Children play – across the entire world and in every social class. In Mombasa’s slums we can see just how little they need for play: they can run through the streets for hours with an old tyre, keeping it rolling and chasing it through the alleys and around the squares.  And an old bicycle tyre, once the spokes have been removed, becomes a perfect hula hoop. Some girls can keep it rotating around them forever, or even make it go up and down.  The only problem is that the bicycles here are never really completely broken. When the tyres go flat and can’t be patched anymore (or if there aren’t any more patches), then the children just ride right on the rims.
 
Inventive when it comes to replacement parts: rusted-out handlebars are replaced by tree branches.
And if the handlebar is rusted through, then a stick will do, fastened to the frame with bands (photo!), or whatever else is around – an old drainpipe… (photo) We could put together an exhibition with all of it.
 
Drainpipe as handlebar
Cars can also be built out of anything: out of old juice containers, a milk carton, with lids as the wheels. Some models are made completely out of wire, artfully bent into shape, and others consist of two wheels and a long stick with a steering wheel at the upper end that the owner skilfully turns. And if an old key can be dug up and hung next to the steering wheel, then you really have everything you need to zoom around as a proud driver. (Photo) And of course you take care of a vehicle like that! You only let your best friend take a turn at the wheel, once in a while.
What else? Girls play Blada, known elsewhere as Chinese jump rope: two girls stretch a rubber band between them. The girl in the middle jumps in and out, low, high, really high, crosses over and turns around. Or they play a ball game for three: the two on the outside throw the ball to each other, and the middle one has to try to catch it.
 
There are no limits on ideas for toys.
And of course football. There are also girls who play, but most of them are boys between 10 and 15 years old, some of whom play every day, throwing all their energy and dreams into it. Many of them haven’t ever seen their great football heroes on television, but nonetheless they are Christiano Ronaldo or David Beckham whenever they are on the pitch. And if they manage to make a great play, a precise centre pass followed by a goal, then they’re no longer in a dusty slum: they’re at the top of the world.

As a matter of fact: hardly anybody knows anything about children’s rights. Many believe it is alright to strike a child when she makes you angry. This is partly because that’s how adults here were treated themselves when they were young. And partly because many African families don’t ask their children for their opinions. They don’t like it when children express their needs too loudly. They should obey their parents. Every decision is taken by the adults and the children are expected to do as they are told.

This is why our first job is to teach them. Together with people from the slums, we formed a committee that focuses on children’s rights. We tell them why it is important not to hit the children, and why it is important to send them to school and to give them enough time to play. The members of the committee for children’s rights are taking the knowledge that they gain in our training sessions and spreading it throughout the slums. They also function as contact partners for families when there are problems. Because most of them cannot read, our groups perform brief plays that describe what children’s rights are, and what is good for children and what is bad. We also encourage teachers to spread this message in their schools.

There is a council of elders in the community that is always consulted when there are problems. They provide counsel on what to do. First they try to talk to the family; then, if the problem cannot be solved, the authorities are notified. In Kenya, people can receive a jail sentence of up to 14 years for mistreating or abusing a child. So it can have major consequences when a child goes to the council of elders and they decide to report the incident.

We were already able to help in the case of a young boy who was brutally beaten by his parents. When the council of elders spoke to the mother, she said, “the boy is always making trouble; it’s the only way I can discipline him.” In the meantime, this mother has come to one of our training sessions and has recognised the damage she does to her son when she beats him. This is how awareness of the problem changes – slowly but steadily.

A mother from the slums named Theresa is very dedicated to children’s rights. She has several children herself and also stands up for the other children in the slum. Now everyone really trusts her. Most of them don’t have the confidence to go to the council of elders themselves. They go to Theresa first and she explains the situation to the council.

Luckily, a great number of people come to our training sessions on children’s rights. The director of a nearby school visited our children’s rights training a couple of weeks ago, and now he is very committed to focusing on this topic in his school. So step by step these urgently needed changes will slowly bear fruit.

