As the name implies, the children that my HOPE (Helping Orphans Pursue Education) ministry project serves are orphans. Many are pure” orphans, meaning having lost both parents, and some live with a single surviving parent – typically a single mother, but sometimes a single father. Others live with family members and, in some cases, community members who took them in. These families typically have families of their own and are supporting HOPE children in addition to their own children.
Pretty much all of our HOPE families live in single room dwellings, some of which are simply made of mud, and share bathrooms with other families within their densely populated settlements. They cook using propane, or sometimes wood charcoal, in this single room. In some places garbage and sewage can be seen along the roads and alleys are is there is no means for trash removal. Residents are forced to burn trash and many times the noxious smell of burning plastics fills the air. Many places have no running water. Water, both for drinking, as well as bathing and cleaning, needs to bought and carried in.
Often there is only one wage earner in the family – typically the single mother (or in a few cases, a father). The unemployment rate in Kenya is very high and stable, decent paying jobs are scarce. Women will typically sell items like fruits and vegetables or porridge from roadside markets. Other will earn money by cleaning houses. Most men are simple laborers who are forced to look for some kind of work every day. These families rely on the money they earn in one day to feed their entire family for that day. They have no savings to tap into and no one to help them buy food and pay expenses if they can’t earn money.
The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have presented significant challenges and additional hardships to our HOPE families, who already struggle to live, eat and provide for their children in the best of circumstances. With the current lockdown in Kenya, their livelihoods are severely impacted. Travel and movement restrictions have made it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for families to earn money to eat and survive. Even as the government encourages frequent hand washing to slow the spread of the virus, soap remains a luxury item. Buying food to feed their families takes precedence over buying soap.
I’d like to tell you the story of one of our HOPE students. Maxmilla joined the HOPE project as a class eight student in 2011. HOPE funded the remainder of her primary school and secondary school education. Maxmilla is the oldest of three children. Maxmilla’s father died in 2009 of AIDS. After the death of her father, her mother became the breadwinner of the family by selling fried fish. But her mother also tragically succumbed to AIDS in 2013. After the death of the of their mother, Maxmilla, along with her brother and sister, were taken in by her uncle and his wife, who have four children of their own.
The family lives in Bangla, which is an informal settlement (slum) of about 50,000 residents. The people of Bangla live in corrugated iron huts, built one on top of each other, with waste-filled ditches snaked between them. The residents share a limited number of pit latrines and there is no running water.
Maxmilla is studying to be a teacher and is in her final year at a teachers training college. Her brother finished secondary school last year and is hoping to go to school to learn how to do electrical installation. Her sister is in primary school.
The education of Maxmilla and her siblings has been disrupted by the current COVD-19 pandemic as all schools in Kenya are closed during the lockdown. The three of them, along with the rest of the family, currently stay at home all day. This puts additional stress on the family as like many families in Kenya, they rely on schools to provide some of the children’s meals. With all the children at home, all meals are now dependent on what the breadwinner in the family can earn – in this case the uncle.
Maxmilla’s uncle is an electrician. He has no shop, but goes to where work is needed when called. Since the lockdown has been put in place, he has had no jobs since traveling to and entering into other people’s homes is very restricted. The family is really struggling to survive during the pandemic. There is little to eat.
Through the generosity of several donors, we were able to provide food packages to Maxmilla’s family as well as 43 other HOPE families. The food items included green grams, rice, milk, wheat and corn flour, sugar and soap. Like Maxmilla’s family, these families are all struggling to survive and eat during the current pandemic.
The food that we gave Maxmilla’s family and other families will help them eat for about the next five days, but these families need more help as the pandemic stretches on. Their livelihoods have been completely disrupted by the pandemic and they have no means to earn money to eat and pay expenses.
I am asking for your help in supporting the vulnerable families and children that I serve in Mombasa. These families need ongoing assistance to meet basic needs so they can survive the current pandemic. Any amount of financial assistance helps. I can’t emphasize enough what a difference a little financial assistance can make in the lives of people who have next to nothing on which to live.
Please consider helping. You can donate online at http://www.mklm.org/RTarro.
Mungu ni mwema. God is good.