Jubilee Action...

Services available for people with disabilities in Kenya, in the most part, are well behind what we expect in the UK. Caring for those with physical disabilities is part of Mission Care's work in the Mission Care Homes in South East London. We want all people to receive the love, dignity and care that they deserve. Working with those with physical disabilities is an area of work we seek to replicate in our work here in East Africa.

The reality here is that there are so many people who are oppressed, vulnerable and in need, and so many voices crying out for help, that the most vulnerable cannot be heard at all. Everybody here is affected in some way - there is so much poverty that the average man would be seeking assistance from a government currently unable to provide it. The number of successful businessmen and businesswomen whose livelihoods were destroyed, whose homes and land were taken, who are now internally displaced reached at least 600,000. This is an additional 600,000 people in need on top of the commercial sex-workers, street boys, older people, orphans and people suffering from disease that you will find in every street of every town. Each people group has a varying ability to speak out and ask for the much-needed help, and now before them are the displaced educated people also seeking support. Those with the deepest needs are therefore often the last to be heard; those at the bottom of the pile are therefore often the most neglected.

I think that one of the most neglected people groups are those who are suffering from disability. We would anticipate this anyway, but here in East Africa there is also a deep lack of understanding and a cultural naivete around issues of disability. Within many tribes disability is still regarded as a curse. Therefore if a child is born with a physical disability, the parents will often hide or abandon the child. Neglect is always the first reaction. A child hidden away will often be abused, forgotten and traumatised.

In order to bring transformation, life and hope for the future to people with disabilities here in East Africa, there must be a change in mindsets.

Last week I travelled by light aircraft to the north of Kenya. This is a desert area where it is a struggle for people to survive. The area is populated by nomadic tribes, hardly touched by Western influences. The place that I visited is called Korr and is occupied by the Rendille tribe. These people cannot grow any vegetables or keep cows, sheep or goats as elsewhere in Kenya. They rely on their camel herds, drinking their milk and blood. This does not sustain the 25,000 population of the tribe so the World Food Program also assist them.

Here, as in so many parts of Kenya, a person with disabilities has no use or value to the community. They are just another mouth to feed and a huge burden to their family. However, this is beginning to change thanks to the Jubilee Blind Project. Situated 70km from Korr, on the main road that passes into Ethiopia, is a settlement called Loglogo, where I visited the work of Jubilee Action, another UK charity working in this isolated area. Jubilee Action are running an orphanage for 17 boys and girls who are visually impaired. Each child is enrolled and integrated into a government-run primary school to enable them to learn to read and write. The children are growing every day into happy, free and rehabilitated young people.

Before moving into the Jubilee home, the children would just exist - maybe being fed a small amount when the family could afford to. Most of the children were rescued from their homes and villages. They had no concept of the outside world and the sounds they could hear and things that they could touch and encounter. They had no idea of what it is to be able to read or write. This amazing project has made living life possible and many of the children are excelling in school. Some children have even been able to go to Nairobi to receive operations to restore part of their sight.

The impact of such projects is far more than changing the lives of the disabled children however. Projects are influencing whole communities and transforming mindsets around disability. They demonstrate that a life with a disability is a life worth living; it can be a full life with achievement, success, enjoyment and the experience of love, hope and community. The Jubilee Blind Project is opening minds as to what can be done.

I was visiting to film the project to help Jubilee promote their work. It was a real privilege to see what was going on and to see the step towards justice for the 17 beautiful boys and girls who are accomplishing so much. At Mission Care we value the work of any organisation that cherishes and liberates vulnerable and oppressed people and Jubilee Action are one such organisation, changing lives, delivering people, and being a tool for long-term development by changing behaviour and mindsets.

Nyanza: part 2...

My time in Nyanza was an opportunity to see, to encounter and to listen. This province in Western Kenya has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the country - with nearly 1 in 4 people suffering from the virus. Statistics sometimes need to be further explored and grappled with to fully understand their impact on reality - envisioning what they mean in your head is difficult, let alone fully considering their implications. Sometimes you have to witness people living with this reality to comprehend the data. During my visit to Mutwala village, on the outskirts of Muhoroni I passed from one mud-house to another, and each visit further revealed the suffering caused by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

I met HIV positive widows looking after fatherless children, elderly widows who had lost of all their adult children to the disease, HIV positive mothers who had lost their babies and children who had lost both of their parents. Another house, another story - each one bearing the pain, hopelessness and destruction of broken families.

So many questions arise when we think about such a reality:
Why is it so prominent here?
Why here and not at home?
Why this part of Kenya in particular?
Why, although we have known for so long about the virus, do people still contract it due to ignorance?

