Back to School (English)
Door: Anne en Rob
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Rob en Anne
14 September 2007 | Kenia, Thika
Good morning! How are you all doing?
Here in Thika, everything is still fine. After we came back from Mombassa, the structure of the day in CRC is back. The children had only a few days holiday after the trip. We went to a playing yard (Blue Post) and did some games with the children. Last Monday they started school again, the 3rd term. Anne was sewing the clothes of the children, a lot of work, but everybody was ready to go to school after that. Because the children go to school now, our daily programme looks different. We have to get up at 5.30 am to prepare breakfast. In the meanwhile the children take a shower and get dressed in school uniform, so that they can eat their breakfast at 6 am. At 6.30-6.45 am we walk the children to school, because they have to be in school at 7 am. Luckily, we are with 5 volunteers now (Rene, Esther, Mirjam and us), so that we don’t have to get up that early everyday.
The rest of the day we help with cleaning, doing the dishes, polishing shoes, shopping etc. There are 5 children still to young to go to school, so we have to keep them busy during the day. But because there are more volunteers now, we have some more time to do other things outside CRC. We visited KOP a few times, we went to Joy Town (school for physically disabled children) and we started thinking about how to spend our sponsoring money.
The idea is to start a pre-nursery unit in one of the slums in Thika. We came up with the idea after we visited a family with 1 child with severe malnutrition, Idris. He is 2 or 3 years old (they often don’t have birth dates here), but mentally as well as physically he’s much younger (probably because of malnutrition). We’ll tell you the whole story of Idris later.
Because of malnutrition, under stimulation and lack of attention, a lot of children in Thika have a delay in their development when they start at nursery school. By giving them education, attention and food at a young age, we’ll try to reduce their developmental problems. Besides that, we want to sponsor those children when they go to Nursery school (because Nursery school is not totally free). We’re going to do the project together with Mirjam, Esther, Nelson and Naftali (management of CRC), so we’re busy at the moment to make it more detailed. We’re trying to make a long term project, which we keep on sponsoring while back in the Netherlands.
So now the full story about Idris. He looked very bad when we first met him (he didn’t react much on stimuli). So Esther and I (Anne) took the boy to the hospital. We were hoping for the grandmother to come, but she had to go somewhere else all of a sudden (most probably she didn’t want to come). The mother got a new baby a few days ago (the 8th child, seriously, why?? She’s not even able to feed 1) and the father passed away last year. So, in stead of the mother or another family member, a highly pregnant woman (a friend of the mother) went with us. First we visited the doctor (we did a HIV test and that was fortunately negative), were we pushed for admitting at the hospital. The doctor thought it was a good idea to send the boy to hospital, because of the severe signs of malnutrition. Normally it’s always a disadvantage to be a “mzungu” (foreigner), because they charge you more for everything; but this time, it helped us to get in front of the waiting line. Idris went through some test and they concluded he had severe malnutrition; his body weight was not even half what it supposed to be at his age. So they gave him a special diet and he was improving quite well, till 2 nights ago. He started vomiting and fitting and had a very high temperature. So he is admitted at the IC, where he still is at the moment. He’s doing slightly better, but still very, very fragile. This afternoon, he’s going for an X-ray of his lungs, to see if the cause of this all is Tuberculosis. We hope for the best and keep on visiting him daily. The time that we’re not in hospital, a cousin takes care of him (there HAS TO be someone with patients 24 hours in Kenyan hospitals). So we hope for the best for “our child”.
For the rest, we and “our kids” here in CRC are all fine! We’re still having a great time here in Thika and it looks like the winter is finishing one of these days as well; the last few days we have had tropical weather, although last night we had a heavy storm. Besides the things described above, we have been busy arranging some plans for the coming weeks. Rob’s parents are coming next Tuesday and will stay here in Kenya for 10 days…..we’re very happy to see family again after such a long time!
We show them around in CRC/ Thika and let them see what we have been doing so far. Besides that, we’re going on a nice safari to the Masai Mara and Lake Naivasha. At Masai Mara we will be at the good time to see the annual wildebeest migration, with millions of wildebeests, zebra’s and impala’s coming from Serengeti Plains to cross the Mara River into the Masai Mara Reserve. We will keep you (especially Zoltan and Sumit :)) updated about this trip and will give you all the ins and outs afterwards.
