I was in a hurry to the hall where I was to speak, thus no time to look at the photo that had been taken of me and the four students. When I at last saw the photo, I was sad. I felt insensitive as I noticed that I was the only one smiling. None of the orphans that posed with me had a reason to smile.
Two days before the students were brought to meet me, I entered the office of the principal where they all had attended elementary school. It was the school I left in 1974. Without revealing who I was, I asked the principal how the 8th grade students had performed and how many were to join high school (in Kenya, not all 8th grade students pass the high school entrance exam). He had the list of the students with him and started showing me the names of those who passed.
He reached the name of one girl and fell silent. When he gathered himself, all he said, “Yii niyo mwaka wa keli wa kelitu kaa kwika mutiani uu nesa, indi kaithi sukulu.” This is the second year for this girl to pass this exam so well, but she will not be going to high school.
Pauline (15), the girl in a red sweater, is an orphan. When her parents died, she was left under the care of poor grandparents. They too died and left her with a maternal aunt. In 2009 she sat for the national 8th grade exam and passed but lacked the minimum $300 (last year it was $250) tuition and fees to join high school. The solution was to have her repeat 8th grade. Because primary school education is free, the hope was that she would spend a few more years before she is big enough to get married. In 2010 she passed again and without help from a well-wisher, she was again destined to be in the 8th grade in 2011.
Mueke (15), the girl in blue, is a victim of the complexities of illiteracy and poverty. This girl too was supposed to repeat 8th grade until “maturity.”
Kimani (18), the tall boy, is a sophomore. A child of a widow, Kimani had passed the exam several times before he decided to go to a high school near his home at 17, but he spent more time at home than in school due to lack of tuition and fees.
Dominic (18), the boy on my left, visually impaired, started school at the age of 10. His poverty level is so devastating that the school had to adopt him. He became the first blind student from our school to pass and secure admission at a prestigious school for the blind. Misery spares no one.
I, too, was a freshman in high school at 18, but for reasons other than being orphaned and without someone to pay for my education. I was born and raised by two parents. It’s hard for me to imagine life of a poor child without parents in Africa where there are no governmental support systems. As a father of three girls, my heart trembles when I think of a girl waiting to be big and get married in 8th grade instead of joining high school.
Yet if someone makes a small sacrifice of $300/year, a destitute girl or a boy has hope of becoming a teacher, a medical doctor, engineer, police, public leader, accountant or preacher to name a few opportunities for Kenyan students who are privileged to attend high school.
I had no choice but to help these children. The two girls are now in the same high school and each had a B+ in their first term’s performance report. Kimani, after being in school for three months without interruption, was number 24 out of 212 students in his class. I have not yet received Dominic’s report.
To help, mail a check to Caring Hearts and Hands of Hope Inc, Idaho United Credit Union. P.O Box 7152, Boise, ID 83707
A few years ago, I brought to your attention the story of the now late Kimani Nga’ang’a Murage, a Kenyan who at 82 enrolled as a First Grader soon after the Kenya government made elementary education free. The thirst for education, professional and personal growth in Kenya is astonishing, and inspirational.
Now, Mr. Rufinus Arap Taa (http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/858060/-/vq1qab/-/index.html) is a fresh man in high school at 75.
What you will not read or hear from the media is the unequaled desire, commitment and sacrifice professionals invest in pursuit for education, professional and personal growth.
In my recent visit, I was privileged to visit and speak all four Toastmasters clubs (open to any one who wants to better his/her public speaking skills– www.toastmasters.org). What I observed and experienced is beyond description even though I have been an active member and financial sponsor of new members for almost two decades and I have visited over 100 Toastmasters clubs. Here is the evidence:
- A normal weekly meeting attended by more than 50 individuals
- All attendees staying in a meeting until the end
- Guests paying to attend a meeting (in some places, guests have to be given incentives or members “treated” in order to invite guests)
- Consistency among all clubs in Nairobi
- Detailed evaluations
- A speaker being recommended to repeat their speech
What happened during my seminar on How to Speak and Get Paid was moving. The seminar was scheduled to end at 3:30 p.m. on the second day but only one participant had left by 6:00 p.m. and the reason was to pick up her child. The seriousness of their desire to learn was evident from the depth of questions they asked and the ferocious taking of notes. For a week and a half after the seminar, I was either conducting face to face or phone consultations daily.
