Day 3 – Noven Community School and Dandora Home Visits

We started our day with a visit to the Noven Community School in the Mathare slum.  The school has approximately 280 children that attend regularly and benefit from the school feeding program sponsored by Feed The Children.  

Everyone in our group had a wonderful time and walked away with many memories (and perhaps shed a few tears)! Our main reason for visiting Noven today was to provide each child with a new pair of shoes and socks through the Sole to Soul Program.  While we were setting up for the shoe distribution, members of our group had the privilege of serving all the children their morning pourage, supplied daily by Feed The Children.  We had the opportunity to talk with the children and they were happy to show off their English skills! 

They all asked us how we were doing and wanted to shake all of our hands!  They counted and sang songs for us.  Since they were all standing around me, I asked them if they knew how to count to 20 in English.  One young man asked me if I “knew Obama”, to which I responded “yes”  (No, I don't actually know him, but I know OF him!I figured it might be too difficult to explain this to him, so I just said "yes"!). The children all cheered when I said I did and told us, “He is the President of the United States, but his father lived here in Kenya!”  I could tell they were very proud of this, so I started asking them questions about Obama:

“What is Obama’s first name?" …..”What is his wife’s name?”…………”What are his daughters’ names?”……….and “What does the President of the United States do?”……….ALL of the children knew the answers to the questions!

Starting with the little ones, we worked our way through all 280 of the children placing new shoes and socks on them.  During our visit to St. John’s Primary Academy yesterday, we noticed that many of the children still had

their shoes on that we gave them when we hosted the Sole to Soul Program at their school last July, this was neat to see!

Next we traveled to the Dandora Slum to take part in community home visits.  Feed The Children Community Health Education and Outreach (CHEO) is a community based prevention, care and support program for people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS and TB in Kawangware, Danodra, and Huruma, three underserved slums area around Nairobi.

The program addresses both short and long-term needs utilizing three social avenues: the school, the community and religious institutions.  Within Dandora CHEO helps support 177 households for a total of 929 beneficiaries.  The CHEO volunteers broke us into three groups and took us to visit families that are served by their various programs. 

One of the programs beneficiaries, Wilson, who’s wife died in 2006, has 9 children that he takes care of after both of his past wives passed away.  Wilson is HIV positive along with two of his children, Vincent and Benson.  Wilson was given encouragement by Atlanta Falcons player Jerrius Norwood, who thanked Wilson for his hard work to keep his family together through these difficult times.  Wilson, who suffers from a chronic running nose because of exposure to the cold, not only takes care of his 9 kids but also works as a night guard to earn money to keep his 1 bedroom house. 

Before coming on this trip, someone said to me, “You think you may be going there to bless their lives, but it is you who will really be blessed.”  I think that pretty much sums up our day. Feed The Children is a blessing to the people in Nairobi that we visited today, but they were a blessing to us!