Four New Kids, A Moment, & Tear Gas

In this past week the House of Hope has been blessed with four new children! During the week Caroline’s, one of the already existing children at House of Hope, aunt and sister, Grace, came for a visit. Tammi and I thought this weird. If Caroline’s aunt is capable of taking care of Grace (and another brother, we found out later) then why couldn’t she take care of Caroline as well? Well it turns out that she has grown weary of the children and was coming to talk to Margaret about placement. Margaret thought it best that the aunt continue caring for the children, but would allow Grace to stay with us for a week.

Grace, who is twelve, has been nothing but a joy to be with since she has been here. She is extremely helpful and friendly and has already blended well with the other children. I hope she is able to stay.
On Friday Margaret told Tammi and Kelly that they were invited to go with her to pick three more children in a village a few hours away. I wasn’t invited because the mother was single and still an active prostitute, and it might look bad for me to go into her home. I understood completely and stayed home and cleaned the house and did laundry anxiously awaiting their return. They had departed about nine in the morning and did not return until almost eight that evening. With them they returned with three beautiful children, two girls and one boy, Wanjiro, Njeri, and Wanaina.

Wanjiro is not yet two years old and is so tiny, but she can walk and feed herself, to the amazement of all the children. Loise, who is four, just recently began feeding herself.

Njeri is six, she is beautiful. She was born with only three fingers on her right hand and limp from what we think is a shorter right leg, but at first glance these differences aren’t apparent because she has adapted so well to them and acts just like every other child. Margaret didn’t even notice them until the next day!

Wanaina is the boy and he is nine but has the body of a four year old. Tammi says that on the way back to House of Hope he kept talking about different foods he had never had, and was hoping to have. Things like bread, rice, chapati, meat, all things that are normally served here, were delicacies to him. By chance Muthoni, our cook, had prepared chapati for dinner that evening so the children were met with meals of chapati, rice and meat. They were so excited.
Of course there is some apprehension with the new children. I can only imagine how overwhelming it must be to leave a place that you pretty much only took care of yourself and siblings and enter an environment filled with children to play with and actually knowing that your meals will come at certain time everyday. Their second day here, one of the existing children asked Njeri what was wrong with her hand, and she broke and started crying and went outside and refused to go back inside. We know the child who asked wasn’t trying to be malicious, only curious, but this sensitivity is normally with every new child who joins the House of Hope. Tammi and Kelly asked Margaret if Njeri could come up to Kelly’s room to just get away from everyone, Margaret, allowed it. Njeri stayed up for about an hour and did art and ate sweets and eventually went back down stairs and has been fine ever since.
Oh yeah, Wanjiro, Njeri, and Wanaina only speak Kikuyu, the language of the people group of the same name. Luckily Margaret, some of the Aunties, Cyrus, several workers and few children speak it enough for the children not to feel left out. So our English and the little Kiswahili we know is absolutely useless in communicating with them. Grace speaks English very well.

Something happened last night that made our time here completely worth it: Tammi and Kelly have a weekly girls night in Kelly’s apartment. Usually I go down stairs and watch a movie with the boys, but since the majority of the boys are still in seclusion I stayed in Tammi and I’s apartment and went over some of our pictures. A few minutes into girls night Tammi came over with Mary to get something and out of nowhere Mary points to Tammi and says “You are my second mother,” then she points to me and says “and you are my second father”. I flinched at her openness. I asked her if it was okay for me to give her a hug, and after much giggling she walked over and hugged me. It was the best thing to happen to me since we have been here.
I know this is unprofessional of me, don’t tell anyone I said this: Mary is my favorite.

This morning on the way to town Margaret and Cyrus told us that there may be riots in the city today. I wore flip flops today, I am not prepared for a riot! Anyway, we were told that it was due to rivalling political parties and demonstrations and such. With the boring two party system of the states, this is new to us (not that I am attempting to incite riots over our electoral process). So after having to pay high customs fees Tammi and I had to go to the bank to get some more money. On the way there I saw a group of people (just business people, not rebellious youth ala the WTO riots in Seattle) running towards us and hearing what sounded like a drum circle. We just got out of the way and proceeded to the bank. Upon entering the bank there was a fine smoke in the air, as well as people covering their faces with their shirts. Then there it was: the burning in the eyes, nose, and throat. We had walked into tear gas. Apparently a few blocks away the police (or military, who knows, they all carry machine guns) had released tear gas and the wind had carried it our way. Exciting but mostly scary.

Welcome to Africa.

Ps.I am trying to load as many pictures as we can. We have almost five hundred pictures to load and while the Sarit Centre is quick but not that quick, our battery might run out! Maybe when we have more time I will bring our power converter and have a go at it! Sorry.

Pps. Also sorry the last entry being posted four times! That blasted Nakumatt!

Ppps. The first photo is John Felix after the, ummm, ceremony. All the boy's had matching khangas (the wraps) that we picked up in Mwanza. Hopefully Mwanza pictures will make it this week!

Here's Tammi:

Week 11/30-12/4

We drove up to a small village that was right off a main road. From first glance it just looked like a few run down shops not really worth stopping and looking. As we drove up we were met by a well dressed woman who spoke English fairly well, she got into the van and said we were allowed to park at her house that was higher up on a hill. Her house was amazing, small in size by American standards but very large for the village standards. Inside her house was handwritten quotes written all on the walls. Some were scripture others were just very powerful quotes. She was very educated. She said her specialty was helping “special needs” children. My heart rejoiced at the sound of an African saying “special needs” most people just say things like “they are not right in the head”, or “retarded”, or “lame”, or “stupid” so you can see my need to rejoice over this women who lives in a village where most everyone has AIDS and she knows what “special needs” is and wants to help them. So she tells us that one of the three children that we took found out that we were coming that day and had not left her house out of fear he would miss us.
We were then lead to the house where the other children, mother, aunt, and grandmother were at. The room we entered was no bigger then a walk-in closet, Kelly and I were asked to sit down but we almost could not fit. The mother and aunt were in the room, they did not look as bad as I made them out to be in my head. They seemed pretty peaceful but very skinny and their bodies were shaking. On the bed was the baby, the two year old that looks no more than twelve months, and the aunt puts the baby on my lap. She was just wearing a small shirt and no bottoms, not a diaper or a cloth, nothing. The baby gave me a look over and then crawled down and walked to Margaret and grabbed her hand and never looked back. She went everywhere Margaret went and never cried, not even when we were leaving or saying goodbye to her family. The boy could not stop smiling and laughing, he just keep saying in Kikuyu all the food he was going to get to eat. He was so excited about being in a car for the first time in his life and about the juice he got on the way home. He has a really bad cough that sounds horrible but he does not let that slow him down. He is a little aggressive at times but who can blame him really. Njeri the middle girl is so sweet, she cried once in the van but it was not because she just left her dying mother, aunt and grandmother, it was because the van was going very fast and she did not understand it or like it. She told Margaret it felt like she was falling. No tears were shed at the children’s departure, I think Kelly and I were about to cry more than the mother was.
It’s hard to explain but I think they were rejoicing at the thought that their children would not end up like them. I think the image we saw on our way out put the whole experience into perspective. We left looking out the window at a man that was building a small coffin.