Anthony Gitonga, author and one of Kenya’s amazing speakers booked not only for consulting time when he learned I was to be there but also invited and made arrangements for me to spend a night at his house, even though we had never met or known of each other.
It has been said that, “The road to success is always under construction.” To grow and remain relevant in what you do and/or as a person, you have to continue “constructing” your professional and personal dreams.
What made me look up was a basic sentence, “Mwana usu aema uthi sukulu wa kwambililya ndeasya mwanya wake” That child will forfeit her admission if she does not join the school on Monday, in my native Kikamba language. What I witnessed, a father shedding tears in public, kept my interest.
In February 4, 2010, I was at a cyber café in Nairobi, Kenya, checking my emails when a man watching his friend check emails from a computer next to mine received a phone call. It wasn’t long before he said those words. He stared at a spot on the floor. When he looked up, I noticed tears streaming from his eyes. He ended the call, saying, “Nyie ndyisi undu ngwika” I don’t know what to do.
I pulled my chair closer and asked what he was talking about. He was talking to his wife about their daughter who had passed high school admission exams. She was supposed to enter a high school the following Monday with full tuition and fees otherwise her spot would be given to someone else. But his family didn’t have the total amount required. They needed Ksh.8,000 ($106.70).
That was two days after Kenya’s main newspaper reported on a mother of six who committed suicide because she couldn’t afford to pay for her daughter to join high school tuition.
I didn’t know how to get involved but I asked this stranger to show me his identity card and make me a copy of it. I requested he write his daughter’s name and the school where she had been admitted. I asked him if I could call and talk to his wife. He granted me permission. Nothing unusual except the fact that this man had never seen me, didn’t know who I was or why I needed all the information he had so obediently provided. Imagine giving a stranger your personal information and that of your spouse and child. Desperation has no privacy.
After I talked to his wife I gave the man $106.70 and $26.70 more for books. All he said was, “Kii ni kyama” This is a miracle. He kept repeating those words as I tried to learn more about him. He is a part time driver with five children and had bought food with all his money because of three consecutive years of famine.
Another miracle happened on my flight back to Idaho. The first person I shared that story with promised to be a sponsor of a child in Kenya. The check arrived two days after I emailed her where to send it.
Orphans, children of widows and/or single mothers and from poor families have no future in Kenya unless God performs miracles. Your contribution, no matter the amount you are capable of, is a miracle.
Every penny contributed for a student is used to pay for their education. To help, mail a check to Caring Hearts and Hands of Hope, Idaho United Credit Union, P.O Box 2268, Boise, ID 83701 or call (208) 376-8734 and get details on how you can help a student directly and get his/her photo and their school’s contact information.
Lakyo was entering sixth grade as I began high school. But because he and his sister were always among the top students in their respective classes, I had come to know a little bit about their family. They were two of six or seven children of a single mother who worked as a bartender, a job that was looked down upon and often associated with prostitution.
Lakyo and I were friends and from time to time we would visit and talk about life. I don’t know what had happened to his father and I didn’t bother to ask him. May be because I didn’t want him to know I knew what his mother did for a living. Or because it was irrelevant given that I knew how single mothers, whether widowed or divorced, suffer in Kenya. There used to be, (and largely still is the same) no source or system of support for the women and their children, unless a woman came from a wealthy family—and even then, support was not guaranteed.
This young student passed the 7th grade national exam and was accepted in a good high school. I didn’t see him a lot during his four years of high school. I went on to college and in 1982, we were suspended from school because the government thought we had supported the organizers of the abortive coup. It was then when I met Lakyo and learned that he had performed well but couldn’t continue his education because of his family’s poverty. He was doing nothing.
I asked him, “Why not apply and join a teacher training college?” He said he didn’t know where to start and how he would make himself available for the interview that was conducted in Machakos Town. He needed bus fare. I had kept in contact with our primary school headmaster and I knew he had knowledge and influence in the education system of our district. I took Lakyo to him and he was given the application forms, which he completed. He was invited for the interview.
But he needed bus fare. That is when I gave him the equivalent of $1.50. Lakyo today is a teacher and probably a school principal because I had $1.50. I cry as I write this sentence knowing that a life (not to mentioned those affected by Lakyo as a teacher) forever changed.
