 Team Reports |
Great Needs, Great DeedsBrenda Oliver - Toronto, ON Kenya is a beautiful country with wonderful, diverse people, but it has an enormous downside: its poverty. Our team distributed bedkits in several slum areas in Nairobi: Kibera, the largest slum in sub-Sahara Africa; Mathare, the second largest; and the Dagoretti area. We witnessed children living in deplorable conditions who call small dilapidated huts or one room apartments home. There's often no running water so children carry large containers of water from a reservoir to their homes. Unsightly garbage is strewn everywhere. Open sewers filled with debris are breeding grounds for mosquitoes carrying malaria to thousands of unprotected children. The treated mosquito nets provided in the bedkit are a much needed item. Many of the children receiving bedkits have lost one or both parents or their parents were simply too poor to care for them and they have ended up on the streets. At St. Catherine's Catholic Church, we were shown a dormitory housing some of these destitute kids. Small bunk beds lined the room and it was very rewarding to see SCAW mattresses from last year on those bunks. We also travelled to Makindu, a rural area about 160 km southeast of Nairobi. There we were invited into one of the school girl's homes. She lived in a mud hut with her mother, sister, and very ill father. Their entire space consisted of a 10' x 10' room with two tiny beds for the parents and a place to cook. The children had to sleep on the dirt floor. Her bedkit is going to bring much needed comfort to this little girl and many like her. The parents expressed their appreciation for the wonderful gifts from Canada and shoeless children with smiling faces sang songs to us in gratitude. One song that for will forever remain in my memory had these words: I am so happy, Donors, please rest assured that you have made 4,000 deserving children so very, very happy. |
