December 29, 2005

Dear Friends,

I haven’t written about Mathare since April, but since then I’ve been back to Kenya three times, in June, October, and November. I’m only now getting around to writing an update, and I apologize for the delay.

When I last wrote in April, 17-year-old Njambi, Boss’s younger sister, had just given birth to Melissa Wambui. Melissa’s father was absent, and Njambi had to drop out of school when she gave birth, meaning that she had only finished one year of high school.

Previously, Njambi had moved out of Good Samaritan and into Boss’s little house a few hundred yards away from the orphanage. Good Samaritan, though, was still supporting her schooling. (Boss and Njambi’s older brother Malonza had also moved out of Good Samaritan and into Boss’s house.) When Njambi had the baby, Auntie (who runs Good Samaritan) was furious and refused to help: “My child disobeyed me and I will not raise my children’s children.” Though Boss was making enough money at his job at the printing press to support Njambi and Melissa, without anyone to help take care of the child, it would be impossible for Njambi to go back to school.

In June, Melissa and Njambi were doing very well. But Boss had recently moved into a new house, leaving Njambi, Malonza and Melissa in a pinch. Malonza only had a part-time job, and since Boss was now paying for his own house, he stopped paying rent for Njambi and Malonza’s house. Boss did, though, continue to help pay for some expenses for Njambi and Melissa, and it seems that between Malonza’s job and Boss’s reduced assistance, Njambi and Melissa are able to get by, but they are clearly in a much more precarious position than before Boss moved. In November, Njambi told me that she worries that Melissa doesn’t eat enough.

In June, Auntie first began to show signs of softening her anger and frustration towards Njambi as she became more concerned with both Njambi and Melissa’s well being. She suggested to Njambi that perhaps there was a way for her to go back to school if she could find someone to look after Melissa during the day. Perhaps, Auntie said, they could send Melissa to another orphanage during Njambi’s three remaining years of high school. Njambi refused this offer, not wanting to be away from her child for so long.

Njambi then went to visit her grandmother to see if she could take care of the child, but she also refused to take care of Melissa because she has to mind her cattle and fields all day. The grandmother suggested Njambi could wait a few years until Melissa is old to be with a group of children during the day, then Njambi could go back to school.

The most obvious solution -- that Good Samaritan watch over Melissa during the day while Njambi goes to school -- was refused by both Auntie and Njambi. Auntie wants to help Njambi, but continues to say that she “won’t take care of her children’s children” and Njambi resents Auntie because of her strict rules and so she doesn’t want to seem dependent on the orphanage.

When I left Kenya at the end of November, the two were still at an impasse and it didn’t seem likely that Njambi would go back to school when the new school year begins in January.

Boss’s decision to move into his own house is understandable – when he was kicked out of Good Samaritan in March 2004 (for starting a fight) he used the money he was earning at his new job at a printing press to move into his own one-room house in the slum. The independence this granted him tremendously helped him grow up, and soon he re-established a relationship with Good Samaritan and became more helpful than he ever was while living there.

But Malonza and Njambi took this as an opportunity for their own independence and quickly moved out of Good Samaritan and into Boss’s house. Soon, Boss was sharing his bed with Malonza while Njambi was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, all in a 10’ X 10’, if not smaller, room. (There was one tap of running water in this group of 40 connected one-room houses, and three pit toilets.) Boss was now supporting his sister and, until Malonza got a part-time job a year later, his brother.

When Melissa was born in March, the situation for Boss got even more complicated. There was less room in the house, one more mouth to feed, and he couldn’t listen to the radio because Melissa needed to sleep. It was too much for a 20-year-old kid who was really just interested in having fun.

So Boss moved out and got his own place around the corner. The room is the same size and its conditions are similar to his previous house, but he made it clear to Njambi and Malonza that they couldn’t move in with him. Boss told me that he just wanted to live alone, but Auntie tells me that Boss was angry at his freeloading siblings and was sick of supporting them. It’s both understandable and very sad.

Boss has had some difficulty of his own; at work he has been accused of bringing in stolen mobile phones and trying to sell them to other workers. And he’s been accused of stealing calendars from the printing press and selling them on the street. In both instances there was not enough evidence, but he was warned by his employer and hasn’t had problems since. It makes me wonder whether the pressures of a 17-year-old sister with a new baby, and his own desire to move up in the world are causing Boss to do things he otherwise would not do.

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In June I visited Lucy’s HIV-infected mother, who I’ve been filming for about a year and a half. Every time I saw her she looked weaker, and when I last wrote in April I wondered how much longer she would live. In June, she didn’t have any money for food because she hadn’t been working. But she still was able to walk a mile with Auntie and me, and was more concerned with her daughter Lucy’s grades at her new boarding school then with her own hunger.

But a few weeks later, after I was back in the United States, she died. She was buried on her family’s sustenance farm near Mt. Kenya.

I saw both Lucy and her younger sister, Mary, in October. Lucy was still at her boarding school, but her grades had fallen dramatically since her mother’s death. (While she was living at Good Samaritan and going to day school, Lucy was at the top of her class. The switch to boarding school in January was tough for her because she missed seeing her mother, and that was the beginning of the drop in her grades.)

When I spoke with Lucy in November, she told me her mother’s death had been particularly traumatic for her because she had taken care of her mother for so many years, but couldn’t do anything to save her.

