Our Fourth Week in Kenya

Sunday afternoon in Africa, we finished the kitchen table for the cook to put the jikos on.  A jiko is a small, round clay grill Africans use to cook their food on (using charcoal) and since they're only a little more than one foot high, the cook has to either bend over double or squat to cook on it.  So we built a sturdy kitchen table that would lift up the three jikos they have and make it a little easier for them to cook.  The building was a good release for my grief.

The morning of Monday the 25th, we got started on the rabbit house we're building for their expanding rabbit "farm".  We agreed that it was important to do this since the rabbits will provide meat for the orphans and selling them will earn some money for the orphanage.  Anyhow,  I was bent over fixing a bent nail in the frame when I received a blow in the head that gave me my very first concussion (to be confirmed later by a doctor in Uganda).  It was a fascinating experience.  Alex later told me that my head was in the direct path of Kevin, the biggest of the boys, as he was running at full speed down the hill.  My fragile little head received the full brunt of his hip.  I had a "whiteout"- the opposite of a blackout- dizziness, a fierce headache, and nausea/vomiting.  Like Alex said, I now know something of what NFL players go through on a regular basis.

Tuesday, June 26. Tuesday was one of the most profound days in my entire life and THE most profound of this entire month.  We were given the opportunity to go look for deaf orphans living in villages a hour away from Kisii with Daniel, the director of LDO, and Winston.  My headache had reduced to a dull throb so I grabbed this opportunity, along with Alex and Alexa.  Javier and Dallas stayed behind to run camp, Moises and Kristina needed to do errands in Kisii to prepare for their flight back to America the following weekend.

First of all, the African definition of a village is nothing like what we think it is-- from our vast experience of watching various Hollywood films. Normally, an African "village" in one of those films consists of a cluster of thatched huts and scantily dressed people in loincloths, brandishing spears.  Maybe a hundred years ago, this would have been common.  In reality, a modern village is more likely to be just remote country with great distances between each hut.  The huts are still thatched, they are still made from mud, but they are nowhere as neat or well built as the ones we see on movies.  There usually is just one long road that is nearly impossible to travel on by car, despite it being miles from one end of the village to the other, with few of the huts within sight of each other.  The people of these villages are beyond poor.  Adults can barely clothe themselves, so their children generally go naked for most of their early years.  Food is scarce.  Children are lucky to make it past infancy.  Many are left orphaned by AIDS.

The first village we went to had four deaf orphans.  After getting our car several miles down the road (with some close calls) we met up with a nine year old deaf boy.  He was orphaned by AIDS before he was two, but thankfully he was taken in and raised by an elderly neighbor.  She did what she could to keep him alive but had no way or knowledge to give him a language. The entire time we were with him, the only thing he could do was nod.  We got to see the hut he lives in and the approximate site of his parents' graves, next to the hut.  The hut is badly dilapidated and the other children living in it looked badly malnourished and were listless.

The second orphan was brought over to the hut by her uncle and his friends.  She was introduced to us as Ooki and her unique features told us that she had Down's Syndrome.  Unlike the first boy we met, 7 year old Ooki wasn't shy about greeting us and giving us a thorough inspection of her own.  Her lovable and friendly nature won us over immediately even though she, too, had no language.  Her story is the same as the boy's - orphaned as a baby by AIDS and raised by her uncle.  We didn't get to see where she lives, but we can safely assume it isn't that different from the boy's home.

After meeting Ooki and giving her and the boy a lollipop, we walked back down the road to meet another child.  She was just a tiny thing that clung to her grandmother's skirt.  We were told that she was four years of age, even though she wasn't any bigger than my two year old nephew is.  Her parents both died of AIDS, leaving her to be raised by her grandmother. No language either.  She was deathly afraid of us all and cried if separated from her grandmother.  She didn't have any clothes on except for a ragged, torn shirt.

On our way back up the road, the fourth orphan met up with us.  She is four years old too.  She is the last of 12 children whose parents died of AIDS.  Her older brother and his wife has been raising her.  One of the things that struck me was how lifeless she seemed.  Nothing got a reaction out of her, negative or positive.  She just stood there, staring ahead, not exactly at us or anything else.  She let us pick her up but just hung in our arms limply and continued to stare out at nothing.

After leaving the last girl, we headed out to a school (for hearing children) about a hour away to meet two orphans that lived there with their caretakers.  One was a 8 year old boy, a shy but cheerful child with rudimentary language skills, mostly home signs.  His father's whereabouts are unknown and his mother died giving birth to him.  His mother's sister fed him cow's milk to keep him alive as a baby and raised him.  One of his forearms are shorter than the other, as well as his femur on the same side, but as his aunt tells it, he doesn't let it stop him.

The five year old girl with him is another orphan of AIDS, raised by her grandmother, who isn't in good health.  The girl had no language skills either but seemed quite animated and while somewhat shy of us strangers, was friendly with us in the end.

After the school, we went to another village about thirty minutes away and drove for about a hour down the long, rather perilous road of that village to meet the last orphan of the day (again, another victim of AIDS- both parents).  When we finally got to the point of no return, we still had to wait for the girl and her caretakers (neighbors of her parents) to make the long walk to the road from their house.  When they got there, we were stunned by the girl's age and how big she was.  She is fourteen years of age and already fully developed, at least physically.  Mentally, she had absolutely no language at all.  Her caretakers told us that she stays in the house all day long and does next to nothing.  They had no idea what resources are out there for the girl or they would have done something sooner.

At the end of the day, I was at a loss for words.  So many deaths from AIDS, so many children left orphaned by AIDS.  So much poverty.  The country we saw, the places where these children live is one of the most beautiful places in the world and the soil is rich and ripe for farming, but there is so much death, despair, and hunger on it.  It's all wrong.  It shouldn't be like that, but it is.

The more time I spend at LDO, the more confident I am that God has sent me here for a purpose.  Not just for this one summer but for many more to come.  LDO is a safe haven for these children and LDO needs as much help as it can get.  The seven kids we saw in the villages that day were only seven out of hundreds of deaf orphans in similar, or worse, situations.  The 14 wonderful children at LDO, who we've grown to love and gotten quite attached to, were once exactly like those kids we met in the villages that day.  Lifeless, languageless, inanimate.  Now, looking at them, seeing them play, talk, fight, it is difficult to believe what they were once like those village kids.

These children need a place like LDO.  They need LDO.  LDO would love to take in these children, but they can only afford to take care of 14 orphans, which they already have.  For just a small amount of money, we can give LDO the resources to take in these kids and feed them, clothe them, teach them, and more.