A life changing trip through Western Kenya and the Maasai Mara:
That first time we came there, we took shelter under the newly extended dining area of the orphanage as the heavy rain poured down from the deep grey clouds overhead. Immediately, I was surrounded by lots of small children with their little, delicate hands grabbing mine and several of them hanging off my arms and any limb they could find to hold on to. They were so excited to see us, they laughed and wanted to play. It was quiet there that evening and we only popped in to say hello and then the next morning we had a proper introduction. When we arrived the following day, the children and staff came out to sing a Kenyan greeting to us. It was very touching and we were treated especially well, being taken into a small room with Peter to have breakfast which everyday, usually consisted of popcorn and coffee.
There were quite a few staff members in the home.
Peter was the boss. His wife Benta worked with the other women. They had quite hard jobs bending down to do the laundry by hand because they only had one washing machine and it was broken. The women had lots of laundry to do every day.
Then there was John who was the cook. The kitchen by the dining area had a stove chimney cooker and huge stainless steel pots for cooking for the 50 and more children. There was usually a small white and ginger cat that laid sleeping by the kitchen door and lots of chickens ran around the grounds being chased by the smaller children.
There were separate dormitories for the girls and boys. The younger children from about two to six years old, slept on a small straw mat next to the baby room. The home had a lot of babies for what they could easily handle. There was Myriam who was much older than she looked. She was fragile and not growing properly. She should have been walking but was still crawling around and sleeping in the cot. There were the twins, Eugenie and Isaac, both around one year in age. Then there was Moses who was quite a big and happy baby and the smallest baby called Brian was about four months old.
A lot of the children didn’t have accurate ages because they could never find out where they had come from after being abandoned. The doctors and social workers would make an educated guess but some of the children could have been much older or younger than they looked.
I asked Peter about the health care system in Kenya and he told me simply that you have to pay, so therefore not everyone gets health care. There was a new insurance card that families could pay about $2 a month for but not all families could even afford that.
We knew that a lot of the abandoned children there had a parent or living relative somewhere but they had just been left in the home because they thought the child would get a better life in the orphanage which is not always the case. There are projects I am aware of that actually fund the extended family member to look after the child in their own family home and it is much better for the infant as they have their very own family giving them an intrinsic value as a son or daughter. This system has much greater benefits for all, but not every child has a remaining parent or extended family member readily available.
Some of the children were just lost. They were so young that they only knew their mother as ‘Mama’, and they didn’t know the name of their village, so if they wandered off and became lost they couldn’t always find the child. International adoption was banned in Kenya because their were many stories of children being trafficked into corrupt orphanages. Internationals from America and Europe would arrange an adoption of a child only to find out that when it came up to the court proceedings that the biological parent could finally find the child as he or she somehow came up in the system. It was hard that the international adoption was banned completely but the corruption in child trafficking was rife and other countries like Ethiopia and India also just stopped it completely.
Myself and Krzysztof would readily adopt a child from Migori. If we were to be able to do it now, we would have to be made residents of Kenya and adopt internally, otherwise we would have to wait for the adoption ban to be lifted and we could do a shorter process.
I felt very strongly that we would be adopting a little girl from the home but it would be in a few years time when things had changed.
The little girl who was about three years old was called Janet. She immediately clung to us from day one and seemed to just always be with us. She would stroke Krzysztof’s beard when he held her and she would show us how to clean the toilets and do the laundry. These children have been in an environment where they learn extremely quickly from all the different age groups there. They learn chores from the older children and seem to quite enjoy themselves.
It was enlightening to see Janet and a few other small girls filing through the dried washing, sorting them into piles of size and function and then carrying the load like a sack on their backs, into the baby room where it went into a big trunk for the women staff to sort out.
When we go into the town here, we are constantly shouted at, ‘Mzungu!’, which means, white person. Peter said we should be careful because strangers will walk up to us and want to take our picture and then they will use it on their social media accounts. And we did find that many people wanted a photo with us, which was funny at first but then after a while it became a little tiring.
Sunday 14th April
We listened the night before as an incredible storm passed overhead. And once more, we were awoken by singing, but this time it was singing and drumming. In my morning walks around the grounds I saw two lizards, a beautiful bird with iridescent feathers that looked like a Kiwi, and a couple of stray dogs. The fields over the border hedge grew maize and other crops. Unfortunately, you can see where some farmers were using plastic rubbish as a covering for their soil, they apparently use it as fertiliser but it doesn’t look good and is damaging to the ground. We found out about an agricultural ministry called Farming God’s Way just before the trip. They started their ministry in South Africa with the same premise as the American gardener Paul Gautschi, from the documentary, Back to Eden, who went out to look at the forest floor and found a perfectly self sufficient ecosystem and healthy black, nutrient rich soil, the concept is that God has made growing food simple when you cover the ground like in nature.
