Widows and Orphans

Every week now I go out to Aston Vision Orphanage and a couple of weeks ago Aston took us to visit his village, Ambreni Moivaro. Aston became chairman of the village 5 years ago and since then he has been working to try and improve the quality of life for the children and people of the village.

Aston wanted us to see the families of the children that attend his school and altogether we visited about a dozen different families. There are more and Aston said he could take us to visit them another day if we wanted. All of their stories are very similar – the mother is a widow with three or four or more children to look after. They all sleep on one bed or the children sleep on the bed and mama sleeps on the floor or on a skinny couch.

Other children live with their grandmothers, as both their parents are dead. Some of the children are disabled – we met four and there are two more that Aston supports. The first child appeared to have cerebral palsy. I don’t know about the rest.

Most of the houses are made of mud and sticks and have only one room. They all have the same problems – mama or bibi cannot work because she either has to look after the children or she is too old. This means that there is no money for food. Everything seems so inexpensive to us – the rent for their houses costs between 10,000 and 30,000 shillings a month ($7.65 - $22.90 NZ) and yet they have nothing. All of them are hungry and the majority of them need mattresses – either they have none to start with or there are too many people to fit on one so some of the family members have to sleep on the floor.

This house was probably the biggest and nicest that we visited and yet it only costs 30,000 shillings a month to rent. Inside lives Veronica, a widow whose husband died in an accident in 2007. Three children live with her, including Susannah who is 7-years-old and who has severe cerebral palsy. Veronica says that there is never enough food so often she doesn't eat, giving what she has to her children.

11-year-old Bilali is disabled and lives with his mama Zainabu. She is a widow with four children, one of whom lives at Aston's orphanage as she cannot provide for them all. A volunteer donated a bicycle for Mama with a special seat on the back for Bilali, which helps to make their life easier. The skinny bed that you can see in the background is where three children sleeps. Mama sleeps on a tiny couch off to the side.

Bilali and his siblings sit outside their house. The door on right belongs to the room that they rent. When we left Mama was cooking ugali over an open fire outside.

When we first went into this Maasai lady, Maria's, house Aston kept talking about her children. She looked so elderly that we kept looking at each other, thinking that surely he meant grandchildren. It turned out though that she is only 51-years-old and her youngest child is 7. Maria's husband died two months ago from a combination of typhoid, malaria and malnourishment and she has three children. They all live in the room on the right side of the picture. The dirt floor has flees that live in it which have given Maria some sort of parasitic infection in her toes.

This one-room house is home to Theresa, her brother and grandparents. Theresa is six-years-old and is severely disabled. Her Mama died two years ago in an accident.

Theresa, her brother and her Babu (grandfather) all sleep on a single small mattress. Bibi sleeps on a skinny couch. Babu was in the same accident that killed Theresa's mother and now he cannot walk without the aid of crutches and is unable to work to provide money for the family.

A volunteer kindly donated a stroller so that it is easier for Bibi to move Theresa. The other children in the photograph are Theresa's brother and cousins. The cousins live in the room next door.

These three children, Happiness, Prince and Dennis all live in the room on the left with their older sister, who is 23. Their parents are dead. When we went to visit, the sister had gone to market and nine-year-old Happiness was in charge of looking after her younger siblings. They have no bed so all four of them have to sleep on the mud floor.

This is the home of widow Happiness. She had three children, but one died three months ago. Her second son, Crispen, is on the left in the photo and is disabled. He spends his days at a school for disabled people where they learn to do basic household tasks. The third child is Kelvin, who lives at Aston Vision full time. He was born with bad eyes and the local doctors do not know how to help him.

These are the neighbouring rooms to Widow Happiness and Crispen's home.

Walking from house to house through the village was beautiful.

Aston and Betsy.

When we got back to Aston Vision we helped Aston serve the children their lunch of rice and beans.

Helena with her lunch.

Sharon, one of the children we met the first time we went to visit Aston.

Everything we saw that day was very sad. The people were very welcoming and friendly, but the majority appeared to be rather hopeless – like they’d been beaten down by life and were finding it hard to carry on. I guess I can see why that would be.