Lucy suspects her mother was HIV-positive, but her mother could never bring herself to tell her daughter about her disease. (She did tell Auntie that she had the disease.) Even though HIV/AIDS education is working in Kenya – Kenya is one of the few sub-Saharan African countries to have reduced its infection rate in the past two years (down to 6.1% from 10% in 2003) -- stigma still exists and more work needs to be done.

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2005 was Chalo and Ochieng’s fourth and final year of secondary school, and much of their time was spent preparing for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education Exam. A B+ on this exam guarantees a position at university with all fees paid by the state. A grade of C+ or higher still allows one to go to university, or a 2-year college, but tuition is not covered.

Chalo and Ochieng had both originally set their sites on getting a high mark on the exam and going on to study law or medicine at university. It has been sad to see their ambitions become more realistic over the course of the time I’ve been filming. By the time the exams started at the end of October, both simply were hoping to get a C+ and qualify for a two-year college, though neither had any sense how they would pay for the additional education.

In January 2004, Chalo transferred from a day school near Good Samaritan to a boarding school near his uncle and grandmother. His first year at the school went very well, and at the end of the year he was chosen to be a prefect for 2005. But, when Auntie and I visited him in June, Chalo was having trouble: he had been suspended for having stolen a cell phone from a teacher, and he wasn’t allowed back to school until the phone was returned or money was given to cover its cost.

The phone was stolen from the teacher’s lounge. Chalo was the only student trusted enough to be allowed in the lounge, and he had been in there during the time period in which the phone was stolen. The vice principal of the school told me he actually doubts that Chalo stole the phone, but he was under pressure from the principal to punish someone, and since Chalo was the only suspect, he was suspended.

Chalo still denies that he stole the phone, and Auntie believes him, thinking that perhaps one of the other teachers stole it. So we paid for the cost of the phone and got Chalo back into school – he had missed two weeks.

Several years ago Ochieng moved out of Good Samaritan and into a slum house that a friend of his was renting. He said he could study better there than at Good Samaritan, but because he had no money and didn’t regularly go to Good Samaritan, he often went hungry and he often got sick.

When I saw Ochieng in June he was sick with typhoid and taking a medicine that caused him to itch and caused painful urination, so he wasn’t going to school. In October, I learned from his school principal that he had missed half of the 70 school days in the second term, from May through early August.

At the beginning of the third term, he was told he would need to bring his guardian to school to discuss his absences from the second term. Instead of bringing Auntie to the school, he just stayed at home, so he missed all of the third term as well. He was lucky that the school even allowed him to take his exams in October and November.

Ochieng says that he was studying the entire time he was away from school and that in February, when the results of the exams are released, he will prove wrong his teachers and Auntie, who was furious when she found out he wasn’t going to school.

These results will be critical for the futures of both Chalo and Ochieng, but until February, neither have anything to do with their time. Many of their schoolmates use the time between the end of the exams in November and the release of the results in late February to take driving or computer courses, but Auntie cannot afford to pay for these courses. Nor can she pay if Chalo or Ochieng qualify for additional education by getting a C+ on the exam but do not score high enough for governmental assistance.

When they finished their exams, both Chalo and Ochieng were far more anxious and much less jubilant than their friends. All of a sudden, their days were no longer structured by school, their futures looked difficult, and their dreams had become more about survival than success or achievement.

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Chalo and Ochieng still can be considered lucky compared to a number of the other children at Good Samaritan. Good Samaritan currently has over 40 children in high school and Auntie pays the fees by selling her pigs and receiving donations. In October, over 20 of the children were sent home from school due to lack of fees. An emergency donation brought the children back to school after three weeks away, but in January, Auntie will need to tell between 10 and 15 of these children that they will not be able to go to school this year. You can help reduce this number by making a tax-deductible contribution to the Good Samaritan Education Fund. For information please visit www.orphansofmathare.com/howtohelp.html

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Finally, new children continue to come to Good Samaritan, whether from the loss of a parent to HIV/AIDS or abandonment due to poverty. In October, a street boy rummaging through a large heap of garbage found a day-old baby girl stuffed into a plastic bag, with the umbilical cord and placenta still attached. The street boy brought the child to Auntie, who took her in and cared for. Almost immediately the girl developed pneumonia, and at the same time as Auntie was dealing with the older children being sent home from school, she was caring for a new, sick baby. After a week in the hospital, she recovered. In November, when I left Kenya, she seemed healthy and was growing.

When I’m back in Kenya in February I’ll check in on this new girl, see the results of Chalo and Ochieng’s exam and see how the two begin to live the rest of their lives, and continue to follow the stories of many of the other children growing up in Mathare at the Good Samaritan Children’s Home.

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I’ve now been working on this project for two and a half years, and I plan to continue to film the lives of these children – many now young adults – in Mathare for up to two and a half more years. If you enjoy reading these emails and learning about life in the Mathare slum, please help support the Mathare Project by making a tax-deductible contribution. Documentary Educational Resources is the tax-exempt fiscal sponsor of the Mathare Project. Grants and tax-deductible donations can be made by writing a check to “Documentary Educational Resources” and putting “The Mathare Project” in the memo. Please mail checks to:

Cynthia Close
Documentary Educational Resources
101 Morse Street
Watertown, MA 02472-2554

Again, thank you so much for your continued interest and support.

All the best in the New Year,
Randy

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