“We rescue children every day,” says Mercy. A one-day-old baby is found in a pile of garbage and brought to Mercy. A child welfare representative arrives with two little girls who have been abused. Another day a five-year-old boy and his baby sister are left at the front gate in their Sunday clothes, hungry and abandoned by a young mother who could no longer afford to feed them. Many of the children at Good Samaritan have suffered painful and traumatic experiences. Several children lost their parents during the post-election violence. For many their mother and father have died from AIDS.

As Mercy explains, “These children want someone they can call ‘Mother’.” Mercy has almost singlehandedly been a mother to all of them. “They need someone to love them, care for them, and listen to them. It is especially important to give them time to talk about their feelings.” Mercy listens to the children who have been abused and traumatized by what they have seen and experienced. One little boy is haunted by the image of his father being slashed by a machete and killed during the violent ethnic clashes after the last presidential election. There are a number of young children at Good Samaritan who came in 2008 as orphans after this conflict.

“I don’t care where they came from. Girls and boys, they are children who need help.” Mercy is proud to say that at Good Samaritan Children’s Home “all tribes and all faiths live together as a family.” At any one time Mercy says that there could be 270 children at Good Samaritan. On my last visit they were taking care of 35 babies less than a year old. Mercy also feeds as many as 300 other hungry children in the surrounding Mathare slums.

Mercy maintains a continuing effort to protect the girl child from the dangers of abuse, rape, early marriage and pregnancy, a constant reality in the slums. Good Samaritan Children’s Home is a refuge and a place where abandoned and orphaned children, abused and hungry children can find comfort and support. Mercy knows the personal story of every child and understands the physical condition and unique emotional needs of each one. In all her actions Mercy expresses compassion and caring “so that the children know that they are loved.” At Good Samaritan the children have someone they can call “Mother” and a family with “many brothers and sisters.” These orphans learn to work together and take care of each other.

I have seen the children grow as I have returned to this place over many years. “They see you come to Good Samaritan again and again and they know that you care about them,” Mercy tells me. “They need to know that they are loved and that there are friends out there and not enemies. Without compassion and without an education, these children grow up with bitterness, hatred and despair.” These children need some hope.

At Good Samaritan Children’s Home, Africa Circle of Hope Foundation (ACOHF) is helping to support a full-time cook, a matron to help care for the children and a social worker who focuses on the educational needs. There are also a number of community volunteers from Mathare who help with various tasks including child care, laundry and maintenance.

ACOHF supports as many as 40 orphans from Good Samaritan in secondary boarding school to get them out of the slums. Still there are more children waiting to go to school and living in a slum where they see absolute poverty, disease, crime, drunkenness and violence every day. The makeshift road in front of Good Samaritan runs grey with raw sewage and the ground consists of more garbage than soil. The slums are not a healthy environment for the development of children. Mercy tells me that last school term she had to sell all her pigs in order to send 10 more orphans to secondary boarding school. “They all deserve a chance,” she says.

You can go to www.africacircleofhope.org for more information about how you can help. For about $300, one child from Good Samaritan Children’s Home can go to boarding school for an entire year. As Mercy says, “We save these children by giving them an education. This is the way out of the slums.”

In this room in the AIDS Ward there are eight beds, four along each side wall. A black number is painted on the wall above each bed. The mattresses are covered with heavy dark green plastic and the patients are lying directly on the mattress without a sheet, covered only with a thin loosely woven hospital blanket. There are seven patients in this section. The young women in the first two beds look like sisters and are talking together. One of the beds near the window is empty with the only sign of the previous patient some bright red medicine tablets wrapped in a crumpled napkin on the window sill. Each of the patients is covered as if in a white blanket cocoon, a distinct outline against the green plastic of the mattress. A woman on the other side of the room looks like a mummy very still with open eyes staring at the ceiling. An occasional moan comes from the patient in bed 37 who has pulled a worn blanket over her head. Today only one patient occupies each bed. Just a few weeks ago there were two people in each of the beds. We hope that all these patients had improved enough to go home. More likely they have died, their long courageous battle with AIDS finally finished.

The three of us walk slowly, with some apprehension, toward bed 36 to see one of the members of the AIDS support group, which Africa Circle of Hope Foundation has been helping with food, nutrition and entrepreneurship projects. We see the patient covered with a blanket except for her face, which is turned to the side and her hand curled under her chin. Her hair is nicely braided in small neat rows. There is a quiet beauty in her smooth brown skin and high cheekbones accented now by the thinness of her face. My friend, who is a minister, bends close to her face and begins to talk quietly, stroking her forehead and reassuring her of God’s love. People here say that hearing is the last of the senses to go. At times it seemed her mind did comprehend what we were saying. For a while she was a bit more alert, listening, and even trying to talk. She knew we were there. After a prayer together we left with heavy hearts what we had seen forever seared in our memory.

