Lili's trip report to MCC Kawangware, Sept 2012

This is Lili's post reporting on her trip to MCC Kawangware during September 2012. (We also hope to pull our photos together soon and get those posted. Might end up on our Facebook MCC page: "Mercy Children Centre Kawangware")

I am grateful to be able to announce that there is no drama coming out of Mercy Children’s Centre Kawangware these days. Our institutionalization process is going smoothly and all involved are behaving very professionally in order to maintain our mission.

Warning: 2-pages of philosophical and policy discussions follow:

We constantly struggle to stay within budget given the seemingly endless needs of our 200+ students and their teachers, (but anybody who has raised children understands this reality). Still the bottom line is that, thanks to your donations, our kids are doing well: they get lunch every day and they are following the Kenyan national educational curriculum while they enjoy their school community and even some enrichment programs like football, music and dance and even some craft classes.

Inflation remains high in Nairobi and the teachers are again having trouble meeting their basic cost of living from their tiny salaries but they are still devoted to caring for and educating their classes and everyone seems very happy to be part of the Mercy Centre community. Gone are any remnants of jealousy or secrecy which had gotten a bit out of hand under the guidance of our previous headmaster. Since January of 2012, the new directory John Wafula; the new financial auditor Andrew Omondi and I are diligent in our quest for transparency and team responsibility and so far this is paying off. Frequent teacher meetings where we discuss everything, even sensitive topics, have been very beneficial to a strong shared work ethic.

I just spent almost two weeks in Nairobi and I also got to visit the 8 graduated secondary school students who are staying at Green Valley Academy in Limuru (a neighboring town to Nairobi) and to talk to a couple of the other high school students. These kids are very aware of how lucky they are to get a secondary education and they are serious about working hard enough to take full advantage of their opportunity. In fact our secondary school sponsorship program is going very well despite the heavy management load it involves so that now we are up to 16 students being individually mentored and sponsored. We plan to sponsor four more students in January (the three top grades from MCCs 8th grade class and one returning 16 year old student who dropped out to have a baby in March but who is keen to repeat her Form I now that she has found someone to look after her son). These students will need individual sponsors (at a cost of roughly 50 euros a month) but we are so hopeful that together we can find them sponsors that I have already promised ‘scholarships’ to our three top students to send them to secondary boarding school. (It is worth noting that our 8th grade class amounts to about 15 kids and they all want desperately to go to high school so as long as we have Jacob Kwembo volunteering his time, care and expertise in student mentorship and sponsorship our expansion potential is only limited by donor generosity. These teenagers are lucky to have all of our attention but Jacob has proven exceptionally good at looking out for them, understanding their needs and guiding them towards personal adult responsibility.)

Mind you my rosy prognosis for the future of the Mercy Children’s Centre would seem surreal to you, if you were to visit the school. Our lunches are minimal and of dubious nutritional content, especially when you consider that for many kids this is all they eat in a day. The children don’t have any kind of health care, they wear tattered uniforms and often ill-fitting shoes and the ‘campus’ is shockingly unattractive and dirty to the western eye, but these are the everyday realities of slum dwelling in Kenya. We do not offer the best school in the world, just one that is good enough to guide these disadvantaged kids through a tough childhood towards a self-reliant, caring adulthood. It is the community and the shared sense of careful responsibility that is our greatest strength and you can’t measure that….but I can assure you that is it thriving.

Because of the changing nature of our community, we have decided to close our dormitory in April of 2013. Ironically these apartments, which were originally developed to house the most abused and neglected kids of our community have, over time, morphed into a relative prestigious residences for the lucky few children whose families have managed to get them accepted at the dorm. The three meals a day and comparatively secure living and studying arrangements offered at our dorm have led to a situation where there is strong competition among all kids to get into the dorms. We have also determined that all the dorm kids can be relocated safely. We have therefore decided to close the dorms and to spend the money instead on a healthy porridge breakfast for the whole school. This policy coincides with a realization that even AIDS orphans are generally welcomed into some kind of extended family in Nairobi so that all our kids presently have somebody who will share their very humble homes with them. We are realizing, with relief, that the term ‘AIDS orphan’ no longer carries the Oliver Twist type stigma that it did just a few years ago, and that the African tradition of ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ is still alive despite its near drowning under the tsunami of the African AIDS epidemic of the turn of the millennium.

