School Visits: Chavara Secondary and Olmaroroi

Over the next few days, we had a few schools and kids we needed to visit. The above cuties were taking a break at Kimuka when we stopped by to drop off some supplies.

We also visited St. Chavara Secondary school. The school is several hours away, so it is close to a full-day trip. 

St. Chavara is a private girls’ school. When Tuko Pamoja formed, the head teacher of the school, Evelyn, had just been hired. We didn’t know her and she wasn’t particularly friendly with us when we visited the first time. On the second visit we convinced Evelyn to let us have some of the girls for a self-defense class. She wound up putting the entire school in one class with us. Then she stayed to watch. We coaxed her to participate and the girls had a great time. By the end of the class, we had a lifelong friend.

Offering the self-defense classes is one of the things that makes Tuko unique. Other organizations offer child sponsoring or a porridge program. Some offer both. Very few organizations offer the self-defense training, especially for free. And we aren’t aware of any other organization that does all three. 

Below are the 5 girls at Chavara sponsored by Tuko Pamoja. Left to right: Sharleen, Ruth, Blessing, Susan, and Wangari.

Blessing (Bahati) is our newest girl at the school. We have had her for a few months. Evelyn had called Virginia and asked if we would find Blessing a sponsor. We said “yes” mostly because we want to solidify the relationship at the school. Without that, we likely would have said “no” due to the distance to the school and her home. We prefer at least one or the other to be close to Ngong. But we found her a sponsor. The decision was even easier to feel good about when we discovered a little more about her situation.

Blessing comes from a single-mother household. She is one of the top students in her grade. She is very active in many extracurriculars and very popular with her schoolmates. But her mother couldn’t pay her fees. For a while, other relatives were paying, but they couldn’t continue. So the school was in a bind. 

Blessing’s schoolmates held a fundraiser to cover her back fees. This helped the school, and also showed how important it was to her schoolmates that Blessing stay enrolled. The students shared their own pocket money to help Blessing’s mom pay her fees.

The school decided to carry her, even with her debt, and at that point reached out to us. Blessing wants to be either a doctor or a lawyer. The kind soul who volunteered to sponsor Blessing is a Kenyan-born attorney. A perfect match!

We visited Blessing’s mother and older brother at their home. Below is their living room.

Another student in difficult circumstances is pictured below: Shantivia, or “Shanty.” Tuko Pamoja met her through a contact who specializes in gender-based violence. We were able to step up and get Shanty medical care, counseling, and enrolled her in a boarding school to remove her from the ongoing risk of sexual assault.

Given where she was when we met her, that smile on her face is priceless!

We also help some of the mothers of our sponsored kids. This is usually, but not exclusively, single mothers.

Below is Evelyn with her food cart. She is the mother of Sharleen, one of the Chavara students pictured above. Evelyn is a single mom and had no source of income. She and Sharleen were in the midst of being evicted when we were called. We intervened to pay their rent, and after hearing her ideas provided Evelyn with the equipment for this start-up. She is working hard at making her vending business a success.

Below is the shop belonging to Judy. She is the mother of one of our sponsored boys. She is doing a great job with varied products and competitive prices. We helped her stock the shop when she first opened.

Our final stop was back at Olmaroroi.

We had promised that we would buy underwear for all the girls in the boarding/rescue facility there. Donors Marilyn and Nick Furcola gave the money for this wonderful endeavor, through gifts received from family and friends for their birthdays. Virginia and Wangari had a meeting with the girls and gave them several pairs each. They were thrilled. I wasn’t allowed in the room for that meeting, of course.

We also held a self-defense class for the girls. They were super engaged. One reason for this attentiveness is because they had 5 or 6 of their teachers in the room learning with them. This always amps up the girls’ engagement significantly. The motive seems to be that if the teachers think this is important enough to be in there taking the class with the girls, then the girls will try to perform even better than their teachers.

We’re pretty deep in Maasailand at this school. The kids grow up speaking Maa at home. They often don’t start Kiswahili until they get to school. Then English comes after that. The younger ones especially don’t have a firm grasp of English. So Wangari led the class in Kiswahili. 

The rest of the kids were playing in the schoolyard. There are several trees that get a lot of traffic under them. The schoolyard is very sunny, hot, and dusty.

The kids not under the tree were mostly playing football (soccer). Although we had given them a couple of good footballs the prior week, those appear to be reserved for the football team.