A Bright Spot in Taraka

The Materi School for Girls

It’s Sunday, and the students of the Materi School for Girls are still in uniform, singing songs in the shade or studying in the grass. Everyone seems to be resting, even the cows and pigs that the school raises for milk and meat, and even the large soccer field nearby. When Brother John Konzka founded the Materi School in a village called Taraka, he envisioned a place where young Kenyan girls could access the world […]

No One Here Wants to Go Home

Children at the Dandora Community Center in Kenya after linger long after school is out

School lets out every day at 4 o’clock at Dandora Community Center, but the kids tend to hang around until long after 6. Luis pointed it out to me when we returned to the school after visiting the Dandora slum — children milled about on the property, still playing games with one another, even though school had been over for quite some time. Sheltering the most vulnerable Dandora provides meals, healthcare, […]

Escape Route

Looking for a way out of the Pumwani slum

Luis and I landed in Nairobi around 6 p.m. As we drove through the city from the airport to get to our hotel, I was surprised to see how developed Nairobi was, especially compared to Addis Ababa. Huge billboards selling bottled water towered over newly built roads, and the sidewalks were lined with green landscaping. We passed tall, gleaming buildings in the city’s business district which reminded me of an American city. MILES AND MILES  […]

Country Roads and City Slums

Leaving Ethiopia and reflecting on time spent in Africa

We’ve been in Ethiopia for just a few days and we’re already packing up for our next stop in Nairobi, Kenya. As we prepare to hit the road, I am struck by the contrasts between urban and rural poverty. In a way, it’s not unlike America — the rural poor living in run-down trailers off dirt roads in Eastern Kentucky bear little resemblance to the urban poor in housing projects of Detroit. When businesses move […]

Holding up a Mirror to the Hopeful Children of Rural Ethiopia

Visiting our affiliated project Kids Hope Ethiopia in Shashamane

Mirror images Most of us don’t remember the first time we ever saw ourselves. In the West, babies encounter mirrors, camera lenses and video cameras from birth. And the self-imagery just becomes part of our life, for the rest of our lives. But in rural Ethiopia, seeing yourself is a rare experience. We discovered just how magical it is to see your own face when we entered the Kids Hope compound outside Shashamane, Ethiopia. We had […]

A Rainbow in Addis Ababa

Helping Ethiopian children through hunger, disease and housing shortages

Many of us don’t know much about Ethiopia beyond their 1985 famine, highly publicized by Michael Jackson and his “We Are the World” campaign. But things have changed significantly here over the last 31 years. In response to that devastating famine, which killed an estimated one million people, the Ethiopian government developed a program to relocate its citizens from the drought-ravaged north to the southern part of the country, where there were fewer people and […]