KENYAN’S VISION TO SAVE CHILDREN HAS TRANSFORMED THEIR LIVES
In May, Herald columnist Valerie Fortney travelled to Kenya and Uganda to visit the charitable beneficiaries supported by a group of southern Albertans. This is the final column of a three-part series on her experiences.
She was a teenage girl with no family, no money and nowhere to live. The only thing that Winnie Nekesa had were the clothes on her back and a brand new baby girl.
“I was forced to go into the forest looking for firewood, to make some money in order to buy food,” said the now 20-year-old, whose parents and only sibling had all died years earlier. To add to her misery, in 2007 the uncle who had taken her in was murdered in Kenya’s post-election violence.
“I didn’t know how I was going to survive. I told God, ‘If you have a purpose for my life, show me your hand.’”
As Nekesa shared her heartbreaking story, she occasionally smiled and shook her head. That is because life is so different today for the gentle, soft-spoken young woman. This fall, she will graduate from vocational school, her field of study — hairdressing.
“I will be a businesswoman, doing something that I enjoy,” she said. “I can’t believe that not long ago, all I wanted to do was die, to leave this world.”
I met the incredible Nekesa at the Yatta location of Mully Children’s Family (mcfcanada.org), an organization that has been helping to transform the lives of young people like her for nearly three decades.
Over the years, I have written a handful of stories on Calgarians Bernie Potvin and Ross Weaver, who through their Old Guys in Action charity (oldguysinaction. blogspot.com) have raised funds for this organization and many others. In 2014, I also had the pleasure of meeting Charles Mulli, the man behind the orphanages/schools, who to date has helped more than 8,000 Kenyan children fulfil their potential.
This past May, I accompanied Potvin to two of the Kenyan orphanages, Yatta and Ndlani, the latter being the place where it all began.
Mulli, now 69, and his wife Esther have been busier than ever these days, thanks in part to a documentary film that tells the story of their journey from being the affluent parents of eight of their own biological children to the caretakers of thousands of orphans and destitute youngsters.
The entertaining and engaging Mully (mullymovie.com), released in 2015, has created a new spike in international interest in the orphanages.
Because of that, when we arrive at Ndlani, about three hours’ drive east of the capital city of Nairobi, we were informed that Charles and Esther had just departed for the United States. Still, there were more than enough Mulli family representatives on hand, from daughter Janey, our host for our stay in its visitors’ quarters, to son Dickson, who oversees the farm and ambitious, environmentally-friendly agricultural projects.
Our guide, Tom Kiari, has been with the organization for more than a decade, working his way up from security guard to being one of the public faces of the centre. Over a whirlwind twoday visit, he provided an extensive and exhaustive overview of the myriad ways in which it has evolved over the decades.
It should be noted here that not everyone is enamoured with the orphanage model, one that continues in Kenya and other economically disadvantaged countries and, due to war, famine and other calamities, has grown in many African countries.
Organizations like Save the Children (savethechildren.ca) have spoken out against them, noting that 80 per cent of the estimated eight million children in orphanages worldwide have at least one living parent or other relatives who could care for them — and that the focus should be on “the root causes of why children are separated from their families in the first place.”
J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, has also lent her voice to the issue. At a European Union conference this past June, she argued that children are “severely harmed” by even well-run orphanages.
Still, in countries like Kenya, where nearly half of the population is under the age of 19 and more than 40 per cent of its citizens live below the poverty line, the problems facing orphaned and abandoned children and youths are immediate and a matter of life and death.
As Charles Mulli — himself a once-homeless child who became a millionaire businessman — learned all those years ago, many of those abandoned and orphaned children scrounge out an existence on the streets or in garbage dumps, while others are forced into the sex trade.
At Ndlani, hundreds of children and teenagers are housed, fed, clothed and given a proper education that includes a faithbased program, in this country where nearly 85 per cent of the population self-identifies as Christian.
Many of its students have gone on to university, a definite departure from the country’s average school dropout age of 11.
Priscilla Wambui was once one of those hopeful youngsters. Today, the 24-year-old, fresh from graduating university with a degree in education, is back at the orphanage to volunteer before she begins her career. “I was served here, given an education, spiritual nourishment and hope,” said a smiling Wambui, who was working in the afternoon sunlight outside her classroom, preparing her instructions for class. “Now I am here to serve.”
The children eat food grown on the orphanage’s farm, which over the years has evolved into a commercial operation that exports French beans and tomatoes to Europe, the tree seedlings grown in its greenhouses resulting in more than five million trees across the country.
The Yatta location, closer to Nairobi and the place where Winnie Nekesa has been honing her hair-styling skills, provides a sanctuary for young single mothers and their children. It’s also a vocational school that teaches such valuable trades as dressmaking and knitting, along with entrepreneurship.
In one building, staff members attend to infants and young children, while in several other modest structures, the teens and young women learn the trades they hope to eventually ply for a living.
By North American standards, the environments at the two facilities we visit are clean but spartan.
For young people like Nekesa, though, they are more than a marked improvement on their previous situations.
“I never knew I would have a chance to study and make a life for myself for me and my child,” she said before running off to join her classmates.
“I’m very excited about my future.”