Although I cannot answer all of these questions I was given some insight during my trip. The biggest factor for the spread of the virus here is the behaviour - often due to tribal traditions. In many parts of Kenya sexual promiscuity is seen as natural and men requiring sexual fulfilment where and when they please is socially accepted. My experience is that even though people do not glamourise this sort of behaviour, it is tolerated as the norm. I think that this is not only due to a moral void in many communities but also due to the lack of commitment given to building a loving, lasting and flourishing marriage.

In many situations, a husband will stay away from home for three months or so at a time to work. Getting a job is so difficult here that if you are able to find one, you take it - no matter how far you may have to travel. It is common for husbands and wives to see each other only four or five times a year. As you can imagine, there are many relational and family consequences to this practice, including the difficulties with raising children and the creation of sexual tension. We must not forget however that poverty affects decisions hugely. People here need to be working and employment is a lifeline to families - but the realities of living life apart can cause destruction to families before devastation such as HIV enters the picture.

The adhering to old tribal traditions only increases the spread of HIV. Polygamy, for example, is widely accepted in Kenya. Inheriting widows is a practice that is built upon the desire to care for and not abandon widows and children after the death of a husband and father - so a brother will inherit the responsibility and take the widow as another of his wives. But inheriting a wife after an HIV/AIDS-related death obviously has a terrible impact, continuing the spread of the disease. Yet this custom remains a part of many tribal institutions, especially in rural areas like Mutwala.

Behavioural changes are needed, but education is the only way to bring them about. The stigma of HIV/AIDS still holds back such communities as Mutwala, with people being very unwilling to admit to being infected. Fear of being branded an outcast is still a rational one to hold, but the failure to speak up and be honest continues to cause further harm and devastation to the community.

During my visit I met one woman who had lost a six month old baby only a few months earlier. It was only following her child's death that she and husband decided to go and get tested, to find out that they too were HIV positive. Upon discovering this, the mother decided to take a stand and she has begun to talk, to speak up and speak out. She is being heard and noticed and hopes that out of such pain she can become a voice for truth, honesty and change. She is an inspiration.

Another sign of hope and change came from a group of youths who were using the town meeting place to hold a week-long seminar. They were learning all about HIV and its consequences, and were being trained to share this knowledge with contacts in the village. I was privileged to spend some time with them and encouraged to see young people who are determined not to be held captive by the disease.

Paul and Erin, about whom I have shared before, are another story of hope, and their work in the village goes much further. With the input of Paul's father, who is a local pastor, they are setting up a project using goats. I was even able to assist them by going to buy a male goat in a neighbouring town and transporting it back to them using the Mission Care International vehicle. This project can have a huge impact in the daily battle to prevent infection and care for HIV sufferers.

Firstly, a child born to an HIV positive mother must not be breast-fed as this increases the risk of contracting the virus. The recommended formula milk is an unrealistic option for most families as it is just too expensive. Goats' milk however provides a nutritious alternative. This can help to break the cycle of infection and help to put the babies out of risk. The milk can also help to improve the health of an HIV sufferer, providing nutrients that families living in poverty struggle to find in their diet on a daily basis. Secondly, the goats also have an economic value. The milk can be sold and offspring can be sold to support the family. This is a powerful tool to support families when the main breadwinner is becoming weaker and weaker due to the effects of HIV.

To look after the goats properly so that they are able to fulfil this dual function, they have to kept differently to how goats are usually kept in Kenya. They require particular housing and must be 100% non-grazing. They must also only be bred with certain other breeds. Education around their care has therefore been essential. With extra funds raised, the Mutwala project also identifies needy recipients to provide training and assistance to build housing. Although the project has only just begun, it is a fanstastic way of bringing change and hope to a place that could have so easily succumbed to the darkness and pain of such enormous loss.

Nyanza...

I returned last week from a stay in the Western part of Kenya called Nyanza. I was visiting a couple I had met in Mombasa, Paul and Erin, who had returned to Nyanza to begin a ministry working in two villages called Muhoroni and Beta.

Paul and Erin are beginning this work following a number of experiences over the past year. They met while working for Youth with a Mission (YWAM) in Mombasa. Paul is Kenyan and Erin is Canadian. The married a little over a year ago and decided to remain in Kenya. News then came to them that Paul's elder brother was sick, and they returned home together to care for him. He was suffering from AIDS, and in just two months Paul and Erin watched him deteriorate daily, until he sadly passed away. He left behind a wife, who was at that time pregnant with twins, and three other children. Unfortunately his wife had also contracted the virus, and there were deep concerns over the health of the twins that she was carrying.