SOS co-workers in Somalia give health care to undernourished and sick children and their mothers - Photo: SOS Archives

There would have been countless reasons for SOS Children’s Villages to pull out of Somalia in the past: the civil war escalated time and time again, maing life in Mogadishu a risky affair. On several occasions, the children and mothers of the SOS Children’s Village in Mogadishu had to be evacuated because the sitaution had become too dangerous. The school and the clinic run by SOS Children’s Villages also had to be closed down several times. Several co-workers were injured or killed, like Sister Leonalla, who worked at the SOS clinic.

Every day, hundreds more pour into the already crowded camps - Photo: SOS Archives

In spite of all this, my colleagues stayed on – for over 26 years by now! This is not reckless behaviour, it is simply the conviction that, once you have committed to give long-term help and offer people a perspective and hope for the future, you honor that commitment.

The dedication of my co-workers in Somalia must be honored too, especially in the current situation! The whole world’s attention is focused on East Africa, where a terrible drought is threatening the lives of so many people.

My colleagues are committed to helping, in spite of the terrible conditions and the ever-present risk - Photo: SOS Archives

Thanks to SOS Children’s Villages‘ presence in Somalia over the decades, my co-workers are now in a position to help swiftly and effectively.  More and more people are flooding the refugee camps, and I am grateful that we have the experience and infrstructure to help these desperate people!

The drought areas of Somalia, Ethiopia and northern Kenya are far away from Mombasa, the city where I live. And yet, I feel a connection to the people there, and with my colleagues who are helping them under very tough conditions and at no small risk to themselves – their work is so important!

Grandmother Jane can no longer feed her grandchildren without help - Photo: Priscah Wachera

The electrical power in Mombasa has been rationed since last week. For us, that means lights out between half past six and half past nine every evening.

Children must find ways to do their homework in the dark, refrigerators stop cooling and people can’t get any information about further effects of the drought, neither from the internet nor television.

Mombasa lies in the South of Kenya and is nowhere near as badly affected by the drought as the North is. But what does “not as bad” mean when you’re living on the edge already? Food prices have skyrocketed all over the country. Flour for a simple Ugali cost more than double, the same goes for maize or even kerosene, which is used mainly by the poor as a cooking fuel.

Yesterday I paid a visit to Jane, a grandmother who takes care of her many grandchildren. Her grandchildren had just returned from school and were eating lunch, but there was simply not enough food. When the family got up from the table, they were all still hungry.

It’s all the more sad since Jane had been doing really well: she had been successfully running a small business selling cooked maize and was planning to expand to include fish and vegetables. She had already found a small lot from which to sell the food and had even developed a business plan. Now she says she has had to raise her resale prices because her supplies cost so much more, so clients have been buying a lot less.

Many of the families we support have opened similar small businesses over the last few years – and they all have the same problem. At the end of the day, all their profits go into buying food for their families, and still it simply isn’t enough! In the schools, teachers say that more and more children have stopped coming to school because they are simply too hungry, too drained of energy.

What can we as a social development organisation do? In principle, the ultimate goal is to empower people to fend for themselves rather than simply give them what they need. But what would you do if somebody were starving and needed your help?

Many children have become to tired and hungry to attend school - Photo: Priscah Wachera

We have decided to help families like Jane’s, the ones who have been hardest hit by the price hike, and give them the food they need. But we know that we can’t help everyone in this way, or else we’ll have burnt up our entire budget in three months!

I am grateful that people understand this. Time and time again, people will approach me and tell me how grateful they are for our help, and how happy they are at how far they’ve come, in spite of everything. The joy of hearing people say things like that is more than I can describe!

Photo: Priscah Wachera

In Kenya, you can’t get anything free, least of all health care! This forces my colleagues and myself to be creative in order to achieve as much as possible with our budget.

For instance, we have no qualms negotiating the price of treatments and surgeries with doctors.