The people at Farming God’s Way teach farmers all across the world how to farm their land the way that God teaches us. The main principle is that every ground in the natural environment has a covering, whether it be the forest leaves and debris as with the American gardener, or that it would be banana leaves and maize stalks like here in Kenya. If you cover the land with a natural covering, which Farming God’s Way call, God’s blanket, then you will see an enormous increase in crop production, quality and nutrient density. One farmer in a testimonial video for the ministry went from 7 kilos of harvested crops to 77 kilos in one year. God is a God of multiplication, abundant resource, supply and goodness!
My husband and I would like to implicate the teaching of this ministry here in Kenya, so while we were at the children’s home, we made a kitchen garden to plant fruit trees and kale.
We spent days and days preparing the soil and the ground.
Everyday, we loaded our motorbike taxi called a Piki Piki, with a huge sack of grass cutting from the mission complex we were staying at.
Krzysztof and a worker called Ben made a fence around the garden and we befriended a man near the crocodile bridge who ran a charity teaching locals about growing plants and trees. He had many young tree saplings that we bought from him to plant in the garden. They mostly have kale and onions growing but we also planted mango trees, avocado, papaya, passion fruit and orange trees.
We had a lot of willing helpers when we were in the garden. The children just loved assisting with the garden rake and the planting of trees. It gave them a lot of joy to be in the garden.
Most of the clothes that the children wear are tatty and full of holes and rips. We brought with us two large suitcases full of clothes for the children that we picked up in charity shops in England; along with a few books and any toys and teddies we could find.
When we went to Peter’s church, at first, I was taken in by the exciting, exuberant worship and preaching. It seemed very loud and full of life. The first time we went, we were taken to sit at the front of the big hall in special sofas allocated for the pastors. And there seemed to be many pastors there. In fact, I think a lot of men become pastors here. There seems to come a certain respectability and prestige. They start preaching at a normal talking volume, then they pace from one side to the next, and gradually become louder and louder until they are screaming at the top of their lungs and your ears are ringing.
The funny thing was, that these pastors spoke ever so softly in conversation with you, but when they were given a mic and a church congregation they started to shout and scream to the crowd.
I didn’t take to the church services much while we were there and would rather go outside and sit looking out at the forested hills, with the enormous Marabou storks perched on the building nearby. I could see the banana trees in the next garden along and would look up at the beautiful blue sky and see eagles.
God says, ‘Be still and know that I am God’.
One night we came back to the mission complex and we had quite a scare.
Lying on the bed, I started to have vision problems almost like hallucinations on the ceiling. All of a sudden, I started to get very frightened, ran to the toilet and began vomiting and having diarrhoea. It was quite severe and Krzysztof went to find one of the guards to ring Peter. He found our neighbour Joshua along the way and he came over to check me. Joshua was our kind neighbour who would invite us over to his garden to talk about politics. He was very gentle and had a bright black and white suit which he wore regularly.
‘Yes, it looks like Malaria’, was Joshua’s very calm and certain observation.
It was then I saw in my mind a picture of a great black mosquito come to attack me. I thought it would be just rubbish to come all the way to Kenya to die of some little mosquito. I decided then that I would deal with it, if it was Malaria, I would get through it just fine.
We called Peter and he arrived quickly with a taxi to take us to the nearest hospital.
It was quite late, past 11pm, so the hospital was so quiet it looked deserted apart from a single man sat in the waiting area watching an American soap drama.
A gentle voiced man came to the reception and asked me if I was okay.
I was sat on the chair by the glass window of the front desk being sick and belching into an Ikea tote bag.
He led us to the GP’s room to talk and then I was taken to the testing room to sit in a turquoise dentist-style chair and wait for the nurse.
I looked at the empty toilet rolls on the window ledge before me and then over to the 5-in-1 window cleaner. The nurse came in and took a cotton wool piece, sprayed it with the 5-in-1 cleaner and then wiped my finger, which she then pricked with a little needle. I was then asked to take a poo sample, which became a treacherous expedition outside to the toilet block that had so much waste splattered up the walls and around the squat hole in the ground that I told my husband to stop shining the torch as I didn’t want to see it anymore; I just took my sample and ran out of there quickly.
Testing for malaria is really simple in Kenya. They are so used to it and you will get fast treatment if you do have it, which this time, I didn’t. I tested negative. And in our estimation of things, I was actually reacting to the anti malarial drugs I’d bought from the pharmacy. I have learnt my lesson that taking anti malarial drugs is a waste of money. I am not a doctor, I do not give anyone medical advice but I know that when I stopped taking them, I felt better. I was suffering from the side effects of those pills. My husband had decided not to take anything and in my experience I wouldn’t take anything next time. Prevention is the key with malaria. You can make sure that you cover up your skin in the evening and wear a strong expedition grade mosquito repellent. We always slept in a mosquito nets and we prayed a lot, so we were fine.
I unfortunately did get sick quite often on our trip though as my body adjusted to what for me was a completely new environment. I did not acclimatise to the hot weather until nearer the end of our time there. I had prayed that the rains would come as they hadn’t yet and were expected. I had great faith for the rain to come and toward the last half of the trip the clouds filled the sky and for a rare moment in my life I was so happy that it rained every day.