Stay well and keep in touch!
Lots of love,
Anne and Rob
Here in Thika, everything is still fine. After we came back from Mombassa, the structure of the day in CRC is back. The children had only a few days holiday after the trip. We went to a playing yard (Blue Post) and did some games with the children. Last Monday they started school again, the 3rd term. Anne was sewing the clothes of the children, a lot of work, but everybody was ready to go to school after that. Because the children go to school now, our daily programme looks different. We have to get up at 5.30 am to prepare breakfast. In the meanwhile the children take a shower and get dressed in school uniform, so that they can eat their breakfast at 6 am. At 6.30-6.45 am we walk the children to school, because they have to be in school at 7 am. Luckily, we are with 5 volunteers now (Rene, Esther, Mirjam and us), so that we don’t have to get up that early everyday.
The rest of the day we help with cleaning, doing the dishes, polishing shoes, shopping etc. There are 5 children still to young to go to school, so we have to keep them busy during the day. But because there are more volunteers now, we have some more time to do other things outside CRC. We visited KOP a few times, we went to Joy Town (school for physically disabled children) and we started thinking about how to spend our sponsoring money.
The idea is to start a pre-nursery unit in one of the slums in Thika. We came up with the idea after we visited a family with 1 child with severe malnutrition, Idris. He is 2 or 3 years old (they often don’t have birth dates here), but mentally as well as physically he’s much younger (probably because of malnutrition). We’ll tell you the whole story of Idris later.
Because of malnutrition, under stimulation and lack of attention, a lot of children in Thika have a delay in their development when they start at nursery school. By giving them education, attention and food at a young age, we’ll try to reduce their developmental problems. Besides that, we want to sponsor those children when they go to Nursery school (because Nursery school is not totally free). We’re going to do the project together with Mirjam, Esther, Nelson and Naftali (management of CRC), so we’re busy at the moment to make it more detailed. We’re trying to make a long term project, which we keep on sponsoring while back in the Netherlands.
So now the full story about Idris. He looked very bad when we first met him (he didn’t react much on stimuli). So Esther and I (Anne) took the boy to the hospital. We were hoping for the grandmother to come, but she had to go somewhere else all of a sudden (most probably she didn’t want to come). The mother got a new baby a few days ago (the 8th child, seriously, why?? She’s not even able to feed 1) and the father passed away last year. So, in stead of the mother or another family member, a highly pregnant woman (a friend of the mother) went with us. First we visited the doctor (we did a HIV test and that was fortunately negative), were we pushed for admitting at the hospital. The doctor thought it was a good idea to send the boy to hospital, because of the severe signs of malnutrition. Normally it’s always a disadvantage to be a “mzungu” (foreigner), because they charge you more for everything; but this time, it helped us to get in front of the waiting line. Idris went through some test and they concluded he had severe malnutrition; his body weight was not even half what it supposed to be at his age. So they gave him a special diet and he was improving quite well, till 2 nights ago. He started vomiting and fitting and had a very high temperature. So he is admitted at the IC, where he still is at the moment. He’s doing slightly better, but still very, very fragile. This afternoon, he’s going for an X-ray of his lungs, to see if the cause of this all is Tuberculosis. We hope for the best and keep on visiting him daily. The time that we’re not in hospital, a cousin takes care of him (there HAS TO be someone with patients 24 hours in Kenyan hospitals). So we hope for the best for “our child”.
For the rest, we and “our kids” here in CRC are all fine! We’re still having a great time here in Thika and it looks like the winter is finishing one of these days as well; the last few days we have had tropical weather, although last night we had a heavy storm. Besides the things described above, we have been busy arranging some plans for the coming weeks. Rob’s parents are coming next Tuesday and will stay here in Kenya for 10 days…..we’re very happy to see family again after such a long time!
We show them around in CRC/ Thika and let them see what we have been doing so far. Besides that, we’re going on a nice safari to the Masai Mara and Lake Naivasha. At Masai Mara we will be at the good time to see the annual wildebeest migration, with millions of wildebeests, zebra’s and impala’s coming from Serengeti Plains to cross the Mara River into the Masai Mara Reserve. We will keep you (especially Zoltan and Sumit :)) updated about this trip and will give you all the ins and outs afterwards.
Stay well and keep in touch!
Lots of love,
Anne and Rob
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