Today in Kenya, children whose parents have died of AIDS or whose mothers have left their abusive husbands have little or no chance of attending high school or finishing college. I have a list of about 30 students (their school names and contacts) that with the support of $150-$250 per year can be tomorrow’s Lakyo. It is astonishing to know the value of the little we give. It changes lives for individuals, families and communities.
We see skeletons of cattle or the emaciated bodies of those about to die lying on grassless soils of Kenya. We see famine relief workers holding bowls of liquid food for young children whose bodies have shrunken as hopeless parents watch. The pain seen on a mother’s lifeless face that is placed in between her bony hands tells of how a famine punishes the living before death claims them.
Your heart breaks when you know what happens to families, women and young girls. Famine breaks families. As I continue to monitor the current famine in Kenya, I recall a woman who was remotely related to my mother coming with her two children to live with us in 1966 (we were not better off but we had one meal a day). She had left her unemployed husband when he couldn’t provide for them.
I have just been informed that some famine stricken families are breaking up. I had called to ask why, in the reports I got, there were different members in 3-5 of the families we have been helping with food. What shocked me is pastor Kiseve’s reply. “Mr. Kituku, I was just counseling one of those men. His wife took their children away to go search for food.”
Some of these families may re-unite, out of necessity, once the famine is over. There is, however, no guarantee they will ever be the same again.
That brought to my mind another huge problem. Young girls, sometimes even when they are still of elementary school age, are given to marriage for “practical reasons.” That means there is one less mouth to feed in her family. There is, also a chance of getting a dowry, no matter how meager that is. In the face of death the unthinkable happens.
When a young girl is pulled from school and given to marriage (most likely to uneducated husband), that is perpetuation of the circle of poverty. Her daughter(s) will likely be subjected to the same short sighted perceived hunger survival escape.
We can help save a young girl from being forced to marriage, a family from breaking up and/or being claim by death. A 180 lbs sack of corn costs about $35-40 and 90 lbs of a ½ sack of beans costs about $64-85.That can feed a family of 5-6 people for about 30 days. Rain is finally back and by March/April, the agony of famine maybe a thing of the past.
Again, 100% of your support is used for food. To help, mail a check to Caring Hearts and Hands of Hope, Idaho United Credit Union, P.O Box 2268, Boise, ID 83701 or to any group that is already helping. To learn more about the situation, just Google Kenya famine or call (208) 376-8734
It is true. There are times when no human language can truly express the depth of appreciation in one’s heart. But please allow me to say THANK YOU for hearing my cry and contributing your resources, even during these economic hard times, to save lives of famine stricken Kenyans.
My prayer, plan and hope was to write this thank you letter sooner. However, I discovered that I am not immune to being depressed by witnessing human suffering. Thus I have been an emotional wreck since traveling to Kenya and witnessing first hand the devastating effects of three years of drought, pathetic governmental leadership and AIDS.
Your contributions saved lives. You kept families together. During famine couples sometimes have to separate in search of food. You protected underage girls from being forced into marriage—which is often a survival strategy. You helped prevent mothers from using their bodies to raise income and provide meals to their children.
I visited the people you helped from starving to death. I was astonished beyond measure. You see cattle skeletons, the evidence of lost livelihood. You see so many brilliant young boys and girls out of school because their parents can’t afford $150-$250 per year tuition since every penny had been spent on whatever meager food they could get.
It took me more than a month after I came back to the United States to regain a balanced perspective and sit at a restaurant and order a decent meal. How could I be blind to the suffering of the mother of six who hanged herself because she could not afford to pay tuition for her daughter to attend high school? How was I supposed to live knowing one of Kenya’s college bright stars, an orphan whose parents were claimed by AIDS, was at home languishing because he cannot afford $200/semester to continue his university education?
Or how could I erase the emptiness I experienced with pastor Kiseve and his wife when we visited a single mother whose son had been sent home from school for lack of Ksh.8,000 ($105) needed for his high school senior year exam fees and tuition.
My question for the mother was, “What are you to do?” “Nothing” was her only response.
Thank you, that you didn’t do “nothing” when you read about the famine problem in Kenya. The rains have come in some parts of the country. But not everyone planted since many people had used the seeds for food. However, if the rains continue, by August this year, food availability will not be an issue. There will be people to eat it because you played a significant role in their assistance.