The cooler air and the daily torrential downpour was just a delight and music to my ears and we witnessed some epic storms for quite a few nights.
When we were back from the orphanage in the evening, we would take our torches and find our way to the communal kitchen in the mission complex, where we would light the gas cooker that had the gas canister next to the gas flame. Most nights, the electricity would turn off and on. We would cook by the light of our little torch and the blue gas flame. One night Krzysztof was in the kitchen cooking our daily lentils, tomatoes and rice when he saw a small spider on the shelf by the cooker. He tried to ‘shoo’ it away when it suddenly jumped right at his face making him thereafter jump out of his skin.
Spiders weren’t really a problem where we were. There were some dangerous species but on the whole we didn’t see many creepy creatures. There were definitely some very poisonous snakes in Kenya, like the deadly Puff Adder and the Black Mamba. We didn’t see any snakes, just lots of Marabou Storks and little jumping spiders that lived in the kitchen.
Thursday 18th April:
We were taken to a small village to see the planting of a new church.
I had visions of how this would take place, that we would go and pray for the land and the people and it would be a special experience. In reality, it was quite a hard day.
On the way to the village which was about 10 miles from Migori town, Peter who had rented a car for the day was stopped by the traffic police on the road. They wanted to see out passports which we hadn’t taken with us. The police officer said something to me which I unfortunately replied back in a sarcasm not understood as humour but as aggression and then they situation got a little out of hand.
‘Maam, how would you like to see the Kenya prisons?’.
I quite proudly exclaimed that they needed prayer too but I was just being arrogant at the confrontation.
They looked at our other identity cards that we had and then we all got out of the car to realise that the car had a flat tyre.
As we all started to change the tyre, a police woman came and joined the situation and more pleasant exchanges were had between us. They ended up letting us proceed, cards returned and smiles and hand shakes bidding a friendlier goodbye than the formidable hello.
I realised I must be more careful with my words. God teaches us to be slow to speak and quick to listen. To be a peacemaker with all.
With a new tyre and ourselves evading arrest, we drove on to the village to plant the new church.
There was a small marquee tent set up with big PA speakers and a small crowd of people.
This was out in agricultural land. There were fields of maize and sugarcane, and many avocado and mango trees. The soil was such a bright terracotta red. To use the toilet here, you had to use a outside mud hut with a small curtain door which was a new experience for me, but quite pleasant.
One day I started to get a fungal rash on my hand of many small white spots, the same white spots that a few of the children had. I had been praying for them to be healed of the fungal rash and had caught it myself. I prayed that night in such faith and not only did I get healed but so did the children. One of the children that were healed was called Andisa. She was a girl of about six years old, who would often sit alone looking incredibly sad. We would try to give her a lot of attention and love as she was definitely one of the most traumatised children there.
Andisa had one of the worst fungal infections. Hers was in her ears and on her scalp. I prayed for her a few times, God healed her and she became like a different child, full of smiles and laughter.
We played a game with the children pretending that my hand was a telephone and they would call the doctor which in Swahili they would say daktari. It would be hard for me to get away when this game started.
My husband, having a brown beard, would chase them around the house like a bear. We would get the toys out with them but chaos often broke out as they hardly ever had the toys out and the excitement would be too much to contain.
A lot of the children played with toys made from old plastic bottles, sticks and rubbish. They would all get so dusty and their clothes would get torn as they spent a lot of time outside.
I would have to push about six children all at once on the wonky swings in the garden, pushing them in a row one after the other.
When dinner was called in the late afternoon, all the children would run toward the dining area, washing their hands in plastic buckets by the kitchen. Most nights, the dinner was kale, rice and ugali which was the bread made with corn maize in a big steel cooking pot. In the mornings, the children were given the special red millet porridge called wimbi, which became a favourite of ours too. We bought four kilos with us to England so we could keep having it for breakfast when we came home.
There were also several hutches in the garden for rabbits. These rabbits were strictly for eating and the children would like to run across, undo the gate and feed them the vegetable scraps. Little Janet was very scared of the rabbits and no one knew why. The only other animals there were the chickens and a single cow that sometimes came to graze on the grass.
As I looked out one day at the children’s clothes drying on the hedges, I thought if we would be coming back here to stay for a much longer time.
Peter had shown us blueprint plans to build a guesthouse on the land.
They had drawn up professional plans and applied for planning permission. They had been building a new dormitory for the boys when we arrived even though the boys already had a dorm room. They said that the Chinese were building the road outside the orphanage and that they were worried that they would have to pull back some of the building and give the land for the new road.
We were quite ambitious at first that this could be a good idea to make a guesthouse for the orphanage but when we spoke to Anette in Sweden, she had a very different view and told us how they always wanted to build things and that they weren’t allowed to build anything new, that all fundraised money should go to fostering the children into families which we agreed with completely. It was hard to keep your wits about you when you were always told so many stories. Sometimes we didn’t believe all we were being told.
