Personal

It’s Personal Y’all.
You know those ads you see on T.V of little Jose or Maria looking pathetic, and then this sweet Santa Claus like guy says you can “buy” this kid for only a few dollars a day? And they will be happy to send you his/her tragic story. I’m always offended by those things, cuz I think if you were doing your job you wouldn’t be spending boatloads of money on advertising on T.V. and paying this guy who you notice never identifies himself. We don’t sell children or their tragic photos. Sometimes I mention names, but it’s because it’s personal. I know them, I watch them dance or curtsey to me. I see them run up to my van when I come. I watch their eyes sparkle when I give them a sweet. And I knew where they lived.

See that’s the deal right now. So many children have been displaced. So many children are dying. They don’t make the news, because they are dying the old fashioned way, they are starving to death or dying from diarrhea and malaria. It’s worse now because they are in refugee camps. There are thousands camped in my beloved Busia. They’ve lost over 100 kids this week in the camp. How many went to Manyole School or Mabunge or Malanga I don’t know. You see, to me they are all my children, and I feel so responsible and helpless. I cannot even get money to them right now because I can’t wire it what with the lack of electricity, I can’t send it via mail since you can’t trust the mail, so I must wait to carry it with me in March.
What totally astounds me is my friends over there and their simple gratitude for our prayers. When they can get one sentence to me via email it is always polite, always asks how I am, and then says something that will break my heart. It could be, “keep praying for us we are all so frightened”, it might be from Daniel, “sorry I couldn’t get back to you we have been having connectivity problems” (read that they have been burned out of the office and there’s no electricity where he is) or it might be “pray for our leaders that they may bring us to peace”. That’s all they want from me right now.
The situation is really quite dire. Mama Florence runs an orphanage for Women and Children with HIV in Orongo. I have visited her before and I am amazed at what one woman can do. This week when I got the UN Newspaper on line called IRIN she was featured. She’s not far from Kisumu, but very far. You see the orphanage is down a dirt road at least 5 miles from the nearest possible transportation. So when the weather is bad, as it usually is, it’s just a mud forest. And when the children are so ill they need hospital one of the widows must carry the child on her back for 5 miles to get to the road. However, the place is far from dreary. There are songs being sung throughout the compound as the women work the fields and the children go to school. There is the luscious sound of women’s laughter as they share a joke or watch a little one toddle after a chicken and teeter around giggling.
I leave you with her poignant story, not because we’re selling children here, but because these are the things that don’t make T.V. We’re too busy watching Hillary and Barack say nasty things about each other and spend millions doing it. But that’s tomorrow’s blog.
Be Good to each other y’all. MM
NAIROBI, 18 January 2008 (PlusNews) - Florence Gundo is the coordinator and founder of the Orongo Widows and Orphans Group, which cares for 288 orphans in western Kenya's Nyanza Province. Gundo told IRIN/PlusNews how the political unrest had affected the group.

"Our group consists of several women, many of whom lost their husbands to HIV and are HIV-positive themselves. We run a nursery where orphaned children come and spend the day and get a meal; some of the women also live with and care for the orphans as guardians. Most of these orphans lost their parents to HIV.
"When the violence broke out immediately after the election, at least two of the people we support were killed by rowdy youths in their homes. One of our widows was attacked and her home was torn down to the ground; she was very lucky to escape alive. One child-headed household had their home invaded - they were chased away and when they came back everything had been stolen.
"We had been supported by AMREF [the African Medical and Research Foundation] and MildMay [a UK-based HIV/AIDS charity] but this funding came to an end and we now buy food for the children with the proceeds from our income-generating activities - we grow and sell maize, sell baskets we make from reeds from Lake Victoria and also sell herbal medicines.
"During the fighting, our maize plantation was burnt so we have nothing left to sell or eat. Even if we did, Kibuye market, where we sell our things and buy food, was also burnt down.

"We have nowhere to get food now ... the nearest market is quite far and we are really struggling to feed the children. Some people brought us a truck full of grain the other day from Eldoret [a town in the Rift Valley], but we don't know how we will feed the children when this runs out.

"Fifteen of the orphans we care for are HIV-positive, and they require a more nutritious diet - for them the need is even greater than the rest.
"For those who are HIV-positive, getting drugs is also a major problem. They have to travel to the hospital and transport has become so expensive; before the election it was just 30 shillings [US 45 cents] to get to the nearest centre, but now it costs 100 shillings [$1.50], which, of course, we cannot afford to pay.
"We have been begging but how long can we do that? We need to get back on our feet to keep the children fed."
You can subscribe to IRIN News, which is a global humanitarian, online Newspaper: www.IRINnews.org.