I first met this good woman two years ago when I spent an afternoon with the AIDS group members as they were sitting together around a table stringing colorful beads for necklaces. She was tall, soft-spoken and determined. As with many of the women in this group, she was infected with HIV by her husband. Only after he died did she find out that she had contracted the virus from him. She is in her early 40s and has been struggling to care for her three children. When I last saw her she was weak but over the months she had improved. Recently she suffered a stroke and went back into the hospital. Her family could no longer take care of her. Now her life is narrowing, confined in the dimensions of bed 36.

On the way out of the hospital grounds we stopped by the maternity ward to see a young girl who had just had a baby. The handsome little boy slept quietly beside his proud mother. Three other mothers were in neighboring beds with their newborn babies, one had twins. These beds were more comfortable covered with sheets and blankets. Family members were there helping with the babies. As we left the grounds, near the entrance of the hospital, there were nine or more women of various ages on a long bench, all very pregnant. I was told that they lived far away from the hospital in remote rural areas and could not get medical help quickly. Some were sitting and others lying down on the outside benches shaded by a tin roof, each woman waiting to go into labor and be admitted to the hospital.

Life and death are close together in this place, the reality of everyday life. We have lost several members of the AIDS group over the last three years. One woman pleaded as she was dying, “Please tell everyone that I died of AIDS.” This is her warning and a lesson for others. There is a huge stigma and yet every family, rich and poor, has lost at least one member to AIDS. Sometimes a whole family is swept away leaving the grandparents to care for the orphaned children.

It is essential not only to provide care to those living with AIDS but also to reduce the number of new HIV infections. Our initial youth-to-youth public health workshop is this week at Thiiri Center. This is the beginning of our campaign to save young lives. Most young people acknowledge that “AIDS is real.” Now it is time to move beyond awareness to prevention. AIDS continues to destroy lives and communities. For me the reality of AIDS is even more vivid after seeing that precious life in bed 36 in the AIDS Ward slowly fading away.

I spent a Wednesday afternoon with some of the student nurses working in the Mbagathi Hospital located at the edge of Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. A number of people are sitting on the ground and under the trees in front of the entrance gate of the hospital. Mbagathi is an old government hospital serving the residents of Kibera. This facility has a long history as a military hospital, then a center for care of leprosy and now a hospital primarily for infectious diseases including TB and AIDS. The buildings are long barracks. A hospital gurney is left forgotten near the road in front of one of the main buildings. Some supplies are coming in but basic medical equipment is often lacking. More than 60 percent of the hospital beds are filled with AIDS patients. In Kenya all the patients have to bring their own sheets, blankets, towels, wash bucket and bedpan. If they cannot afford the bedpan the wash bucket must suffice. Basic equipment is often lacking. In a large ward of this hospital the staff has only one thermometer.

Today the classroom for the nurses is in a tent on the grounds since a group of doctors are meeting in the only conference room available. The 27 young women and men are dressed in their white jackets and looking professional and eager to serve. These are some of the students from the Regina Pacis University College affiliated with Catholic University of Eastern Africa.

After talking with the Director of the college and understanding the need for basic tools, Africa Circle of Hope Foundation provided funds to the nursing school to buy additional thermometers, stethoscopes, and equipment to measure blood pressure. Today I presented these materials to the grateful students. They immediately took the equipment out of the boxes and started taking temperature and blood pressure readings for each other and the teachers. Some hung the stethoscope around their neck as part of their badge of nursing. Everyone was found to have normal temperature and blood pressure.

There is no calling that is more noble in Africa than medicine and community health care. These young nursing students will no doubt save many lives during their medical careers. They will provide comfort and care to those in need. A contribution to nursing education is an investment in the future of Kenya.

We began our trip as part of the ACOHF mission to help get kids out of the slums of Mathare and give them an opportunity for an education to move out of poverty and have a better life. We were going to a boarding school to visit some of the students from Good Samaritan Children’s Home and bring three new orphans who would begin their secondary studies.

One of the schools I visited that day was Rubate Secondary Boarding School in Chuka, Kenya. There are about 300 children in the school and more than 50 of them are orphans from Good Samaritan Children’s Home in the Mathare slums. ACOHF is currently supporting 27 Mathare students at this school. The visit turned out to be a learning adventure for all of us.