When we went through the town the next day, we had a different Piki Piki driver as Phillip was away somewhere. Our new driver was called Patrick. He drove us to town to buy food from one of the small supermarkets that seem to be run by the same Indian family. Outside we bought fruit from five ladies sitting by the road, one woman said that we looked like the paintings of Jesus that they see on the side of buses as they are typically painted with white skin and long brown hair.
One day when we came to the orphanage, the manager was not happy with us as we’d found a pile of perfectly good clothes thrown away in the compost. I spent some time sewing up little holes here and there but they were not so bad as to be thrown away.
Rubbish is a problem in Kenya.
You can often smell the burning of plastic as people try to discard the multitude of water bottles that some I have seen just throw out of car windows into the street.
When I was sorting out our rubbish bin in our little room, two cockroaches sprang out at me and I jumped around in a frenzy trying to find them. We turned the bed over and pulled off all the sheets and pillows, we only ever found one.
Our neighbour Joshua would often visit us to talk politics or to offer us some home made food.
One day, he asked Krzysztof to borrow 1000 shilling that would be about £10 to be able to put down some money in the church planting.
Joshua told us how it was that he met his wife Anna. He said that he met her one day and just couldn’t imagine being without her and that he missed her too much to be apart so her proposed to her and they have been happily married ever since. His wife, Anna, was a quiet and gentile woman, as were most of the women we met on our trip. There was one woman who we met one day at the orphanage who was the complete opposite of quiet and gentile.
The Seventh Day Adventist church came to visit the orphanage one day led by the afore mentioned lady. She was like a loud war general who paraded in with an army battalion with of children singing a song, ‘I’m happy today, so happy, I’m happy today, so happy, Jesus has taken my sin away, I’m happy today, so happy’.
The children who were well dressed sat down on the lawn as the pastors and elders gave their donations to Peter and the staff.
We were asked to sit in front with the pastors and visitors as they presented three highly rehearsed children who recited each a spoken bible story to us. It really was almost directed straight at myself and Krzysztof.
Our own children from the home sat in the veranda and not with the visiting children.
A small group of them came up to sing a song to the visitors. It was such a beautiful moment as their voices sang with such an integrity and emotion unlike the army battalion parade. The other children sang about being happy and looked rather miserable that they were there.
It was different when the children from the home sang. You could hear the deep cry of their souls and the purity that comes with not having much in the world.
The children in the home were often singing. Mercy and some of the other women would start the singing. They had their own Kenyan version of Old Macdonald, which became, ‘Mr Kamachi had a farm’; Mr Kamachi I found out was the school teacher.
The older children left for the boarding school while we were there. When the younger children left for the local school, there would only be the very young children and babies at the home, which made everything more manageable for the staff though it was always a joy when the older kids returned in their grey jumpers and purple shirts everyday.
A group from America had visited one year and decided to set up a fund to get all the children into school. This was a great gift to those children because many of them wanted to grow up to be a doctor, or a teacher and with this education they could be given a chance.
Something that really drew my attention and admiration in Kenya, was the appreciation for education. They sang songs about education in the corridors of the home. How vastly different it was in England. I myself was a rebellious child and didn’t know God at all. I felt a guilt come on me that day how I had abused my free education. Now as I look back I could be grateful for what I had been given in education and schooling.
When the staff divided up the clothes donated from the Seventh Day Adventist church, the children were given new dresses and t-shirts, along with a complimentary Seventh Day Adventist magazine.
Some of the donated clothes were tatty and ripped but the children were so happy to get something new.
Little Anette a small girl of about five, who would often be mischievous to get attention, was very sad that day as she wasn’t given a piece of clothing that she liked. After a while, she came running back to us in such joy because she was given a rather scruffy t-shirt with a small yellow flower on it. Janet also came running up to Krzysztof crying out, ‘Baba, Baba’, which means Father, to show him the little red dress she’d be given which she wore over her original dress. It made Krzysztof cry that she was so happy with her new dress which was quite worn and tatty but it made her so happy.
Tuesday 23rd April:
There was a worker outside our window cutting the grass by hand with a scythe.
Little bits of cut grass flew through the open window and hung on the metal frame.
We were waiting for Philip to arrive but he was an hour late. We spoke to the grass cutter who arranged to pile up the grass cuttings so we could take them to the garden and use them as a covering.
We ended up taking huge sacks of grass and fallen leaves to the orphanage every day. Philip would precariously balance the huge sack in between his handle bars and we’d both squeeze on the back to ride down the red dusty roads to the orphanage.
We managed to cover the whole kitchen garden with the grass cuttings from the compound, and even in a short place of time you could tell the difference with the soil that was covered as it was moist and looked healthy.
Stanley was a young boy of about seven. I found him very hard to deal with at first because though he was young, he was quite strong and he would hold onto my arm and hang from it and it would hurt me and he wouldn’t let go. His behaviour was quite erratic and he always wanted me to pick him up but he was too big. After a while, I started to get along better with Stanley and I found that he was really quite intelligent and witty, often making clever jokes.
