September 7, 2004

Dear Friends,

Last Saturday was Chalo's 17th birthday, and since it was during a school holiday, Chalo was at his uncle Robert's house. There is currently a drought in much of Kenya, and Robert's region is one of the hardest hit. Fortunately, the family lives in the hills, which are not nearly as badly affected as the plateau. Still, there is not enough grass for the milk cow, and it has stopped producing, forcing the family to buy milk for their children. Because of this additional financial burden, the family couldn't really afford to celebrate Chalo's birthday (I did bring a few things for him from myself and other well-wishers.)

Sunday, Chalo and I visited his grandmother, who also lives in the hills and has fortunately hardly been affected by the drought. She told us a story, though, of a bandit who had been killing her chickens, poisoning her dogs, and strangling her calves. It hardly ever is easy here.

The following day we went back to Nairobi, where Chalo showed Auntie his grades. He has a B- average, and was ranked 12th out of 89 students last term. Auntie remined him, though, that he needs to get at least a B+ on his secondary school exams, which he takes in October and November, 2005, to go on to university. If he scores a B+, he will be able to go to a public university and the government will help with the fees, but if he does not, he won't be able to continue his studies -- the private universities are simply too expensive.

I think Chalo took this to heart, and he promised to work even harder this term. The new school term starts today, and tomorrow I am going to visit him.

I've now known Chalo for over three years (for that matter, I've known many at Good Samaritan for this long). He was 14 years old when Pacho and I met him in the summer of 2001, and the eight-year age difference between him and me seemed quite large. As he grows up, the gap seems smaller, and we continue to become better friends. Though I have confidence that he will be succesful later in his life, I do hope that he is able to pull his grades up and continue his studies.

Ochieng stopped by Good Samaritan last Monday. When I left last time, he was living alone in a little shack in Mathare and was unable to pay his rent. Furthermore, that whole area of the slum was being threatened with being demolished. Auntie told Ochieng she would pay half his rent, and that he would need to find a roommate to cover the other half, which is what every young person in Mathare does. Ochieng did not find a roommate, and he couldn't pay his July rent, so he moved in with an uncle who lives far outside Nairobi, and commuted to school. The cost of the commute for one week iss more than his monthly rent, and no one knows how he is going to pay that. Ochieng seemed dejected. He hardly was eating, and he wasn't going to school as much as he should because of the cost of the commute. Auntie is trying to get him to move back to Good Samaritan for this term, and then she'll try to get him to a boarding school for his final year of secondary school, which begins in January. I think Ochieng will swallow his pride and do this, though he is erratic, so I cannot know for sure what will happen.

On Thursday Ochieng and I went back out to his family's region in the west of Kenya to try to find out more information about his brother, whose story I began to follow over a year ago. The 15-year old boy had been accused of rape, not given a fair trial, and put into a juvenile prison. (The full details of this story can be read in my dispatches from 7/11/03 and 12/24/03, found at www.orphansofmathare.com/mathareproject/).

In a remarkable coincidence, Kevin, the brother, had been paroled and arrived back in the region the same day we arrived. He described very difficult conditions, and though he had run away from Good Samaritan a few years ago, he was now ready to go back and study. (His extended family doesn't really want him, so if he were to stay out in the west he would be forced to go back to tending cattle, which he had been doing previously.)

Yesterday Ochieng and Kevin were making arrangements with the police so Kevin could report to a parole officer in Nairobi, and today they return to Good Samaritan.

While Ochieng and Kevin remained on in their region, I met up with Freddy, who is a teacher and social worker at Good Samaritan, in his home area also in the west. Freddy's girlfriend/fiance -- they would be married if they had more money, Freddy is currenly saving for the necessary things for a wedding -- got pregnant and in July had a miscarriage. To honor the dead child, they needed to go to their ancestral land and have some of their hair shaved off.

In the old days, Freddy told me, they would shave the entire head, but these days they only shave a bit. Freddy told me of numerous traditions that had shrunk like this one, or fallen by the wayside entirely, in recent years. Colonialsim and Christianity were of course some of the obvious causes of this, but Freddy mentioned another cause that surprised me -- poverty. As more and more people are forced to go to the city and live in slums like Mathare, they have less and less time for the traditions. Just earning enough money to eat takes up much of their time.

For instance, in the past after boys were circumcised around age 10, they went and lived in the woods for six months and learned to "be men." Now, though, they only spend six weeks in the woods. The families need the boys' help on the farm, or need to take them back to the city. They also need the labor of the older boys who supervise the ritual.

The shaving of the hair was rather anti-climactic. A man simply sat Freddy down on a chair in the lawn, pulled out a safety razor, and shaved a little bit around the entirety of his hairline. They did the same to Helen, Freddy's girlfriend. And that was that. On the hike Freddy and I took afterwards, Freddy told me that now the lost child can be forgotten, and they can try for another one.

On a positive note, Freddy told me that he and Helen both had HIV tests before they became sexually active. (They were both negative.) Perhaps some of the HIV/AIDS education is working.

On an unfortunate note, though, Tony, whose mother died of HIV/AIDS while I was last in Kenya, has run to the street. He sells sweets and begs for money and food. He was always difficult, even when his mother was alive. He wouldn't live with his relatives upcountry, and threatened to walk back to Nairobi if he were left there. At Good Samaritan he got tired of the donated vegetables that make up the diet, and he went to the street so he could earn money and eat a little meat. Kennedy, the younger and tamer of the two brothers, stayed at Good Samaritan and is still in school. Today, we are going to try to find Tony and try to get him to move off the street. I will let you know if we are succesful.

Until next time, thank you for your continued support.

best,
Randy

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