After about five hours of driving on some steep and winding highways and 10 more miles on a dusty rough road we arrived at Rubate Secondary School, a mixed boarding school. The Principal and one of the board members greet us warmly as we arrived. The school grounds are surrounded by green forests and hills, a peaceful environment far removed from the slums where the orphans had lived most of their life. The school Principal points to a shady grove of trees where the students often sit and read or study. The classrooms are well-maintained and all the students have books and paper. The power for the lights and electricity comes from solar. Like many of the schools, churches and the major hospital in this area of Kenya, the school is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.

We toured the girls’ dorm and then the boy’s dorm. Both had long rows of bunk beds and the standard colored metal boxes that contained the students’ clothes and personal items and were secured with a padlock. Then we saw the kitchen where the cooks were preparing food in large metal cooking pots and cutting meat to make stew for dinner. I also went into several of the classrooms to talk to the students and take some photos. They were interested to know that I came from Chicago. Their most common questions were about Obama and Chicago weather.

I am learning more about the standards and operation of the Kenyan educational system. Eight years ago the Kenyan government began providing free primary education and three years ago free secondary education in public schools. Students must still buy uniforms and school supplies, and pay boarding expenses and development fees for school facilities. Boarding schools are the norm in Kenya and only recently day schools have begun to gain popularity. For students living in Mathare slums boarding schools are the solution to getting them out of the slums and into a supportive environment for learning and development.

Over the past two weeks I have visited six different schools from pre-primary to primary and secondary to talk with the administrators, teachers and students. In Kenya grades 1 through grade 8 are considered primary school. Form I, II, III, and IV constitute secondary school, which is the equivalent of high school in the U.S. The schedule at Rubate Secondary School is similar to that of most Kenyan boarding schools. At 5:30 a.m. students wake up and have time for morning study and preparation for classes. They are supervised by a teacher during this period. Breakfast is around 7:00 a.m. After breakfast they continue their studies. Morning assembly is at 8:10 a.m. Students are in classes until 4 p.m. with a break at 10 a.m. for tea and lunch at 12:30 p.m. At 4 p.m. students have a break with afternoon tea. They gather in discussion groups from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. with specific academic tasks and exercises facilitated by teachers. At 5:30 p.m. the students enjoy an hour for games and sports before supper. From 7 to 9 p.m. the students complete evening studies. By 9:45 p.m. they are in bed. Weekdays and Saturday follow a typical schedule. On Sunday they have more flexibility. After church the students have time for reading, washing clothes or recreation.

Students are prepared for a national exam at the end of primary school and another after finishing Form IV. Performance on these tests can determine their future career options and opportunities for further education. The recently released Kenyan national budget allots more funds for education and also provides sanitary pads for girls in school. Often girls do not attend classes because they do not have this basic necessity.

Education helps to empower girls and boys to build a better future. As Mercy, the director of Good Samaritan, often says, “Education is the way out of the slums.” Find out how you can help children, orphaned and living in poverty in the slums, get an education. Visit www.africacircleofhope.org.

UNESCO describes Indigenous Knowledge as the “intangible heritage” of the community, transmitted orally and recreated as part of an ongoing process of development. Today this oral knowledge and history are carried by elders and grandparents who still remember the stories, proverbs, songs, and the art of traditional crafts and skills. Hampate Ba, African historian and philosopher, puts the challenge into vivid perspective with his words: “Every old person who dies in Africa is like a library set ablaze.” A wealth of local knowledge is lost. The need for documenting and studying African indigenous knowledge is increasingly urgent not only to learn the lessons of the past but also to determine what can have value and application to current issues and challenges. Indigenous knowledge can increase our understanding of some of our most critical 21st century issues including nature conservation, conflict resolution, food security, spirituality and community.

I am working with Mwiniki again and Bethwell, a talented young scientist at Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Nairobi. We will be editing a collection of articles about indigenous knowledge by scholars in universities throughout East Africa. A call for papers will be issued soon. The book will be published by CUEA Press.

It may seem that indigenous knowledge is a distance from the mission of Africa Circle of Hope, but in many ways it is clearly related to cultural competencies and shared understanding. For example, we work with groups of women to support their creative entrepreneurship in weaving baskets and rugs, dyeing cloth, small-scale farming, and food preparation and processing. For one group in the Mathare slums it was the old grandmothers who taught the other women how to weave baskets in the traditional way. These are not like mass-produced products that are all exactly alike. Each basket is unique and reflects the history and culture as well as the skills of the weaver. Today some of these groups are striving to produce baskets and other items that have a “modern” style and are in the most popular new colors. These do not have the distinct character and value of more indigenous designs. Even the flaws of traditional craftsmanship reflect something of the nature of the world. Indigenous knowledge is a national cultural resource. We hope to help preserve some of this knowledge not only in books and crafts but also in electronic resources with photographs and documentary videos for this generation and the next.