But a non-government and targeted long term strategy is the solution that can prevent masses from starving in future famines. The orphans and children of widows are being left behind because of lack of school tuition. For the widows, we are providing either a cow for milk or steers and a plough to work on their gardens and/or hire them out for income.
We sent tuition directly to the schools of high school and public university students who are orphans or children of widows. That way the money is used for the purpose it’s intended for. If you are a sponsor ($250/year for a high school student, and $400/year for a university student) you will be given the student’s name, school and contact information.
Thank you for saving lives in Kenya
As a young boy growing up in Kangundo, Kenya, Chapati (flied tasty wheat bread) was Christmas. My family, like many others could only afford it on Christmas. This Christmas, many Kenyan children and their parents will not have anything to eat.
Children and their parents in Kenya are starving to death as a result of a famine brought about by three consecutive years of drought.
My earliest recollection of the hurtful experience of hunger was in the mid 1960s. We ate one meal a day at night. It was Ngima ya muvya, dough made of millet flour. It tasted like soil. But we had “food.” In 1972, there was another famine that again relegated my family to one solid meal at night and porridge for lunch.
Both famines were short lived and families were able to return to reasonably diverse dietary portions. The current famine catastrophe has brought bad memories of students fainting in class because of hunger. I recall a woman who had to go to a neighbor’s garden at night to steal bananas after her son had starved to near death.
This 2007-2009 famine has reached a new, albeit devastating height. It’s killing my neighbors. I was born and raised is an area with average to above average rainfall, I have never heard of anyone dying of hunger like in drier parts of the country. My father just informed me a neighbor I know died. I went to school with his children. By developing nation’s standards, his family was a middle class.
In some parts of the country, schools have had to close to allow pupils to scavenge for food. Johnston Kiseve, a pastor I have known for twenty five years talked of how hunger has forced women, even churchgoers to unthinkable acts of prostitution to save their children. It is heartbreaking to think of the repercussions of these low acts in areas where deaths from aids are more common than births.
What, however, is humbling is to know how possible it is to save lives. The congregation of the Boise based Faith Evangelical Church has donated about $4,000 this year. People have given $5, $10 or whatever their heart feels moved to give. That has fed over 1,000 people. Mothers are spared the agony of watching their children die or becoming prostitutes.
Not a single penny is send to the corrupt officials or used for administrative costs. All, 100% of the contributions is used to help mothers feed their children. We require and get the names of all recipients, the number of the members in their families and the quantity of corn and beans they receive.
To help, mail a check to Caring Hearts and Hands of Hope, Idaho United Credit Union, P.O Box 2268, Boise, ID 83701 or to any group that is already helping with the situation. To learn more about the situation, just Google Kenya famine or call (208) 376-8734.
“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” Coach John Wooden
Job cuts, salary reductions, mandated furloughs, foreclosures and an unmoving cloud of uncertainty have dominated our lives for several years. The speaking, training and consulting industry has not been spared the pain of lost business. Even drastically reduced fees are not incentives to make the phone ring. I used to receive about six requests a month to offer speeches pro bono but even those requests have almost disappeared. How is that for your ego?
When we lose our jobs and the sense of identity and belonging that comes with them, we also risk losing the awareness of our infinite potential for facing the challenges of the new normal. Yet we have to seek not only survival opportunities but also to use untapped creativity with renewed energy, hope, and focus and propel our personal goals and those of the organization we work for to new heights.
You have to know that regardless of what you are going through, you are way better off than millions of people. Escape your “me” attitude and find ways to help those who are in worse conditions than you are.
My shrinking business became secondary within a few days after my arrival in a recent visit to Kenya. I encountered a man with only two teeth, sunken eyes, unkempt hair and clothes literally hanging on his skeletal frame who opened his arms to hug me as he asked, “Do you remember me?” I could not recall ever seeing him in my life. After I confused with embarrassment that I didn’t, he told me his name. He was one of my 7th grade best friends. I had even informed him that I was leaving for the USA in January 1986. Poverty had reduced him to a walking object.
The following day I saw a 17 year-old high school senior student who had been suspended from school because he had unpaid balance of tuition and fees totaling $106. When I asked his mother what she planned to do about it she said, “Nothing.” She and her two sons receive about $50/month from her working daughter for their sustenance. On February 2nd the Daily Nation newspaper reported a mother of six who committed suicide because she lacked $250 her daughter needed to attend high school.
