Just when everything feels hopeless, one person can change your entire perspective. For me, it was Sister Martha in Kenya. Luis with Sister Jane Sister Martha and Sister Jane are Children Incorporated volunteer coordinators who run Maria Immaculata School in Nairobi, Kenya. The school hosts almost 400 students from toddlers to teenagers and more than 300 of them board there because they are orphans. Children Incorporated sponsors about 100 of these […]
Audacity and Hope in Kenya
Maria Immaculata in Kenya offers hope to children in need
Msamaria
A Lesson in Self-Sustainability
The average American doesn’t have to think much about how he will provide an education to his children. Our public school system provides many of our children with an education courtesy of tax dollars, and we’ve grown to take it for granted. In Kenya, however, school is a privilege, not a right. If you can pay to send your children to school, they go. If not, then they’re almost certainly looking at a bleak future […]
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 […]