With some of the older children, I played games of pretending to do certain emotions like crying, laughing, sleeping and then acting out as different animals. Those that didn’t speak as much English as the others would just answer, ‘Yes’, to almost everything I said.
The children would often call out in unison, ‘Hannah Banana, Hannah Banana!’. They started to call Krzysztof Baba Kidogo, which means Little Father. They called Peter, Baba Kubwa, which means Big Father.
At other times, we’d play tickling games, and sing rhymes and old nursery songs, all of which had that beautiful Kenyan harmonising of voices, in some parts sounding slightly out of tune.
When I heard them singing, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, the melody was so different and quickened that at first I didn’t realise what it was that they were singing.
When they sang, each child would naturally fall into a different harmony part and the result was so beautiful to hear. The older girls would make a type of call of response composition, all of them clapping different rhythms and the younger children would sing the main part in unison. All this singing was like a beautiful garland of blossom floating up to heaven, filling the children’s home with sacredness and purity.
When the home came together each week, the staff and children, all sang worship together in the dining hall. Peter had a very low baritone voice and made some stunning harmonies. And the younger Pamela often instigated the call and response song worship to lead the others in unison.
Generally, there is a lot of corporate singing in Kenya. You can always hear some church off in the distance singing their hearts out.
A few things really stand out to you when you observe the children here in the home. What they may lack in worldly provision they certainly make up for in character and spirit.
They are all incredibly hard working and obedient. They seem to learn much faster the practical things of life, the daily chores, ground work and social building. When you are surrounded by so many brothers and sisters at such different ages, then you learn quicker.
One little girl called Amy was possibly the silliest little girl I’ve ever met. She was about two years old and absolutely bursting with energy and life. Amy wasn’t potty-trained yet and invariably would either pee or poo herself constantly, running around laughing all the time with a wet bottom. She was always laughing and smiling, so it would be surprise to you that on the very rare occasion she could be seen crying and then you’d remember that she too was an abandoned child just like the rest.
Jane was a bit older than Amy, she was around six years old. Jane would always be seen with Anette, Andisa and Gloria. They seemed to have a little friendship group. Gloria was a very stable and graceful girl similar to Lovitt who was a little younger. She often stood a little aloof, looking very graceful and gentle until you’d give her a big smile and she would break out in her own beautiful smile and laughter.
Jane was definitely the most ticklish girl of the group. She would literally fall down on the floor in fits of giggles at the first gesture to a tickle.
Some of the children were more quiet than the others.
Ototo, was a small girl who was very gentle and quiet.
One day, I noticed that her ears were pierced and I asked Peter how it was that she came to the home. Peter told me that they had received a report that a young girl had been left in the town overnight. She was a one year old girl at the time. No one knew where she had come from and obviously she couldn’t tell the authorities where she had come from because she was too young. She had spent a few nights alone in the town centre by the market, scared and frightened. Peter took her into the home and they could never locate any relatives so she stayed there. Ototo, which in Swahili means little child, was a very quiet child but had the odd mad moment like a cat where she would run around and laugh. She was one of a few children there who displayed symptoms of disassociation in which she would go into a state of escapism, not talking or responding to people and just staring off into space with an expression of such sadness. I had spent years in this state because of my own trauma when I was a teenager and taking drugs. I would often disassociate from reality to the point where I suffered for years from sleep paralysis and I would feel like I’d woken up properly but I was paralysed in my body and no matter how hard I tried to move or speak or scream, I couldn’t, until suddenly I would jolt out of it and actually wake up fully in reality. The reasons for this are scientifically linked to disassociation where someone has gone through a lot of trauma and literally cannot handle reality so the body goes into a bizarre reaction of not just removing oneself from the present surrounding but literally from ones own body and mind.
Lovitt was another child who displayed this disassociation and you would catch her completely out of her senses just staring off into the distance.
On the whole, most of the children there are happy and get along well with each other.
The older girls and boys love to go to school and the younger ones who have been here from a baby age tend to be much better integrated and socially active than the ones who were brought at an older age because the older aged ones who were abandoned remember their parents or family who abandoned them or who died.
In the home there are three sets of twins. Eugenie and Isaak are the baby twins who don’t look so much alike, and then there are the older twins who are mixed race, though they don’t know what their ethnicity is. The rest of the children call them the Mzungu twins because of their much whiter skin. They were two very valuable members of the home. Sharon was very capable with the babies, she was always feeding them and changing their nappies and I would not be surprised if she were to grow to be a midwife. Her twin brother Felix could definitely be an actor or comedian, he had a flare for facial expressions that I’d not seen in anyone before. He could pull crazy looking expressions and make everyone laugh. Then there are two of the older boys who are twins but we didn’t see them so much because they were sent off to the boarding school.
Every day at the home, it seemed like one of the children would stay with me for the day and I would get to know them on that day. One day it was Amelio and then the next day it was Yvonne, who I found difficult at first because she was always hitting the other children but was so young, she didn’t really understand what she was doing.
Her and Amy were about the same size and were often getting into disputes.
They would squabble for lap space and then both end up on the floor crying.