It doesn’t always work, some clinics won’t even grant a small reduction, but we try not to be discouraged by this, because we often meet people who show a lot of empathy and do everything they can to give us what we need. Recently, the mother of a child in our care needed surgery. The surgery was very expensive, the equivalent of 130 Euros, a fortune in Kenya! We spoke to the doctor, a gynaecologist, and explained what SOS Children’s Villages is and how we help and asked for a reduction. The doctor agreed to do the operation for the equivalent of 90 Euros, which was a great help for us. The mother is doing well by now and whenever she sees me, she thanks me profusely for my help. With the money we saved, we can help so many others…

We achieve great impact through health education. Ever since our first family strengthening programmes, we have invited the people from the slums to presentations on medical issues. Doctors from state hospitals sacrifice their weekends to help people understand diseases like cholera, AIDS, malaria and other common illnesses.

You see, most of the parents and grandparents we support have never attended school, can’t read and are therefore cut off from any information. Misinformation and hear-say lead to the strangest beliefs. For instance, some of the parents living in the slum believed that malaria was transmitted by mangoes. This may sound absurd to us, but how were they to know better? They listen to the doctors as though they were hearing the most exciting story and go home with knowlegde that can save lives.

Photo: Priscah Wachera

Unfortunately, SOS Children’s Villages doesn’t have a clinic of ist own in Mombasa, so we work together with private clinics and encourage people to go to state hospitals for check-ups. If they need medication, we often contribute half of the cost.

This works to a certain extent. But then a women with, say, asthma will come to me and say she can’t even afford half of the price for the medication, as she would prefer to feed her children. In those cases I have to remind myself that I am doing the right thing by at least making sure she receives an inhalor and hope she can soon continue with the medication.

One of my dreams – I know I have many of those – would be to establish  medical centres in Mombasa. In Nairobi, SOS Children’s Villages has been offering this for a long time: every three months, specialists from different countries come to treat the people there free of charge. These camps have become a very important feature in Nairobi.

A few weeks ago, a new state clinic opened close to the slums. I would like to work together with this clinic, it could make its premises available to us and we could convince the doctors to stop by in Mombasa once they have completed their work in Nairobi.

I’ll get on it right away!

Photo: Priscah Wachera

A black monster! A devil! A dragon with frightening horns – this is what AIDS looks like in the children’s drawings. I hope you’ll forgive me and go on reading if I repeat yet again that AIDS is unfortunately THE huge challenge in our work. Nobody can predict how long it will take until something really changes, because what has to change is people’s habits and that is incredibly difficult, as we well know.

This is why we try to start sex education as young as possible so that even children know how to protect themselves. We start this in a very simple way by going through the names of the parts of the body with the children. I touch my ears and say, “These are my ears. You can just touch them.” The boys and girls touch their ears. Then it’s the turn of the nose and the mouth and sooner or later I come to buttocks: “This is the bottom. You can just touch your bottom.” The children giggle because they find it embarrassing. I don’t know what it’s like in your culture, but here it is not normal to speak about private parts. “But you need your bottom,” I then say. “How are you going to sit down otherwise?”

It is really important to call things by their name, even when it comes to sexual matters. We also encourage the parents to do this because the children will only be able to ask questions and express their fears when they have words for these things.

We also tell the parents that it is important to tell the boys and girls the truth as soon as possible in case the children are also infected – like little Martha (name changed) whose parents have died and who is being brought up by her aunt. When, after an AIDS test, her aunt found out that her niece was HIV positive, she burst into tears and was really unable to come to terms with it. To this day she hasn’t managed to tell the girl – who is now nine – the truth. This confuses the children, they wonder why, for example, they have to take regular medication although they are fine, or why they have skin problems. The later it is when they find out what is wrong, the greater the shock they experience.

So we talk to the parents and go on talking, in a friendly but persistent way. And are pleased with every small success.

Photo: SOS Archives

In the book which lists the families we support through our family strengthening programmes there is a column for entering the AIDS status of the children and adults. In some cases the small comment “denied” has been added. We know that the person is HIV positive but they do not admit to it. Like Helen, for example, whose real name I don’t wish to reveal because she definitely doesn’t want anyone to find out that she has HIV.

