24 March 2011

Anna Jones plays with orphans in Nairobi, Kenya's Kibera slum in 2007. Jones, who has made two trips to Kibera since her initial nine-month stint ended, said she hopes to return there this summer.
                                                                                                                                          Courtesy Photo

By Raymond Billy
ResonateNews.com

Efforts to help homeless children in one of Kenya's most infamous neighborhoods were dealt a setback after a fire last week that destroyed a boarding school there.

The blaze occurred at Restoration Primary School in Nairobi's Kibera slum, displacing 33 orphans and 400 day-school students. For at least a decade, a growing number of nonprofit organizations from outside of Africa have sought to improve the lives of Kibera orphans — a demographic believed by UNICEF to number at least 50,000 children.

The orphans are among the neighborhood's “street kids” — some of whom have homes in which to return at day's end. Existence for many of them revolves around begging passersby on the street for money, stealing and inhaling the fumes from glue bottles — their most accessible means of relaxation.

“They basically become a societal nuisance,” said American Anna Jones, who was a missionary to Kibera from 2006 to 2007. Jones said that it is common for poor parents in Nairobi to abandon a child because of financial hardship. She said parents are more likely to discard their sons.

“They keep their daughters around to do household chores,” said Jones, 26, who first traveled to Kibera as a junior at Jacksonville University in Florida.

Kenya has addressed the hoodlum problem by sending mischievous youths to remand centers and  allowing private orphanages to open throughout the country — especially in slums such as Kibera. The government says rehabilitative services for the children are provided at these tenements. But Jones said the conditions she observed when she visited one Nairobi detention center would only serve to harden its boarders.

During the visit, she said she witnessed boys being beaten by an employee of the home until she demand he stop. Jones also said dozens of children were forced to drink from a common basin and received only one meal of rice and corn every day. Save the Children and other nonprofit organizations also have expressed alarm at the treatment of children at orphanages and remand centers.

“When I saw the way these kids were living, I knew I had to help these kids,” Jones said.

As a missionary with Adventures in Missions, a Christian missionary organization headquartered in Gainesville, Ga., Jones said she worked primarily with orphans in Kibera. She and her colleagues worked with orphans for six hours every day, teaching them the Bible and arts and crafts, she said. The experience moved her so deeply that she has returned to the neighborhood several times since her initial nine-month stint, Jones said.

“I fell in love with those boys,” she said.

Jones, who now lives in North Carolina, is among hundreds on humanitarians worldwide who have  taken interest in Kibera's orphan crisis. These philanthropists work for organizations such as The Kibera Foundation, DoSomething.org and New Life Restoration Ministries International, which ran the destroyed primary school. All have been working to build, operate or fund orphanages in Kibera.

Jones, who hopes to visit Kibera during the summer, said she's seen how quickly neglected children can achieve emotional and psychological restoration. She said one of her friends from Kenya, a former street child named Samuel, has become a role model for impoverished children in the country.

“He went from living on the streets for six years, to graduating No. 1 in his class," Jones said.

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