December 9, 2003

Dear Friends,

Hello again from Nairobi. I've been in Kenya for about a week now, on my second trip as part of Pacho Velez's and my ongoing project to document the lives of children growing up at the Good Samaritan Children's Home in Nairobi's Mathare slum.

[For those of you new to this list, in the summer of 2001 Pacho Velez and I travelled to Nairobi and shot the film 'Orphans of Mathare.' This past summer, I returned to Kenya to begin work on this project. More information can be found at www.orphansofmathare.com.]

Much is changing in Kenya, as well as at the Good Samaritan Children's Home. President Kibaki, the first new president in Kenya in over twenty years, was elected nearly one year ago. In trying to undo many of the failures of the previous, Moi administration, Kibaki has made primary education free, and commited large resources to bringing children off the street and into the National Youth Service. When I visited in July, there were significantly fewer children on the street than there had been two years ago. Now, though, there seem to be more children on the street than in July. This is a testement, I think, to the continuing problems of AIDS and poverty, and the difficulties in changing a country from the ground up.

Terror warnings are again high in Nairobi, and we are warned to stay away from "American interests." The cost the terror warnings bring to the tourism industry and Kenya's economy is large, and many Kenyans continue to be perplexed by US foreign policy. This terror threat is of course very real, though I suppose (or perhaps hope) I am generally out of harms way as I spend much of my time in Mathare, which is hardly an "American interest."

In Mathare, the November rains have brought out the rats, and each night from about 2 to 5 am hundreds of them run through the slum from house to house looking for food. They pour through the rooms at Good Samaritan where the children sleep, and Auntie and at least one child have been bitten, though no one appears to have gotten sick yet. The recently purchased cat cannot keep up with the number of rodents, but he is growing fat trying.

The recent political changes are bringing about a number of changes at Good Samaritan. Since primary education is now free, the financial burden of raising orphans has shifted. In the past, empoverished aunts, uncles, and grandparents, already caring for 7 or 8 children and only able to send several of them to school, would bring a newly orphaned child to Good Samaritan knowing that he or she would get food and an education at the informal primary school at the Home. Alternatively, and even worse, Auntie would find a child living in the streets, simply turned away from his or her extended family because they were too poor to take on the additional child.

Now, extended families are far more able to care for these orphans (and their own children), and the Home is beginning work to bring these orphans back to their families. Good Samaritan will continue to pay for secondary school, which is not free, for as many of these children as they are able (to find out how to help support secondary education, please visit www.orphansofmathare.com/howtohelp.html). By moving these children to their extended families, Good Samaritan is attempting to mend some of the cracks in the social structure caused by the orphan crisis. This will also open up more space at the Home for temporary shelter for children whose parents have recently died, and for permanent shelter for children who truly have no place else to go.

While the little kids at the Home don't seem to have an opinion on this change, it is upsetting a number of the older children. Those children who are not in secondary school, such as Boss, who is almost 18 years old, and those who have finished secondary school, such as Boss's older brother Malonza, who is 21, are being asked to go to their extended families, or to try to find work and begin to live independently. Even kids in secondary school, such as Chalo, are being encouraged to leave and transfer to schools near their family. (Good Samaritan would still, of course, pay for school.) Beyond creating room for more children, Auntie feels that getting these kids out of Mathare is ultimately in their best interest as the slum offers many temptations and pitfalls.

The kids feel very threatened by this change. Even though some of them do understand why it is important to make room for others, Good Samaritan has been their family and their source of stability for many years. Furthermore, many feel they are being asked to go back to a family that they have little connection to, and which has previously rejected them. Finally, many would move back to rural areas. Having grown up in the city, some kids don't want anything to do with that.

And so the teenagers are rebelling. They've stopped doing chores. They organize secret meetings. And they've called the newspaper claiming abuse.

Auntie, who was initially very angry to be treated this way after all she has done, has realized implementing this change may take time, and also needs to be handled differently with each child. Yesterday she told me that it may take up to a year to get Boss out on his own, but she feels strongly that it is in his best interest, as well as the Home's. And some of the children in secondary school may finish up their education at their current schools before leaving the Home.

Chalo has two years of secondary remaining, and Auntie hopes he finishes them in Machakos, where his grandmother lives. The school is better there, and Mathare makes it very difficult for him to study. Right now, he doesn't want to leave his friends and his home of the past 13 years, but I am going with him and his younger brother, who is ready to begin secondary school next month, to Machakos for the next couple of days. Auntie hopes his grandmother will be able to convince him to move there.

And Boss's grandmother will be coming to Good Samaritan later in the week to try to convince Boss, Malonza, and their younger sister Jambi, who begins secondary school in January, to move in with her.

We will see what happens in both cases.

In disappointing news, shortly after I returned to the US this summer, the streetboys who I was filming trying to come off the street and move into Good Samaritan were caught stealing school uniforms and selling them for money for glue and chang'aa. Auntie tried to take the boys to the National Youth Service, which is better equipped to deal with these boys, but they refused. They were kicked out of the Home and they moved back to the street.

Every once in a while they return to Good Samaritan for food, and yesterday three of the boys, now even skinnier than before, came back to the Home asking for help. Auntie is going to arrange to take them to the National Youth Service in the coming weeks.

That is all for now. I hope this email finds you well.

best,
Randy