The thing that gives me hope is that by helping Aston and his children, we are helping these families as well.

xoxo,

Hannah

Oh My God

Two weeks ago today, my mother, friend Betsy and myself were driving home from an outing in Usa River, when we saw a sign that said “Aston Vision Orphanage”. Betsy and I had both heard of the orphanage before, but didn’t know much about it except that it was excessively poor. We decided to stop, thinking that there might be something that we could do to help then.

I know this may sound trite, but the people we met, what we saw at that orphanage, the brief time we spent there, is something that I will always consider to be a pivotal moment in my life. While we were there we met a young man, Aston, founder of the orphanage. This is his story.

Aston Simon was born 31 years ago in a Maasai family, where he was the eldest child of the first wife of his father. His father had six wives altogether and many children, five alone who were born to Aston’s mother. His upbringing was tragic – his father was an alcoholic who used to come home and beat Aston, saying that he could not go to school anymore, but must stay at home and herd the cows.

When Aston was still a young boy he ran away to live as a street child in Arusha. Eventually a soldier found him on the streets, took him in and welcomed him into his own family, giving him a home and an education. At the age of 23, Aston left the soldier’s family and went to work in the mines. It was here that he learned English and met some local Christian pastors who converted him to Christianity. The church he attended sent him to a university to study to be a mechanic and driver.

Six years ago, in 2007, he bought a plot of land in the village Ambreni Moivaro. At some point during this time he became the chairman of the village. He built a house for himself and for his birth parents on the 5 hectares that he had bought and planned to settle down there.

Then three years ago he went to the spring to collect water, a thirty-minute walk away from his home. When he got to the spring he found a box laying on the ground, a baby inside. Aston took the baby to the neighbours and people of the village but no one would claim her or take her in. He then took her to the police who said they would have to, “Give her to the white people,” meaning that a Western orphanage would be the best place for her. Aston refused, wanting the baby to grow up in her own culture, with her own people, and he kept her. He named her Angel.

Since then, Aston has collected 42 children who are either orphans or the children of widows who cannot support them. Currently there is only room for 10 children to live at the orphanage and they are taken care of by Aston and his sister, Jessica. Because there is no room for the other children, they have to stay with neighbours and relatives, often in places where there is no room for them. Many of the children have to sleep on the floor. All are hungry.

At the orphanage itself there is one small building, half of which is a little office, the other half of which is the sleeping room for all 10 children. There are four skinny bunk beds and the children sleep two to a bed. All ten of them are approximately three to seven years of age. Most of their ages are estimates. Next to the sleeping room is a tiny schoolroom with a mud floor. Boards are missing from the walls and roof, leaking constantly in the rainy season. Across the yard is a chicken shed, generously donated by volunteers from Belgium and the Netherlands. In two months time the chickens will start laying and Aston will be able to sell the eggs to make a little money to buy food for the children.

The window on the right is the "office", the centre window is the bedroom and the small window on the right is part of the schoolroom.

Back of the schoolroom.

Inside the schoolroom.

There is no money to pay a teacher, so the children can only have school when there is a volunteer there to teach them. 14 of the children have been sponsored to go to local schools. The other 28 spend their days at the orphanage, where they eat one hot meal a day. It costs $1000US to send a child to school for a year by the time you add together all their school fees, books, uniforms and the cost of transportation.

Aston’s mother and father live on the grounds and Mama and Jessica cook for the children. Most of the time there is not enough food and often there is none. Sometimes all the children eat is a meal of a paste made of flour and water. The cost to feed all the children for a month is only 500,000 shillings, about $350NZ. This would buy them rice and beans, sugar, flour and cooking oil, all of which could be bought at a local market, supporting the village and local economy.

Beautiful Angel - the spring baby.

Aston is the chairman of his village and as well as looking after the children, he helps to look after a large number of widows in the village. His hope is that these children will not just have safe water and enough food, but that they will be able to dream of a better future. He says his dream is to help children because he remembers his time as a street child and he doesn’t want anyone to have to live like that.