Friday 26th April:
Outside our door one morning, there were hundreds of insect wings. They seemed to have flocked to our door at night to commit some kind of mass suicide. We were cooking in the grounds kitchen and one of these flying insects came in and started darting around the room until coming to an abrupt stop on the floor where it proceeded to dissemble itself, shedding its wings one by one until the last wing fell off and it hobbled off on all six legs. Another came through the window and did the same. When we woke in the morning, there were literally hundreds and hundreds of wings at our door and around the complex. Krzysztof returned to our room with some tea and informed me from a local source that the insects where actually termites that leave the mound once a year, fly around for three hours and then die. In the rainy season, some male termites grow large and develop wings, they leave the termite hill for a few hours, shed their wings and then die. This, however, does provide a seasonal treat for the locals who grill them as a snack. This was when I also learnt about the Nairobi fly. Now this insect is not one to mess around with. The Nairobi fly comes out in the rainy season too and has a toxin more venomous than a cobra bite. The advice is to blow them off and not brush them off as you could easily crush them which would then release a toxic poison causing burns, intense itching and boils.
In the compound a mass of tents were outside our window. In the kitchen, there were now lots of people using the cooker and sinks and we were often speaking to a new face everyday. They had come for a event at the bible school in the complex.
The whole kitchen wasn’t used so regularly and most of the time it was just my husband and I that cooked there. In the kitchen there were cobwebs in the oven, and little jumping spiders everywhere. At night there were many flying creatures and the lights would always turn off and on in blackouts, especially when a big storm passed over.
I had never experienced such blackness at night when all the lights went off. You couldn’t even see the stars one night when there was a storm. As the lightening flashed intermittently, it lit up all the buildings and the lawn for a brief moment and then you were immersed in the unsettling blackness again.
When the rains came, they were heavy and loud. Our Piki Piki driver Philip, like Ototo, was a bit like a cat but in a different sense that he would never drive us in the rain.
Now when we crossed over the crocodile river on the way to the orphanage, the water level was raised almost two meters higher in the space of hours.
Whenever we drove from the compound to the orphanage, we are greeted with friendly shouts of, ‘Mzungu!’, from the local children.
The clouds appeared so great and magnificent at this time. It was as though, being on the equator meant the sky was higher and the clouds extended to heaven itself. They were lilac with pink edges and fluffy white highlights with thunder resting on their bellies.
When the older children were preparing to return to the boarding school the local hairdresser came to the orphanage to shave the children’s hair. It was sad that they girls couldn’t have their hair long because it was too much work for the staff to maintain. It was cleaner and easier for them, but how much I wished at least the older girls could let their hair grow. They would come and touch my long brown hair and stroke it saying how they wished they could have long hair.
Krzysztof suffered badly from a case of tan lines. So much so that it looked like he was wearing a t-shirt still when he’d taken it off.
One day when he was working on the garden, he didn’t put on the garden wellies we’d bought from the market, but wore his Maasai leather sandals that he’d bought from a travelling Maasai in town. That day he was taking the wheel barrow across the garden and it got stuck and then landed on his toe. At first it looked like he would lose the top of his toe but we covered it in tissue and prayed hard and in faith and when we took the tissue off, the toe was just damaged on the nail and not the skin. Though there was a lot of blood, God had healed the main injury and he was okay.
I had another episode in the hospital as my nose started to run with water when I was bending over. I started to get such a bad sinus infection and couldn’t find relief so we went to get it checked out and they gave me some antibiotics.
Krzysztof got sick as well because he would sometimes buy a five-bob doughnut off a street seller even though he had been advised not to buy food from some of the street sellers as it wasn’t hygienic and the food wasn’t always fresh. But Krzysztof would go off for a walk and buy a 5 bob doughnut though one time he got very sick and had diarrhoea for days on end. At first we thought he might have malaria but he got better after a few days. When we weren’t feeling well, we would rest in the spare room in the orphanage.
It was so hard to rest there as militant looking wasps would fly in through the window and over our heads like apache fighter helicopters planning to strike at any moment. A couple of times we both ran out of the home like little children screaming at the black wasp that had three abdomens segmented with thin black lines, a small black head and big stinger on the bottom. Peter would laugh at our somewhat over the top reaction.
It was also hard to rest in the spare room because the children were always coming to the window and saying hello, or they had started singing in the next room, or mostly it was because it was so very hot under the iron sheet roof.
When the rain came in the home it became a wonderful event. The sound of the rain on the iron sheet roof made a deafening rhythm and all the children went a little crazy running around the house.
Some mornings in the compound, we were awoken by what we thought was the alarm on our phone, but when we went to it, it hadn’t gone off. We realised that we were hearing a very loud creature outside that sounded like an alarm clock.
There were always very odd sounds coming from so many different directions.
The Maasai Mara
One of the best moments of our trip to Kenya was the opportunity to spend the day in the Maasai Mara Triangle to watch some of the world’s most beautiful animals.
We had to get up early at 4:30am to be picked up by Peter in a hired car. He was on time this morning and we started a drive of about two hours to the Maasai Mara Triangle.
