Robin Pilcher

Last year, Kirsty and I were invited to go to Lamu in Kenya for a week. We thought, well, that’s a long way to go – just for a week, so we thought we’d go for two and find something else to do meantime. We ended up ‘being useful’ in a small orphanage about a 4-hour drive north of Nairobi in the lee of Mount Kenya – 26 kids aged between 10 and 17, all there because of HIV and home and sectarian violence. In the short time that we were there, we came to realize that, besides the obvious material requirements, the children were wanting consistency – not just some people breezing into their lives and out again – and, at the end of our stay, when Kirsty said that we’d be back, it was pretty obvious from the expression on their faces that they didn’t believe her. So we proved them wrong and returned to the orphanage two weeks ago. And Alice, my eldest daughter, went out there last September and spent a month with them. There’s no doubt that she was the one that made the BIG difference.

So, in a nutshell, this is what I learned from the experience this time;

a) White people do not walk along the side of the road like Kirsty and me – they all have Land Cruisers and appear unsettled by us doing this.
b) Kenyan kids don’t like to say thank you. They find it difficult, maybe even demeaning, so you just don’t push it with them.
c) You have to be so careful with what you buy for these kids. They cannot be made to stand out from the crowd or appear privileged, otherwise parents who are struggling to keep their family unit together might feel that their kids would be better off in the home.
d) Questions were asked like “Are you doing this to make yourself feel better? Are you a do-gooder?” We didn’t take that one any further. I just said that I was a writer – I think that says enough, doesn’t it?
e) Their church services are a complete riot. When the lesson is read, it is accompanied by a series of disjointed notes and drum and cymbal beats from young Dennis’s keyboard. These are relayed to the whole township by way of one of the largest speakers I have ever seen that sits outside the door of the church. After the service, the amplifier is plugged into a CD player, Dennis’s stuttering tune is replaced by Kenyan reggae, and all the kids traipse out in their Sunday finery and they dance for hours right there in front of the church – and boy, can they dance!
f) Visiting the local Sunday market to buy them all designer trainers (at £3 a pair), Kirsty and I stood outside (our pallid complexions would have pushed up the prices by at least 200%) and the kids went in to ‘bar-gain’. They would then come rushing out, tell us the deal they’d got and I would have a clandestine rootle in my wallet for some money and hand it to them with a solid shake of the hand, rather like tipping a hotel bell hop. It was pretty important that the transfer of money was not seen, otherwise vast crowds would have gathered. I came to be known as the Bank of Kenya.
g) My farewell remark to Ma Esther Mwiti, whose vision it was in founding the children’s home, was that the kids had left Kirsty and I both emotionally and financially drained.

Alice is going back in September and we no doubt will return next year. I suppose they’re really all family now.