I am not a stranger to the vulnerabilities of life. I had experienced the deaths of five younger siblings by the time I turned forty. I know the deep darkness of a dysfunctional polygamous family and the humiliation of being labeled an underperformer after spending six years in three grades. Yet the suffering of families and the condition of my friend forced me to question the meaning of life. My desire to wake up declined and I experienced nightmares I was not used to.
After weeks of carrying the burden of the emptiness in life with prayers and fasting, it occurred to me that if nothing was done, other mothers would kill themselves, promising students would wind up in wasted condition like my childhood friend and many girls would turn their bodies into commercial commodities of survival. I committed to seek help for high school students who are orphans, children of widows and those from very poor families. By the end of April, I had secured financial support for about 30 students (we have more in need).
What had brought deep darkness in my life became the springboard I so needed to regain a sense of purpose. Doing nothing is not a recovery plan when things have gone wrong. Help someone in worse condition than you. Learn something new. Develop new friendships. Ask for help—this is not a sign of weakness. Write down your experiences and expectations and share them with a person that you know will encourage you.
Sponsors (those who commit a minimum of $250/year, but any amount of contribution helps) get their student’s name, photo, school name, the address and principal’s contact (including phone number). The $250 is 100% used for tuition and fees while undesignated funds are used for operational purposes. To make sure the funds are used for tuition and fees only we make sure neither the students, guardians or headmasters receive them. Bishop Daniel Matheka and Pastor Kiseve (who has been in Boise) are in charge and we also contact the principals to confirm and make sure the students are in school.
To help, mail a check to Caring Hearts and Hands of Hope Inc, Idaho United Credit Union, P.O Box 2268, Boise, ID 83701. (This is a non-profit program—Federal ID # 27-3127770)
Kithetheesyo, my son, is starting high school this fall. His three sisters have traveled that same path. There is no fanfare. Every student from his middle school will attend high school, if they so wish.
Joining high school in Kangundo, Kenya, was a childhood passage that left vivid memories only death or permanent mental lapse can erase. Seventh graders sat for the examination set by educators from three nations, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania (former British colonies). The few hundreds of youngsters who passed the exam had an opportunity to enter high school and increase their chances of living up to their potential. Failing in that exam relegated thousands of youngsters to a pool of poorly paid manual jobs. Nothing short of a miracle could help those who failed the exam better their future life status.
Passing the exam was so rare that it took some schools many years before they could have one of their own admitted in what we called government high school. I was in my early teenage years when someone I knew, my uncle Makau—we called him Jimmy, passed the exam. His joyous screams, from about a quarter of mile from home, were what alerted the family that January afternoon in 1969.
My memory is not clear about how my uncle learned his results. Normally, the government-controlled radio would make announcement that results were out. Neighbors who had a radio and knew someone who took the exam would run to inform him/her about the announcement.
What I remember is Jimmy’s beaming face and his inability to sit still as he told the story and how the family was overwhelmed by this more than welcome circumstance. Jimmy had sat and failed to pass that exam in two previous years. Who would guess the source of joy…after three years in the same grade? What a relief! Some pupils had tried and failed that exam for seven years.
There was a social promotion that came with passing the exam. One could wear long trousers, a privilege reserved for high schoolers in those days. Those with a well-to-do dad or a family member had no struggle going through this transformation. It wasn’t so for Uncle Jimmy.
My grandfather, not yet a member of the Catholic church, was ready to capitalize on Jimmy’s dilemma. Jimmy had to purchase his first pair of trousers from his own father. Grandfather needed money for traditional beer. Jimmy, from manual labor projects, had gathered some money to buy luggage, toiletries and maybe a new shirt but not enough for a new pair of trousers.
Jimmy was admitted at Kabaa High School, a premier institution about sixty miles from home. That is where I come in. Jimmy’s young brother, Munyioki and I were naturally the ones to carry Jimmy’s luggage (with a wheelbarrow), from home to the Kangundo shopping center where he would take a bus. And that is where, three months later, we went to pick up Jimmy’s luggage after schools were closed. We too became part of Jimmy’s success—we could go to the shopping center where students with no business were prohibited.
Joining high school was not a personal achievement. It was a family affair. It wasn’t a routine thing. It was, for many communities, the first sign of a bright future when one of their own entered the world out there to learn the western education—the certificate one needed to progress.