When you begin to enter into the Maasai lands, zebra flock around the local farms as they find protection nearer the livestock and further away from the reserve.
Maasai have to walk their children to school, sometimes with guns in case a rogue lion attacked one of the children which would occasionally happen.
It wasn’t long after leaving Migori that the landscape became a different kind of luscious green. The land seemed to stretch out for miles and after passing the Maasai town of Lolgorien we headed to the Mara triangle.
The grass here took on the appearance of perfect velvet moss. I kept looking out expecting to see my first wild animal.
The Maasai winds, as Peter called them, made it all quite surprisingly cold but it was still very early in the morning. It was the first time that I had actually felt the cold on my skin since we arrived in Kenya.
The Maasai Mara lies in the stunning Great Rift Valley. We drove quite high up until turning suddenly into a dip that presented a breath taking view of the game reserve. The horizon seemed to go on for such a long distance, it was such a vast mass of virginal land and I thought, yes, this is how it was meant to be when God created all the birds of the air, the creatures of the land, the trees, vegetation and man, and He said, ‘It is good’.
There was a great sense of freedom and wonder looking at the green hills bordering the east and the Serengeti off into the distance on the Tanzanian border. The herds of elephants and giraffes that dotted the landscape with baboons and hyenas taking shade under the umbrella acacia trees; what a wonder!
We came to the Narok gate guard point to buy three tickets and hire a personal ranger. He was a tall Kenyan man with a rifle who got into the passenger seat of an estate car which compared to the safari trucks was rather small. The ranger’s name was William and he kept adjusting his black beret in the passenger seat wing mirror.
Everyone else on the game reserve had the traditional high safari truck so we were not much of a match for any of the many angry elephants who could within minutes crumble our car like it were a cardboard box.
Immediately as we entered the park, a pride of lions walked across the dust road in front of our car, stopped for a moment to check us out and then carried off into the grassland yonder. The ranger said that we were very lucky to see lions so early on as most of the animals hadn’t migrated from Tanzania so it was much harder to see all the animals.
As we headed to the hippo pool by the river, we drove past many herds of elephants which we had to treat with precaution. The ranger would watch the elephants to determine their mood and quite a few times we had to reverse very quickly to avoid a confrontation. The elephants seemed quite aggressive animals compared to the elegant giraffes that danced along the plains.
As we neared the hippo pool, I saw a white crowned eagle perched in an acacia tree. There was also a hyena hidden among the grass which became a favourite for Krzysztof. And everywhere there were zebras, gazelles and baboons dotted about.
One of the only places you can get out and leave the car is at the hippo pool, where you can walk down a path to a viewing area and watch the great water pigs in the dirty brown river chortling to one another. Their communication sounds like old Russian men laughing at each other. They literally grunt and chuckle and it is very amusing to observe. The hippos were surprisingly big, almost the size of the elephants.
There were a few times that I thought our little estate car would get stuck in the thick mud tracks.
Peter drove very skilfully so we managed to not get stranded. I had visions of angry elephants coming to trample our car as it became stuck in the uneven dirt tracks, but I knew that as long as we had Ranger William with his rifle, then we’d be fine.
We also had three bags of corn puffs, a bag of bananas that seemed to be fermenting in the heat, and four bottles of water in the car so we had some supplies at least for a while.
Peter told us a discomforting story of when a bull elephant came up to a parked car by the Narok gate and stood on it, crushing it completely. We avoided any such event taking place so I thank God for that.
When we left the hippo pool, we visited the Mara Serena Safari Lodge which was set up high on a bush covered hill overlooking a 360 degree panorama view of the game reserve. The domed beige architectural design was inspired by the traditional Maasai huts and inside the décor was brightly coloured in terracotta’s, yellows and reds. Up on the main balcony was the epic view of the game reserve where you could see herds of animals far down below. Up here, there were little creatures climbing the trees and colourful lizards on the rocks by the clear blue pool where hotel guests sat sipping cocktails looking out at the breathtaking views.
The hotel employed local Maasai to give the guests an authentic experience of the area. They were dressed in the colourful tartan-like Maasai Shuka and held sticks with rattles on.
Though you can see how the Maasai have integrated into modern life, they stay very close to their traditions and some are still semi nomadic. The Maasai populate Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania. I remembered the scene in film adaptation of Karen Blixen’s, ‘Out of Africa’, when the Baroness says that, there was just something different about the Kenyan assistant to her friend Dennis Finch Hatton who calmly replies, ‘He was Maasai’. He went on to say that if you put a Maasai in prison they’ll die, because they live for now and they cannot see that they will ever get out.
After visiting the safari lodge, we drove to the Tanzanian border and were blessed to see a leopard sitting in a tree. You couldn’t see him entirely, but you could just catch the spotted skin and his head as he was quite camouflaged.
The Tanzanian guards at the border were very friendly. Around the guard house there were many small monkeys sitting under a tree grooming one another.
Before we left the park we also went to the river to watch the crocodiles who lay almost completely hidden in the water.
