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
