daily meal. Meal at the school might be the only meal of the day for some of the kids.
The kids were adorable...the "baby class" with the 3-4 year old children, some of them clammed themselves around us. Pretty much all of us were having one or two children in our arms or sitting in the lap. We played with the kids, they sang to us and we sang our team song to them. The amount of smiles and laughter filled the room.
...then to the next room to meet the "middle class" 4-5 year old children. Some of the kids from the baby class followed us, as they insisted not letting go of us.
The kids sang to us and danced. We sang to them and played together.
...then to the next room to meet the "top class", 5-6 years old children.
The amount of children moving along with us grew again.
Junko, our team member from Japan, had a Polaroid camera with her. She took pictures of the children and gave them the picture. Oh joy, oh joy...the kids were bursting out of joy when getting to hold a photo of themselves.
After singing songs and playing in the class room. We played for a short while outside and then gave the kids some candies.
We had brought toys with us from all over the world to give to the schools. We left some of them at the nursery school and I wanted to give the "baby class" the mirror, which has been previously my nephews' toy, when they were smaller.
In the baby class, there were twins, who just simply made my heart melt...they got excited when I hung the mirror to their class room wall. The twins of the baby class, Joseph and Felicia, welcomed the mirror with joy.
In the car, when driving to the next place...after a short buss of talk everyone went silent and among some other people, I had tears in my eyes. It broke my heart to think that these kids go from the school to junk yard and call that their home.
The car drive was long enough for me to gather myself before we arrived in the New Life school. The school has about 500 children, whose parents cannot afford to put the children to school or otherwise not able to look after their children. Some of the children were formerly street children or orphans.
About 150 of the children permanently live at the school. There is girls' house and boys' house in the school area for that purpose.
Nakuru is a melting pot for several tribes and if it clashes in Kenya for tribal (read: equal to political) reasons, Nakuru suffers the most damage. Some of the orphans or street children are the result of those clashes.
Again were welcomed with pure joy. The smaller kids ran to meet us and did not let go. I had at the best 4 kids holding my hands ;o) We played and sang songs with the kids at the school yard. I sang finnish play-songs with the children around me. Funny enough they caught some of the lyrics and sang their version of the Finnish song with me (Piiri pieni pyörii / "small circle spinning around", yksi pieni elefantti / "small elefant marching".
They have a sewing classes at the school, 1 and 2 year class. They have the old style sewing machines, which my grand-mother had.
Rooms full of girls busy sewing. We talked with them and many of them had the dream to open own sewing shop one day. They make the school uniforms there for the whole school and for the nursery school. Practical and saves lot of money.
The founders of New Life Africa International (the organization behind the schools) came to meet us at the school. We got to hear the story how they ended up moving to Kenya and how it all got started. Lovely couple, Leif and Susanne. They moved 17 years ago to Kenya with their 5 children. They had not planned to start this kind of charity work to support the local children...but their love to children took over the direction. Susanne said it nicely that as we cannot take anything with us, she wants to leave behind as many children as possible, with a better future.
I was taken by the fact that they have 5 children of their own, who were small at the time they started the charity activities. Yet they opened their heart to help other children...in huge amounts.
They have opened a crisis center for women, who need a safe house. It is also for young women or teenagers, who are about to become single-mothers. They can stay in the crisis center during pregnancy and maternity period here and get support to start the life with a baby on safe grounds.
This is the only one in whole Kenya (with population of 40 million people). In comparison, in Finland (with population of 5.4 million) there are 21 women's and children's safe houses.
The crises center women have started earlier this year a glass jewelry project and are also making bags. This enables them to work and support the school to become more self sustaining. Also the sewing class is making items for sale.
Our team's ladies, we pretty much shopped till we dropped. I can say from the bottom of my heart, not being the typical female type who would love shopping for "ladies accessories",it was the best shopping ever! The brand is Kioo Lulu (means glass pearls in swahili).
After ladies were worn out from the shopping it was our team's guys time to contribute by playing football with the kids. We were cheerleaders and got most of the kids cheering "IBM, IBM, IBM!!" and clapping their hands. Heavy rain shower stopped the game (maybe better so for our team...as we are talking about consultants, who do not play football every day) ;o))))
We left bag loads of toys, pens, books, baby & kids clothes to the school. Nice feeling to know that they will definitely know to appreciate those...and there will be many happy kids playing with the toys.
One can become sponsor to the kids, and that I will definitely do. Knowing the founders and directly the target and not having some organizations with their high admin costs in the middle. Heard e.g. that with some international organizations, you donate 100 eur, 10% of it ends up to the target. Rest disappears along the way to admin and other costs. With New Life Africa International this is not the case.
You can read about New Life Africa International more here and even become a sponsor to one of the children(for only ~20 eur per month):
http://www.newlife-africa.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1
(the connection is getting worse again...will upload the rest of the photos as soon as possible)#ibmscs Kenya 3
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