Having enough food is a continuing and sometimes overwhelming challenge.  On one visit I saw children of various ages, sitting at the edge of a mountain of green beans piled in the corner of the room, as they prepared the vegetables for cooking.  Mercy, the founder and director of Good Samaritan, takes the little red truck that Africa Circle of Hope Foundation (ACOHF) bought for the home several years ago and goes to the food processing plants around Nairobi and picks up their surplus vegetables and rejected produce. The children are pleased on this day to have fresh vegetables.  In desperate times the home has been forced to buy second-quality corn that is usually meant for animal feed.  The children must sort it carefully to pick out the small stones and rotten grains.  In many everyday tasks the orphans at Good Samaritan live and work as a large family, brothers and sisters, each one doing his or her share as they are able.

It is not easy feeding as many as 300 children each day. Good Samaritan feeds not only the orphans who live at Good Samaritan but also other children in Mathare slums who are hungry and have no food. Beans and ugali, a cornmeal mush, are staples for most meals.  Good rice is more costly and served less often.  The price of food basics has increased substantially over the last year and this is having a disastrous effect.  There is less government assistance and the needs are greater than ever.  ACOHF is helping to ensure that the children at Good Samaritan get regular nutritious meals by helping to support a full-time cook.  In the past the children were cooking for themselves.  On this visit I bring large 100 lb. bags of beans and rice, which will feed the children at least for the next week.  Tonight far too many African children will go to sleep hungry.

The greatest resource of Kenya is the amazing resilience and faith of its people.  I come to Kenya to work side by side with people whose names may never be known outside their small village or slum neighborhood, but who are leading along the path to a better future, serving others in a selfless and compassionate way that asks for nothing in return.  They embody servant leadership in their everyday activities.  

 The focus of Africa Circle of Hope Foundation is to provide the resources and support to empower people, especially women and children, to raise themselves out of poverty. I know the results of even a small amount of assistance to people who have the energy, intelligence and creativity to move out of a life of poverty.  I have seen lives transformed by education.   I have witnessed the emergence of hope out of desperate situations.  “You have given us hope,” said the leader of one of the rural women’s entrepreneurship groups ACOHF has supported.  “You have saved me,” said a young woman from the slums who can now get higher education, an impossible dream for many African youth.   It is not me, or us, or our foundation but these courageous people have saved themselves through their own efforts.  All they need is a little hope and support to develop the skills and resources they have within themselves.  

It is a joy to be back in Kenya.  No matter where I am, Kenya is always in my heart.

The meetings with our grassroots partners from Nairobi, Meru and Eldoret were truly inspirational. We planned together about how we could empower youth in these areas as peacemakers and creative community entrepreneurs. We sat around the table and knew that we were of one heart and must do what we can to give hope to young people who are increasingly frustrated by political and economic conditions in Kenya.  One of our colleagues from Eldoret told us about his house that was burned in an area that experienced the most severe violence after the 2007 elections.  While the official death count was 1,500 people, others say that many more were killed in the ethnic and political conflict that erupted across Kenya.  We are working together on a grant proposal targeting youth who are out of school with the communication skills for peacemaking and entrepreneurial skills so they can start small businesses and contribute to the local economy.  Peacemaking and conflict resolution skills are a critical need in view of the upcoming Kenyan election in August 2012.

I visited one of the boarding schools where Africa Circle of Hope Foundation is supporting 15 orphaned boys from Good Samaritan Children’s Home in the Mathare slums.  Our foundation is also funding 10 girls from Good Samaritan at two girls’ schools.  This number will be increased next year. We walked with the principal to tour the school facilities and meet the students.  The principal tells us that the Good Samaritan boys are doing well in their class and are some of the best students at the school.  She explains that they love to read. Some have become student leaders.  The boys work hard on their studies.  In Kenya students go to school long hours and on Saturday morning.  On Saturday afternoon at this school they have club activities or sports and wash their clothes. Sunday is for church, relaxation and reading.  A few of the boys in Form 4 are getting ready to graduate and writing their exams. As the boys stood in a group in front of the dormitory building they looked distinguished in their uniforms with striped ties, grey slacks and black sweaters.  One boy spoke on behalf of the group to express their gratitude.    It is a special moment to spend with these 15 young men.  I greeted each one with congratulations and encouragement.  This education will help them to have a better life, out of the slums of Nairobi, with an opportunity to contribute to their community.