They were very large and some of them would end up growing from two to five meters long. Peter explained to us that when the Great Migration would happen, they would just lie hidden in the river water and wait for the migrating animals to cross over and then catch them in their extremely strong jaws lined with sixty or more razor sharp teeth. It would be almost impossible to get out of the death grip of a Kenyan Nile crocodile fatal bite.
As we neared the end of our safari day, we were upset that we didn’t’ see any cheetahs or rhinos, but were very grateful to have seen everything else. I especially liked witnessing the lions as soon as we arrived and would look forward to the next time we could come back to this extraordinary place of adventure and wonder.
Peter told us that one time a volunteer sponsored the home so that they could hire a bus and take all the children on safari. Peter himself, had been but three times so it was a blessing for him to come back again.
After this trip to the Maasai Mara triangle, our time in Kenya was almost over. Thoughts about travelling back to England were somewhat sad but also happy, the happy thought of being in the comfort of one’s own bed was something to look forward to. Our bed in the mission compound had broken and we were sleeping on a wonky mattress the whole time but when you were there in Kenya, amidst all the wonderful sounds of nature and sentimental thoughts of the dear children, such things didn’t matter.
The day before we left, we visited the church one last time. They presented us with Maasai Shukas and back in the home, Benta presented me a blue African dress that fitted me perfectly.
The staff also presented us with more Maasai Shukas, so in the end we ended up with a suitcase full as we’d bought many from the shop in town.
On the last day, the staff gathered all the children on the veranda and we sang songs and clapped hands.
Some of the children were crying and so was I.
We all prayed and said words of thanks and well wishes that we would come back and build a small home on the grounds for us to stay in and we would help them create a farm in the land next door.
I held Janet for one last night, as though she were my own daughter, praying that one day I could come back and adopt her into our family.
The night became dark and I knew that it would be emotional to say goodbye.
As we squeezed on the back of Philip’s Piki Piki for one last time, we waved farewell to our dear children, new friends and family and went back for one last sleep in the wonky bed, with the night chorus of cicadas and other creatures.
When I got back, I cried for a long time. I would miss the children so much.
I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing them again. I vowed that we would come back one day as they had made a little place in my heart and I didn’t think that I would forget them any time soon.
We left Migori early the next morning on a big coach. It was much more comfortable than the tiny sacco bus we’d taken from Nairobi to get here.
We said an emotional but happy goodbye to Peter who sent us off alone back to Nairobi where we would meet again with our taxi man Ronald.
The journey was much more pleasant than the first long drive from Nairobi.
On the way back, we were surprised to see that the Chinese had finished building the road so it was a much quicker journey.
As we left to travel through Kisii, the Narok road and further through the Great Rift Valley to Nairobi, we drove the whole way to the sound of American country music. The Narok road that had seemed so deep in poverty and drought on our first journey looked like a different place altogether as the rains had come. There were no longer people lining the road begging for sales, rather, people were in the green fields tending to the crops. Everything has gone from dusty brown to succulent green. The place looked so tremendously different. It had been my prayer to God that when we came back along this road, He would have brought the rains and that is exactly what He did.
Dolly Parton blared out on the radio as we came into the busy city of Nairobi, where we were stuck in a traffic jam for two hours or more. The chaotic sound of the Matatu buses and people shouting and banging the metal sides filled the streets. I looked up and saw the buzzards and eagles, and the marabou storks sitting like undertakers on the building tops.
When we eventually got out of the traffic, we came back to the mission hostel we had first stayed at when we arrived and I thought about how different we we were now, after only a month and a half in this exciting and mysterious country of Kenya. I know I had been so naïve about a lot of things. I had also been very proud. When I came face to face with the reality of poverty I was humbled and provoked to change the way I would lead my life when I got back home.
Our plans to return to Kenya we have left in God’s hands. We know that when the time is right, we would come back and see the dear children again.
I’d laugh at silly Amy running around with Yvonne, and smile when Stanley makes a joke. We would sit with Joshua in the mission compound talking politics and we would enjoy the delicious home reared chicken and lentils with fresh parsley.
When I returned to England, I would go to sleep with the sound of cicadas, expecting the wild African storm to pass over at night and shut down the electricity, only to find out that it was not Kenya that had taken me in dreams. I was far away now, back in another reality, ever thankful for being given such a beautiful memory book of Africa, that I would treasure until the next time we could be so fortunate to gaze across sugarcane fields to the scents of mango and banana and listen to the sweet and sacred song of the children of Good Samaritan Children’s Home.
If you want more information about the charity and the home, please follow the link and if you are able, be sure to donate: https://barmhartigesamariten.wordpress.com/english/
You can donate directly to the Swedish Charity for the Orphanage here:
IBAN number is SE7180000826440437879927 together with address is SWEDSESS
You have to use the full name: Anette Hellekant-Långs (Director and Charity Founder)
All photographs and audio clips are copyrighted to Hannah Eve Szczepek 2019.
All photographs taken on an old, well travelled, Canon EOS Rebel T2i.