Right now though, the children need dormitories and bathrooms, beds to sleep in and food to eat. To build a bathroom block with two toilets and a shower room would cost $1500US. When they have dormitories, all 42 children will be able to live there. Before they can even think about building it though, they need to finish the retaining wall on the plot of land where the dormitory will go. This will cost them 300,000 shillings, about $210NZ.

That first time we visited, there were only two children at the orphanage – Sharon, who is four and Angel who now is five or six years old. The other eight children had gone with Aston’s sister to get water. The spring is half an hour away on foot and they take several children so they can bring back as much water as possible. After they bring the water back, it needs to be filtered before it is safe to drink. At the moment they have one water filter that was donated by a volunteer. At $50US each, they are hardly expensive and it would be incredibly beneficial if they had more than one, due to the fact that there are so many children.

It would cost $1000US to get pipes laid and water pumped in from the spring so the children don’t have to walk to get water. I don’t know about you, but the thought of living in a world where four-year-olds have to walk miles to find water, makes me feel sick.

Mum with Angel and Sharon.

Aston, Betsy and I with Angel and Sharon.

After we left the orphanage that first time, we spent the car ride back to Arusha in near silence, all of us trying not to cry at what we’d seen. We went back to Neema House and the first thing that I saw when I stepped inside was my little Angel, wearing a new green and pink floral onesie, her face clean and shiny from her bath. She ran to me, laughing, before the nannies took her away to eat her dinner. That night, and every night, she will go to bed in clean pyjamas and sleep under warm blankets, tucked away safe from mosquitoes. She will have a warm bottle, be kissed and cuddled and told that she’s loved and she will sleep peacefully until morning. Our babies are so loved and so lucky and so very, very blessed.

As I sit here at the table, writing in candlelight because the power is out, I am crying about it all over again. You hear about this world – people living in filth and poverty, children starving, everyone desperate to survive. You would think I would be getting used to it by now. I don’t think I ever will. What can we do? So little would do so much to help these people.

Our electricity is out and when it’s on our Internet is slow. Our beds are hard, our feet are dusty, and we can’t get the same foods as we can in our Western countries. We miss the comforts of home – take away pizza and high speed wifi. How very trivial our problems are!

Since that first time Betsy and I have been back to Aston Vision. We met the other children that live at the orphanage and took them bread and bananas, margarine, eggs, biscuits and lollipops for a treat. It was a drop in a bucket that will take more than a few groceries to fill.

And yet, the children are so happy – they ran towards us, shouting, “Teacher! Teacher!” They climbed on us and laughed as we blew bubbles and skipped rope with them. Quiet little Kelvin saved his biscuits in his pocket and after a while of sitting beside him, he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a sticky piece of biscuit, giving me, someone he didn’t know, his treat.

My first time at Aston Vision made me think of Habbakuk, crying out to God when he sees the violence and corruption happening amongst his people. He says, “How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save. Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.”

And it made me think of the song, Oh My God, by Jars of Clay.

“Sometimes when I lose my grip, I wonder what to make of heaven

All the times I thought to reach up, all the times I had to give up

Babies underneath their beds, hospitals that cannot treat

All the wounds that money causes, all the comforts of cathedrals

All the cries of thirsty children, this is our inheritance

All the rage of watching mothers, this is our greatest offense

Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God.”

I found this song powerful even before I came here, but now that I have seen hospitals full of people, but not drugs to treat them all; since I’ve watched tiny children walk miles to fetch water; since I have understood that mothers do not abandon their babies because they do not love them, but rather so that they will have a better chance with someone else; my heart has the same cry as Habakkuk’s.

I would despair except for the fact that I know if my heart hurts for 42 hungry children, then how much more must God hurt. And at the end of Habbakuk’s book there is hope. "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights."

Tomorrow Betsy and I are going back to Aston Vision. Aston is taking us to the village to meet the other children and the families they live with. While I know that what we will see there will break my heart all over again, I am grateful that God has given me the chance to witness it.

Tonight, in this dark and quiet house, my candle burning low, I am thankful. Thankful for Aston who was given a dream and is doing everything he can to help these children. And thankful to God, who a long time ago, on a cross far away, put a plan in place to save us from all this.

xoxo,

-Hannah