 In Kenya there is unfortunately still a stigma attached to AIDS. People don’t dare to talk about their illness because they are afraid of discrimination. They prefer to call it malaria or something else and sometimes believe this themselves. Helen, for example, is convinced that she is bewitched. In her tribe there is even a special name for AIDS: “chira,” which means “curse”.

 In cases like this it is very difficult for me and my colleagues to take action. I cannot simply go up to Helen and say: “But we know you’ve got AIDS so let’s talk about it!” If I were to do this I would lose her trust on the spot and might as well give up there and then. So we visit, listen and, if someone is ill, suggest that they go to the doctor. We can’t do much more than that. But we have someone who can – and that’s Irene.

 Irene is her real name – I don’t have to hide her identity – because she is a strong and confident woman who is open about her illness. Irene leads the “Light support group”, a self-help group for people who are HIV positive which we founded soon after the start of our work in Mombasa. This is a place where people can exchange views and experiences, whether about medical issues or personal ones. Many people have started talking about their illness for the first time in this group.

 Then Helen got mumps which is actually a childhood illness but often occurs as a result of AIDS. Irene went to see her and talked about the fact that she herself is HIV positive which surprised Helen as Irene looks so healthy. “That’s because I take my medication regularly,” Irene explained. Medication helps to suppress the onset of the illness.

 She did in fact succeed in convincing Helen to go to the clinic and be given the drugs which are available free of charge. But shortly after this Helen arrived at her door in the middle of the night suffering from terrible nightmares.

 It is well known that bad dreams are amongst the side effects of these drugs, but Irene told Helen that these usually go away after a while. However, Helen stopped the drug therapy.

 I really hope she’ll change her mind but fear that will only happen when she’s really ill again.

Photo: SOS Archives

The phone rings. It’s a call from Nairobi!

I’m always pleased to get news from my colleagues in the capital because I lived there myself up until two years ago. I worked for SOS Children’s Villages with girls and boys suffering from AIDS, which was a very demanding time. I grew very fond of many of the children and am still in contact with some of them.
So the news my colleague has to report hits me all the harder: one of the boys from my programme has died.

I don’t know what to say. I’m so upset, so sad. I know I can’t let myself give way to these feelings too much if I want to do my work well, but of course they are there and to deny them would be a mistake.

The worst times for me are always when people I’ve been working with die. During the two years in Mombasa four people who we were looking after have died as a result of AIDS. You spend time with them, laugh with them, make plans, see progress – and their loss is very painful. It is particularly hard when a child loses the battle against AIDS.

There was a time when I actually didn’t notice how much I let these kind of experiences and my work in general affect me, without any kind of protection or boundaries. I cried a great deal during this period and couldn’t stop wondering how God could allow such things to happen.
I still remember walking through Nairobi and suddenly meeting my father on the street. I was so preoccupied that I almost knocked him down. My father was really shocked. “Priscah, what’s wrong, what is the matter with you? You’ve become so thin and look so old!”

After that I started taking better care of myself. I started eating properly and found a way of dealing better with things. It is important for me and my colleagues to be able to talk about things regularly, to have someone with whom we can discuss our worries and problems, someone to listen to us. So we have incorporated regular meetings with a psychologist into our work which is a great help. After all, how can we help others if we are doing badly ourselves?

Photo: SOS Archives

What questions does a child have for life?
In the slums of Mombassa, the following for instance: Why have other people got enough to eat, but not me of all people? This is unfair!
Why are my parents not interested in whether I go to school or not and who I meet up with?
And a child who had not been told that he/she is HIV positive asks:
Why do I have to take medication although I do not feel sick? My friends don’t take any medication.
 