The day before I left Kenya I was invited to visit a small makeshift music studio in a Nairobi neighborhood. We walked into an alley and climbed up the narrow wooden stairs at the back of the building. I was the guest of four young musicians and poets. The studio staff had made creative use of their limited equipment and space.  With the engineer and our group the studio was filled to capacity.  In turn each of the musicians and poets went into a tiny soundproof room with a microphone hanging from the ceiling, put on earphones and spoke a verse of poetry, or contributed rhythmic vocal sound effects or energetic clapping. Even the technician added some distinctive yelps to accent the emerging creation.  Then the engineer mixed all these unique tracks together with everyone participating and offering suggestions in an enthusiastic team effort.  They gave me a copy of “Today” a beautiful spontaneous collaborative celebration of youth and the human spirit. This creative group of artists will be mentoring youth in a pilot program at Thiiri Center in rural Meru as the local young people create communication materials for HIV and AIDS information and prevention in an innovative youth-to-youth campaign.

There are many other people and programs we support in Kenya and in Tanzania, but the focus of these comments is our youth programs.  It has been a memorable and productive trip.  Kenya’s greatest asset now and in the future is her young population.  We join with these youth hand-in-hand in a Circle of Hope and give thanks for their energy, creativity and belief that they can build a better future. 

Check our Web site africacircleofhope.org for more information about our programs, updates and photos.

Odongo Kennedy Leakey, known in the entertainment industry as Kennet B, started writing spoken word poetry 14 years ago but gained increased recognition in 2009 after he won the Slam Africa Poetry Championships.   Many of his poems and lyrics are focused on social issues around the spread of HIV and the global concern with AIDS.  His biggest hits are “Kijanaa” and “Mpango wa Kando.”  He has several successful albums and is currently working on a new collection.  Kennet B was featured at the UN Habitat Messenger of Truth Concert.  He performs in popular music venues in Nairobi and in many schools and universities.  One of his goals is to help aspiring and upcoming young talents with assistance in composition, production and performance.   

Kennet B is a talented performer who knows how to communicate with young people.  At each of the schools the large auditoriums were filled with hundreds of young people eager to hear from him. By the end of the day he had reached almost 2,000 students with his AIDS education message. Kennet B walked into the auditorium wearing a long white tunic with red collar and a long red scarf around his neck and head accenting his distinctive dreadlocks. He took an interactive approach in talking to the students, speaking in a dynamic style that kept their attention, pausing at a strategic moment to increase dramatic effect, adding movement and gesture for emphasis. Kennet B moved easily between English and Swahili with the local slang called Sheng, a combination of Swahili and different ethnic languages. His original poetry consisted of realistic and humorous stories about bad behavior and poor decisions that increase the chances of becoming infected with HIV. The students laughed and shouted as he told his stories about people, older than them, who made mistakes that these students can avoid.  After each poetic selection he asked the youth some questions and they responded with interpretations of the narrative and the lessons they had learned.  He involved many of the students in this activity and gave one of his CDs to those with the best answers. At one point in the program a young boy from the audience was inspired to read a poem he had written about the “monster” AIDS.   The audience was thoroughly engaged in this educational experience.  Kennet B presented his narrative poems in an informal frank language that students could relate to and described awkward situations and foolish people students could laugh at and learn from.  As he says, “I model my pieces into teachings. They laugh and they learn.”

In the last school visit of the day with more than 800 young girls in the audience, Kennet B began a conversation with them, linking each poem and challenging them with direct questions encouraging considerable audience involvement and thoughtful answers.   As Kennet B completed the program, the school music teacher came onto the stage and asked Kennedy to sing a popular hit song from one of his albums.  The result was screaming swaying waves of young girls. In the end several of the students ran onto the stage to dance with Kennet B, spontaneous lines of green school uniforms and a long white tunic, joyful people caught up in the rhythm of the moment.  Was it the music blasting through the sound system, the clever poetic lines in the slang language of youth, or was it the energy and talent of Kennet B?  The source, the message, and the delivery combined to make this HIV and AIDS message clear and powerful.

 I have learned to tolerate the huge brown “house spiders” and green lizards crawling up the walls. Kenyans describe them as “harmless” and “helpful” since they eat bugs and mosquitoes. I have my doubts about the spiders and have eliminated several of them.  I purchased a large can of high-powered bug spray, aptly named “Doom”, and created an “instant death” barrier around the windows and entrances to each room.  This at least slowed the insects down a bit. 

People here deal with this bug invasion as a part of the regular cycle of life. The bugs come with the beginning of the rainy season.  Some people even go searching for them and dig into the tall red termite mounds to collect the insects.  Termites are considered to be a gourmet delicacy, lightly seasoned and fried to a crunchy brown.