Paul and Erin knew that 66% of babies born with the virus die before the age of three, and without the right drugs and a safe hospitalised birth, this becomes increasingly likely. Children then require more drugs soon after birth and must not be breast-fed by their infected mother to give them a better chance of survival. Having watched the painful and undignified death of a close family member, Paul and Erin decided to do all that they could to prevent the children from being born having contracted HIV.

The babies were born and Paul and Erin supported their mother as closely as they could, although she was evidently struggling to look after all five children given her weak state due to her illness. Paul and Erin offered to assist her by adopting the twins, and they began to raise them as their own when they were two weeks old. They have fed them with approved formula and made sure that they have the appropriate care and medical attention to help protect them from HIV. The twins are now happy and thriving at nearly 10 months.

Having heard this story I was keen to visit them and meet their family. On my visit I received a real insight into the AIDS epidemic in this part of the world, and saw first-hand how poverty, lack of education and tribal traditions only seem to intensify the crisis. But I also found a family who are beginning to take action in their small village, and bring hope to the many families suffering as a result of HIV and AIDS.

Fuhomi...

Fuhomi has been making some real progress with its schools' programme in the last few weeks. They have been attending three different schools and tackling the first topic on the syllabus, which is sex education. They have been working with groups of 15-20 students.

Over time, the students are becoming less intimidated about asking questions and they are learning to be more honest and vulnerable in talking through some of the issues. This is great to see, since many young people are can be very inhibited when talking about sex. The Fuhomi schools' programme provides a forum where the young people are accepted as they are, whichever background they come from and the trainees are working hard to create an environment where the students can be themselves and develop.

The team recently received a letter from one student asking for help about a particular home situation. This is real testimoney of the growing trust between the team and the students and the Fuhomi team hope to continue to be a safe place for students to come and seek advice.

The other area of mission with which the Fuhomi team are currently involved is working with local commercial sex-workers. It is tough at the moment, because we don't have the infrastructure or resources to take the girls off the streets. We cannot yet save them from the daily injustices or offer them a safe living environment. While we continue to pray that one day we will have these resources available to us, this does not stop the team working tirelessly to bring the change that they can to the lives of these teenage girls.

The Fuhomi office in the centre of Naivasha town is slowly becoming a sanctuary where the commercial sex-workeres feel that they can come and find advice and friendship. It is so hard for the girls to trust peopel, having been exploited in so many ways throughout their short lives, but we are encouraged that the team has already established the foundation for lasting relationships with eight girls, and they are now seeking to develop further friendships.

While my sister Aimee and my friend Leonie were here, we invited some of the girls to join the team in the office and spend time together, just enjoying each other's company and having a good time. It is very hard sometimes knowing that on that very evening the girls will be back on the streets, selling their bodies for next to nothing just to survive. Sometimes just showing that you care enough to give somebody two hours being a "normal" teenager can make a huge difference. We employed a woman to come and paint the girls' finger nails and toe nails. It was something small, but something that reminds them that they are special, that they deserve so much more than they have at the moment, and that they deserve to be the women they were made to be.

Tony Campolo, a Christian Sociologist from the US, told a similar story of street girls in Haiti who approached him, hoping that he would have sex with them. He and his ministry workers took them to a hotel room and ordered as much ice cream as they could and rented every Disney film in the hotel. They gave the girls a night where they could be the fourteen and fifteen year old girls that they really were. Sometimes it is impossible to change the lives of every child and adult who suffer from desperate poverty - but if we can give them a glimpse of the love and joy of Jesus, then we should always strive to do so.

All move...

At the moment there are sixty boys who attend primary school who live at Sunshine. Currently, they are spread over two sites - the old Sunshine Home and the new centre which Mission Care International has been building.

The great news from here in Naivasha is that with the painting of the dormitory, as shown in this picture, all sixty boys will be moving to the new Sunshine Centre next week! This means that they will now all be living in a warmer, safer, cleaner and more comfortable living environment and this is largely thanks to the funding and project management provided by Mission Care International - and therefore thanks to our brilliant supporters. So many thanks to everyone who has helped this dream to become a reality.

The boys will now be living next door to me, which is very exciting. They are extremely pleased with their new home and love their bedrooms. The next item on the building agenda for Mission Care International here at the Sunshine Centre is the kitchen, as the boys will have to continue to return to the old site to eat for a while until this is completed. Please continue to pray for and invest in the work here at the Sunshine Centre, and take time to visit the Mission Care website to read some of the boys' stories to understand the full impact of how their lives have been dramatically transformed by this valuable work.