Juveniles

23rd December, 2008

I didn't sleep well last night which is unusual for me. I kept waking up thinking that I heard things.

However, I finally got up at 7:30am and got dressed. Around 8:00am one of the house mothers came over with a thermos of milky tea for me. This is breakfast.

One of the main things that I've been asked to do is create a website for the project to not only inform people about what is going here, but to also try and raise awareness and ultimately money to continue the work. Of course, one of the normal prerequisites for creating an internet site is a connection to the internet. They are hoping to get one in the next few months so in the mean time I'm creating everything off line which is really testing my skills as I can't do the normal practice of looking at someone else's site who has done what I want and copying it.

I grabbed a few of the records from Moses to start reading them and working out what information is captured and what should be captured. The first one I grabbed was for a 4 year old boy called Manyara. The file has a picture and I can see he is a tiny little boy with no mention of a father and a death certificate from his mother. He is the fourth of five children. His mother died at 27. The next file is for Mary. Both her parents died of AIDS, her father at 33 and her mother at 28. In both files, as in all the files I look at, there is a certificate saying that the child is HIV negative.

It's incredibly hard to read these files each one a story of loss and misery. I start making notes and after a short while I've got the basic structure of what details should be kept and how best to arrange them. I fire up my Mac and start to create the database to store all these records.

About 20 mins into this exercise, Peter, Duncan, John and Ciro come into my room. They bring with them a tiny little boy who they introduce as Manyara. I quickly turn over the file documenting the misery of his childhood. Manyara is probably the smallest boy in the orphanage and I think he gets picked on a bit. He is quite physical when he plays and is constantly being pushed over by the other kids.

Whilst I try to work, the kids are exploring my room. They squeal with delight when they set off my electric toothbrush. They've clearly never seen anything like this before. Next they find the electric razor. I take both of these things away from them as I don't want the batteries running down or my toothbrush being used to dust the floor.

They start to open some of the other bags and when I see them near the camera bag I stop them. Now that they have worked out there is a camera in there, they want me to take photos of them. I put down the computer, grab the camera, lock the door and we wander around the grounds taking photos of them in various poses.

I head back to do some work and before long, a few more faces have appeared. Over the next hour or so another 10 children arrive. The house mothers bring me over some lunch. It is a chopped up and boiled green vegetable that I have seen them picking in the garden in the morning (sukuma wiki). It is sort of like a spinach texture and taste. Served with that is ugari. I'm not sure exactly what this is but it is white and stodgy. I'm guessing it is a mixture of maize and a yam like substance. It's edible but I don't expect to see it on the menus of any Michelin star restaurants anytime soon.

After lunch I speak to Moses and he suggests I go see Daniel. I had met Daniel at the party on Sunday. He is Evelyn's older brother. Naturally I have an escort of five boys, Peter, Duncan, John, Simon and Edward. They try to teach me a few words of Kikuyu on the way over but they are going so fast I only catch one or two. They constantly pepper me with questions like; Do I have a car? Can I drive a car? Can I fly an aeroplane? and Have I met Barack Obama. Obama is a legend in Kenya (as his father was Kenyan). Even little 3 year old Ciro who saw a photo of Obama in the newspaper I was reading, pointed and squeaked, Barack Obama.

When we got to Daniel's, the boys were all given a banana and Daniel showed me around his 6 acre property. By Kenyan standards this is quite large. He has pioneered the tissue culture bananas which are a disease resistant species. Bananas were not typically grown around here but the tissue culture bananas have been a huge success bringing prosperity to those farmers willing to try something new. Daniel was one of the original demonstration farms for this and now has hundreds of plants. He also shows me his bee hives. Again, this is a relatively new venture that is proving to be profitable for many.

After the demonstration, we sit in Daniel's living room and he puts on an African wildlife video. The kids quickly lose interest in the lions hunting down a giraffe and head outside to explore. When it's time to go, I round them up and we head back. On the way back they proudly show me that they have found 3 old light bulbs.

We get back to the home and are met by even more children. There must be about 25 by now. (Halfway there!!!) The boys go to the concrete edge of the building and taking a rock they carefully bash at the base of the light bulb until it has been loosened. They pull of the metal cap, then they have the bulb, the glass filament inside and the cap. I watch as they wipe all the white powder coating off the inside of the bulb. The filament and the cap become playthings for other boys. Meanwhile, they have taken some water and washed out the bulb until it's clean. Then they put water in the bulb and using the suns rays turn it into a magnifying glass concentrating the rays into a bright white light. Being boys they take turns in seeing how long they can hold their hands underneath it. I'm fascinated at their ingenuity.

Normally I would take things like this away from children of this age, but I'm not sure of the culture here so let them play for a while. They seem to be pretty rough with each other anyway and are constantly pushing each other over and tripping each other up. It's a very physical sort of existence. Even with 24 other kids around, Manyara is still the runt of the litter but gives as good as he gets. After a while, one of the house mothers comes out decides that they shouldn't play with this and makes them throw it down the toilet. I don't really feel guilty as yesterday, one of the house mothers gave Ciro a broken glass thermometer to play with. At that point I did take it off her and gave it to Moses who agreed she shouldn't play with it.

I wrestle with the kids a bit, play on the swings with them and kick around a soccer ball for a while. Then it's coming up to 6pm and they head off for their dinner. Margaret, the nurse, comes over and says for my own safety I shouldn't leave the doors of the clinic unlocked at night. This worries me a little. Although there is a watchman on all night, I'm still sleeping in a clinic that has drugs likely to be sought after by undesirables. I misunderstood when I asked her about the doors last night and thought she would close them.

She tells me to lock them from the inside at 7pm and open them again at 6:30am. They are big heavy doors so I feel a lot safer with them closed. She also says I should padlock them from the inside but when I look at the way they are constructed I decide against this. Nothing is coming through these doors.

Dinner arrives at about 6:55pm and Moses comes over to say good-bye for the day. He too comments on the unlocked doors the night before and we go again through the procedure. He does acknowledge that it's his fault as h didn't advise me correctly. I lock up Fort Knox after he leaves and finish off my rice, cabbage and potato.

I then spend the next few hours working on the website before finally heading to bed. Hopefully I will sleep a lot better tonight.

This was a good day.