Kenya, A People Inspiring Hope, Love, Compassion and Determination

       I spent three weeks in Kenya with Team Tumaini in 2006 but sitting at my desk to-day I can say that I am still in Africa, feeling the love from the people I met there. Africa is in my bones and my visit there has forever changed my life. My attitude towards the world changed so much that I co-created Global Citizens for a New Tomorrow (working hand in hand with team Tumaini) and am more determined than ever to make a difference to the orphaned children and thus to the future of Kenya.
      

     Many have asked me “why Kenya, why not Canada’s poor?” My response has been “because it is my soul’s calling” and “because in Canada we have supports for people who might be hungry or in need of shelter”. In Kenya there are not enough adults left to take care of the basic needs of the orphaned children. In two years the number of street children in one small town alone, has doubled. It’s hard to imagine walking around a town where you don’t see any old people. When I was there I realized that our team were the oldest people many of the children had ever seen! Why was that you might ask? Simple answer.  Many of the older Kenyans were dead.

     I thought I had understood poverty before I spent time in Kenya, but once there I realized that I had no idea what real poverty was. I met people who had NOTHING. That is true. I mean they had NO THING. They did have the clothes on their backs but that was it. No food, no money, no possessions and yet they did have love to offer each of us and a ton of gratitude. I was blessed and prayed for more times in Kenya than in my entire life. The prayers were heart and soul filled and more often than naught moved me to tears. Here I thought I was giving to them but what I experienced was a type of giving that comes from deep within the hearts of humans who have no possessions. They offered their one pure possession and that was love! I experienced the purity of their gratitude and a sense of oneness that comes from feeling a soul to soul connection with another person.

      One day,  I stood on the street corner of Kitale, Kenya and handed out bread and small portions of milk to dirty, hungry, scared, lonely, abandoned street children (from ages 5 to 15) until the food was all gone. I looked helplessly at the children who had not received anything and they simply stood quietly and stared back at me. They were already hardened to the realities of street life. Sometimes they got a mouthful of food from the garbage dump and sometimes they went hungry. I thought about my own healthy grandchildren and felt my heart break for the little ones who left to go back to the dump to curl up on a corn sack and try to fall asleep while still hungry and cold. Who would speak for these children? How many would die before our team returned? What must it be like for a four year old to have no family members left alive? I was acutely aware of the fact that these children were victims to the ravages of disease and hunger and that they still were children, hoping for a hug or someone to come along and say “there, there, you’re going to be alright.” What I found the hardest to handle was not just the fact that these children were hungry and alone, but that there was literally no one to give them love.

    After I returned home I realized that love doesn’t matter if a child is starving to death. I began speaking in a variety of schools in Ontario and repeatedly discovered that Canadian children really care about those less fortunate and are eager to help. They just need an avenue to do that.

       Some nights I lay in bed and I send a small wave of love to the orphans in Kenya. I pray that one of them will feel it as they lay alone in the dark. I am not sure who will receive the energy. It could be a little girl who might be sleeping in a farmer’s field, a young boy in a garbage dump, a high school student lying on a mud floor in a cold hut with several of his buddies or a teenage girl curled up with her bunk buddy in an orphanage. These children all had one thing in common. They were orphans. The first time I spoke in a school when I returned from Kenya, I was stunned to know that a majority of the children did not know what a slum or an orphan was!

       Every day I ask “what can I do today to make a difference?” Sometimes it is raising awareness through a public speaking engagement, putting a toonie in my “Kenya jar”, calling a principal to see if their school can come on board, writing our newspaper, speaking on the radio or happily receiving another cheque in the mail for the Kenyan kids and sometimes I express gratitude for the wonderful opportunity provided by team tumaini to evolve my world consciousness.

     Travelling and working with Team Tumaini is a privilege. Sandy Foster exemplifies what it is to be a living “gift from the heart”. Working with the team was like experiencing Christmas every day. I feel deeply touched by the ongoing work of everyone involved and will continue to do “my one thing” until the children are fed and housed!

      Marilyn Picard