To provide the children with the space for their questions and psychological issues, we have set up a children’s club as a regular part of the family support that SOS Children’s Villages gives. Every one of the three slums in which we work features such a club, which meets once a month for an entire Saturday. This is an additional day’s work for me and my colleagues, and sometimes all I want to do in the evening is put my feet up, but for nothing in the world would I miss the enthusiasm and the trust that the children now put in us.

We work a lot with play therapy, do excursions, play theatre and sing, encourage the boys and girls to pursue their talents – for instance, we have excellent footballers and dancers. And one girl from Kisumu Ndogo can paint exceptionally well. But we also discuss topics like education or sex education.

As we unfortunately had to cancel the dates in January and February, the children’s club met this Saturday for the first time this year. We looked back at last year with the children: what did they like best?
Some children spoke enthusiastically about the big end-of-the-year party, which all three clubs celebrated jointly in the SOS Children’s Village in December, other remembered topics we had discussed: hygiene, for instance, or environmental protection. For others, the highlight was the trip to the capital Nairobi: children from the slums were invited to the capital with boys and girls from the SOS Children’s Village to a conference on children’s rights. For many, this was the first time they had left Mombassa and it was quite a sensation that they were considered to be important enough to be invited to such an event.

When we started the children’s clubs, many of the boys and girls were very shy. Their self-confidence has now grown hugely. We have rehearsed plays and dances with most of them, which they have already performed at some public events, most recently during the World Aids Day in December. They are all eager to participate and we ensure that all children have a go, but tears are often shed by those who stay back home – and I am not exactly good at bearing that!

There has also been quite some change in the families: some children that had not gone to school regularly in the past, now understand how important education is for them. And we sometimes hear from the parents that the children are making demands at home: I have a right to education! If I fall ill, I have the right to be treated by a doctor. I have the right to participate in family decisions. The parents accept this remarkably well.

Photo: SOS Archives

People from the slums of Kisumu Ndogo and Shauri Yako are sitting on chairs. Speakers from Mnasi Moja, also a slum, are standing in front of them and explaining to the audience how to manage an account, run a group or set up a business. A sense of pride resonates along with joy over what has been achieved. And rightly so! It really is great what these people have already achieved.

To understand what has happened here, you have to turn back the clock about a year: back then we started to set up capacity building groups in the three slums where we work. These are self-help groups, where people support one another, where the focus is on budgeting and developing business ideas. At the time we started with a motivating opening speech, which was held for us by the “dream achievers”, a group we work with frequently. Many of the people had lived in dependency for years without much hope of change and with very low levels of self-confidence. Now the speaker stood up and tried to wake them from their sleep: “It is still your life and it is possible to regain control of it and make a change. We want to support you in doing this.”

Of course, you never manage to reach out to everyone, but there was a clear sense that it some were affected by what we said and then actually starting taking action. Since then, the groups have been meeting regularly. The Mnasi Moja Group, for instance, meets in a church and pays a small rent for this. (image) Every group member has opened an account, most of them for the first time in their lives. The group also has a joint account, which they pay into regularly and which already has 100,000 Kenyan shillings in it, nearly 900 euros, which is a lot of money here. It is to be used to develop a joint business idea, but is also available to support those who are in need. In addition, everyone saves for themselves. Some members do not yet have a fixed income and get by with doing odd jobs; others already have their own business. One of them has a motorbike, with which he offers taxi rides, another one sells drinking water, one woman works as a midwife and another one has opened a nursery.

Occasionally, trainers come round to offer advice on small loans or business management. I regularly attend the group meetings, but I mostly just sit quietly in the corner and do not get involved, because it is important that the group works independently.

And now those living in Mnasi Moja slum are now suddenly the experts themselves, what a sensation! The group works in a very structured manner and has therefore saved significantly more than the other two already. They pass on their tips in the workshop: that it is important to come regularly and in good time, that those coming late pay a small fine. They speak about leadership qualities, time management and cooperation with financial institutions. The others listen attentively and can accept advice well. An initial success is recorded in the first days already: the group meetings in Kisumu Ndogo and Shaurijako are clearly popular.