September 20, 2004

Dear Friends,

I arrived back in the United States Friday night after a very busy second half of my shoot in Kenya.

Last time, I wrote that it hardly ever is easy in Kenya. This was again proved true in trying to deal with Ochieng's brother Kevin. The police wouldn’t let Kevin leave the west without an official letter from Good Samaritan, and between the time Ochieng returned to Nairobi to get the letter, and letter being delivered to the police in the west, Kevin had run away again. The school holiday is now over, so Ochieng can’t leave Nairobi to look for him. He’ll do this during the next holiday in December. Until then we hope Kevin is able to fend for himself.

Ochieng has agreed to move back into Good Samaritan, though he was supposed to do so last week, but had not done so when I left. He is very headstrong, and I don’t know if he actually will move back to the Home. I also do not know where he will find the 100 shillings (approx $1.25) per day to pay for his commute to school. Good Samaritan is trying to transfer him to a boarding school for his final year of secondary school beginning in January, though that will be difficult if he does not regularly attend school this term, which is what I fear will happen due to the cost of the commute.

After I wrote last time, we went looking for Tony, who had run to the street, and we found him visiting an uncle’s house. He had been collecting scrap metal and selling it for pocket money, and his uncles let him come over and watch TV whenever he had a little money that he could give them. Tony had run away because Good Samaritan didn’t have enough money to buy him a school uniform, and so they were waiting to take him to school until the beginning of the next school year in January. He didn’t understand this; he thought he was never going to go to school and so he saw no reason to stay at the Home. When they explained this to him, he agreed to move back in and study on his own, with the help of the teachers who teach at Good Samaritan’s school for grades 1-4, and start grade 5 in January. Auntie was afraid he would run back to the street, but he had not as of when I left.

A week and a half ago I went to visit Chalo at his boarding school. He is doing very well there; he has many friends and is a natural leader. Usually optimistic, on this trip, though, Chalo showed to me a flash of bitterness, which I had yet to see. He started talking to me about his father and I asked if he ever wanted to try to find him. With startling abruptness Chalo responded that before she died, he had promised his mother he would never speak to his father again. He wouldn’t explain why, but the anguish in his voice revealed a deep and painful history.

Chalo’s uncle Robert, his mother’s sister’s husband and his only relative who has a job, can’t afford to give him any money, so Chalo often doesn’t have the little things, such as extra sugar for his tea, that his friends have. He is one of the few orphans at his school -- it is rare for an orphan to have as much education as he does, as primary education was not free until last year -- and so he doesn’t like to talk about these problems with his friends. He only talks about his difficulties with his girlfriend Nancy, who shares what extra she has with him. Even as Chalo grows up, he continues to be affected in a very immediate way by the fact that he is an orphan.

Last Friday Auntie and I visited one of the secondary schools near Good Samaritan, where we found Lucy, who I’ve written about on previous trips. Lucy’s mother is HIV positive, and Lucy moved into Good Samaritan because her mother couldn’t afford to send her to secondary school, and was too sick to care for both her and her younger sister. Recently, though, Lucy has moved back home to help care for her mother, who only sometimes has enough energy to work. Saturday we visited the one-room home in another slum where they live. Lucy does much of the cooking and cleaning, but still somehow manages to be number one in her class. She also received the largest government bursary fee for secondary school of all the children at Good Samaritan. In January, Lucy is going to transfer to a school closer to her mother’s home so she can be there even more often.

Sunday I went to visit Boss’s extended family with Boss, his older brother Malonza, his younger sister Njambi, and Freddy, the teacher and social worker. Of all the rural homes I’ve visited, this was by far the nicest, and the children were warmly welcomed in it. Freddy asked Njambi why, seeing they were so well off, the family did not help more with the children. Njambi replied that though they appeared to be welcomed in the Home, it was only because they were visiting with Freddy and me. When they visit alone they are not welcome because their mother has been disowned by the family. She is a drunk, and probably used to be a prostitute. She abused the children, and that is why they ran to the street many years ago.

Boss, Njambi, and Malonza are doing relatively well these days. They live together in a one-room house in Mathare near Good Samaritan. Boss continues to do well at his job delivering for the printing press, and is on his best terms with Good Samaritan since he was kicked out for getting into a fight in March. He now visits almost every day and often helps Auntie with the livestock. Njambi is finishing her first year of secondary school and she is passing, though just barely. Boss says that she is stubborn, and he thinks that she might eventually drop out of school.

On Monday and Tuesday, Auntie, Freddy and I went to Ukambani, a semi-arid area of Kenya about 150 kilometers east of Nairobi that is particularly hard hit by the current drought. We were looking for Whitney, a particularly bright girl who had recently dropped out of high school and moved home to care for her increasingly sick HIV positive mother and her baby sister (it’s a story that is all too common for girls in Kenya). Because of the drought, Auntie was afraid that the mother and two daughters would not be doing well.

Many of the fields were barren, and the river was mostly dry. Those who lived near it could irrigate a bit, but those who lived farther away could really only carry enough water to drink. It was not a critical situation, but clearly a dangerous one, and if rain does not come soon (it could be well over another month before the rainy season starts) it could become critical.

We tried to find Whitney and her family, but when we arrived at the house an uncle told us that they had moved back to Nairobi to try to get medical treatment for the mother. Whitney had not bothered to report this to Good Samaritan. We can only speculate that she was too overwhelmed with her family situation, and perhaps ashamed that she had dropped out of school, to talk to Auntie when she came back to Nairobi. Auntie is going to make inquiries for them in Nairobi, and she hopes to have found them by the time I next visit Kenya in either December or January.

Wednesday I visited with some of the streetboys who I met last summer while filming. Though they had tried to move off the street and into Good Samaritan, eventually all of them failed and moved back to the street. This trip, they showed me one of the bars where they drink chang’aa, the illegal drink that blinds and kills many each year. The smell of the clear drink was more like lighter fluid than vodka. As they drank, they quickly became intoxicated and crazy.

Later, while walking through the slum, we bumped into Simon, probably the smartest of all the boys. He took off his shirt to reveal enormous scars from being burned. He and a friend had been drinking and while sleeping on the street the friend knocked over a lantern, lighting the bag Simon was sleeping in on fire. Over 50% of his body was burned. When he showed me the scars, he seemed too out of it, too damaged from the glue and chang’aa, to care. I find it even sadder than seeing these burns that the residual effects from the glue and the chang’aa make it difficult for me to tell when these boys are actually high, and when it just the damage to their brains that causes them to behave as they do.

On a final note, on Thursday as I was saying my goodbyes to the people at Good Samaritan, Tony walked into the compound crying. He had fallen and broken his arm. It was contorted and looked very painful. But instead of taking him to get the arm set right away, the teachers decided to wait until the next morning. If they were to do it right away, they would need to use a private, nearby hospital, which is very expensive. The national hospital, which is much cheaper, was too far away, and so they would need to wait for morning. When I called Auntie from the airport on Friday morning to say one final goodbye, she told me that they were right then taking Tony to the hospital. Even after all the time I spend in Mathare, I still find it remarkable the decisions that those who live there are forced to make. I still find it shocking that Good Samaritan is forced to wait a day to treat a child’s broken arm even though there is medical treatment readily available, because waiting that day saves a tremendous amount of money. In fact, perhaps waiting that day is the difference between Tony having a uniform for school in January, or him being forced to wait another year for fifth grade.

Until next time, thank you for your continued interest and support.

Best,
Randy