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