Visiting my kids

As I said on my previous post... time really goes fast. Just 6 days to go now.

I've been very busy again... My schedule for this week is very tight.

On Thursday I went to visit Nancy. Nancy is in class 1, she's 7 years old but she looks like she is 4. She lives with her aunt as her mother died when she was 3 and they were abandoned by the father. She was not properly fed for some years so that's the reason she looks that young. The aunt has two other kids and, again, there is no father around... They live in a very small house made of wood with no electricity. The aunt had another sister that also passed away leaving John Njoroge, one of the pupils in class 7, orphan. John and Nancy are cousins and both orphans of different parents. John lives with his grandmother and he helps her in the small shop she has when he's not at school and that's where we found him on the way to Nancy's house.

Nancy is a sweet girl. She likes playing with me and she similes and laugh all the time but the situation for them is very difficult as the aunt has no job and she has other two kids... But even though they have nothing they always cook something for me. The day before, on Wednesday, I went to visit Damaris. She is one of the cooks at the centre and she kept telling me to go and visit her house and finally I went with Lucy. She has 4 kids, they live in a very small house with again no electricity and the husband has no job. Damaris is happy because she works at the centre but Samuel and Lucy can't offer her a big salary so she and her family try ti survive with the little she gets form the centre. Well, so we arrived to her house and she was cooking lunch for us. She gave me a big plate of lentils and another plate with chicken. I know they don't usually eat chicken but they got one because I was coming to visit them and, again, I can't refuse the meal even though maybe there is no chicken for the rest of the family.

At Nancy's place her aunt cooked a big plate of rice and potatoes.

The following day, Friday, I had to say goodbye to Erick, my kid. They are five: Peter the father, Lucy the mother, Loise the daughter, Manasseh the son and now Eric who they took from the streets. We went to visit them to their house. They live in a very small and dark house with no electricity. When their house was burned during the clashes they were given a tent to live in but luckily they found this small house where they live now. They had no jobs, two kids and they decided to look after Erick. People told them that they were crazy, that they should leave Erick in the streets... but they didn't. Now the mother bakes some cakes at home and the father tries to sell them to the shops to get some money but it's not easy...

I talked a lot with the father and I played with the kids and, obviously, we were offered loads of food again: cakes, chapati, potatoes and cabbages...

Then I had to say bye to them. Erick doesn't really speak English so I think he doesn't really understand what was going on. I said goodbye to him but I think he thought he was going to see me again soon... maybe it's better this way.

Then we went to see Sylvia. She is another mzungu and she has a nice house in Molo. She's friends with Lucy and Samuel and she's supporting a lot of people. She was very welcoming and I promised I will visit her again when I'll come back.

Today I went with Samuel and Lucy to Moses' and Mary's house. I talked about them in a previous post. They were abandoned by their mother for a week. When we got there the mother was not at home and Moses was in the forest looking for wood. So we found Mary with her sister Faith who is 9 years old and the brother Kelvin who is 5 and still doesn't go to school. They were at home alone and they didn't know if the mother was going to be back soon. We asked Faith who looked after them when the mother was gone and she said that Moses was the one looking after them, the problem is that when Moses, Faith and Mary were in school, kelvin was left alone for the whole day...

We asked them if they had anything to eat that morning and they said no. We asked if they had any food to eat and they said no so I went to the shop and I bought some bread. They eat it in 2 seconds, they were starving. We left and we didn't meet Moses because he was not back from the forest yet but we met the mother on the way back, we asked her about the older daughter that was not around. She told us she is in a boarding school in Meru because some relative is sponsoring her. Samuel asked her for the phone number of that relative to check that out...

Then on the way to town we stopped at David Maina's. This is another tough story. David, his brother Peter who is in class 5 and John Gichuki who was in class 7 (he went back to the streets) live with their grandmother. Their parents died because of AIDS. Then another son of the grandmother died too leaving three kids that the same grandmother is looking after too and, if that's not enough, another son had two kids, Nicholas and Jane both in class 1, but he went into drugs and left them with the grandmother. So, this grandmother looks after 8 kids all by herself. I met her today, I liked her so much. She is a hard worker. We couldn't comunicate because she doesn't speak english but I enjoyed looking at her talking and laughing with Samuel and Lucy. Guess what? Yes, they cooked loads of rice and potatoes for us.

When you see the kids at the centre you see them all with the same uniform and you don't really realise about their tough lives. You just hear the stories that Lucy tells you but when you visit them in their houses... That's tough. It's so frustrating to see the way the live and you can't help them all! It's so unfair ! They are just kids!

After visiting all those kids I really see the need of having that hotel and my mind just thinks for the whole day in how fundraising money to buy it.

Oh, by the way, there is this website www.idealistas.org about volunteering and there was a contest where volunteers could send their experiences as a volunteer. Ok, I sent mine, I talked about Chazon, about Samuel and Lucy, about Molo, about the kids and... yes! I won! I got an email today saying that they were choosing a winner for every country and my experience is going to represent Spain. They will publish it on their website. I understood that I was getting a prize too, money or material for the centre but I'm not sure though, I'll see what they tell me. It will be good for the centre!

I'm also getting loads of emails of people interested in coming to Chazon. I wrote about my experience in two websites and now people are very interested and they send emails inquiring. That's the way I have got two volunteers from Barcelona, they are coming in July :)