With an AIDS infection rate leveling out at roughly 10% in Nairobi, and with ARVs becoming increasingly available, the tradition of extended family care is again able to be called into service. None of our children are fully homeless. We are proud of the community support that has always sustained Mercy Children’s Centre and I am proud to say that we haven’t destroyed it (which can happen by rendering the significant personal sacrifices called upon by the local supporter network irrelevant) with our western largess. Most Nairobi slum dwellers struggle to provide a comfortable life for their families, they are willing to work very hard to facilitate their livelihoods but they will also happily step back and let rich westerners take over the care of their hungry nieces, nephews or grandchildren if they think that is best for all. I don’t think it is – I believe these kids need their extended families, need to feel like valuable children of Kenya and need to belong to their hometown. So I am happy that we foreign donors to Mercy Children Centre haven’t trodden too heavily on the local community culture. The Mercy Centre is an indigenous community school supported by the local teachers, shop keepers, land owners and professionals. We foreigners are helping with the material support that is needed to make the whole orphan education project seem both possible and valuable to the community.

Thank you all so very much for your support.

Wow, additional IEA donations in October..

In addition to the items listed previously below, we have just received EUR 200 from candy sales from the IEA/ESD Division - second time they have donated funds to MCC - wow! AND, an additional 120 Euros from the runners at the Paris-Versailles race. Finally 90 Euros from those who purchased some items from the Fultons moving sale (indicated that it would be donated to MCC). Thanks everyone !

Also, Friends of MCC have (finally) received their disbursement from Global Giving and have sent 400,000 KSH to the school to start making the purchases of beds, desks, books, cooking supplies, uniforms and other badly needed goods. We will try to upload some pictures of all this soon. Thanks again to all 80 people who donated to that project!

Some amazing contributions

We've had great success (and luck) this past couple of months with fundraising. This includes:

Global Giving drive: We signed up with Global GIving (www.globalgiving.com). The first step is to prove you "belong" by reaching certain goals in an initial fundraising drive. We needed to raise USD 4000 from 50 separate donors in one month (August 2011). We passed with flying colours, thanks to the 80+ donors who contributed over USD 5000. Special thanks to Brendan Beck who contibuted over $1000 at a key moment and thus single handedly put us well beyond the finish line. These funds will mainly go toward a special purchase of books, uniforms, desks and other supplies in Kawangware for 2012. The extra funds will go into the general budget for MCC for 2012, probably toward the budget for the MCC nursery in Kakamega.

IEA runners: the International Energy Agency in Paris has a group of runners who collected EUR 1080 as part of the Paris-Versailles annual 16k race. About 10 of them, led by Dennis Best, went after sponsors and ended up with an amazing donation for MCC - enough to cover the costs of supporting 200 children (basically everyone in Kawangware) for a month (at this point, namely January 2012). There should also be enough there to pay for new uniforms for the Kawangware students football team. Thanks very much runners! and to your sponsors!

Jim Murphy (with assistance from Maggy Madden and Siobhan Einarson). Jim insisted that, apart from paying for one tree for his place in Burgandy, he would donate the rest of his retirement party gifts to MCC. Well, quite a retirement party, he and his assistants raised about EUR 680. Running with the value for kids in Kawangware concept, this gets us through about 2/3 of February 2012. Great!

Thanks again everyone,

Lew

Springtime in Kenya, 2011

By Lili Fulton (with some inputs from Lew)

Hi all,

Lew and I just got back from our annual visit to Kenya to visit the Mercy Children’s Center and I have lots of pictures and news to report. Mostly things are progressing well, with new students and new class levels and such. And, as with any school, there are various issues to deal with. I dealt with teaching issues (e.g. concerns over curriculum, test scores and teachers’ discipline methods), management issues (teacher hiring/firing policies, strengthening the role of the local community), and of course budget issues; especially the constant need for more desks, food, clothes and school supplies.

The Bumala school is as beautiful as ever though it is strained to try to feed and clothe the 300 kids who now go there (and especially the 35 or so who are now staying in the dormitory). The latest new water well (deeper, electric pump) is working pretty well so far, and they are having a nice rainy season which should help the vegetables. And, we started a high school – at least the first year of one, known as Form 1. So far we have three teachers, one 28 student class. The goal is to make this high school self-supporting. So far nineteen students pay, nine are graduates from MCC Elementary or local orphans and therefore do not pay. The fees for the paying students just about cover the cost of the teachers. It’s a good first step, but we have far to go to fully develop the new school.

In Nairobi, our Kawangware MCC school is also rolling along fairly well, though we are still “stuck in the mud” and continue our search for a new location. We now think it will take a bigger sum to make this happen, and we are considering fundraising options. But for now things are okay, the facility is not great but serviceable, and the students and teachers remain enthusiastic.

In January we sent some Kawangware Class 8 graduates out to Bumala to start Form 1 at the new High School, and had included our class 7 and 8 kids (about 10 of them) so that we could close down the boy’s dormitory in Nairobi. As it turns out, after one term up country, many of the Class 7 and 8’s were very ready to come back to their homes in Kawangware. So we are welcoming them back and reopening the boy’s dorm on the Kawangware campus and putting the head teacher – John Wafula – in to live with these kids. Here is a picture of some of the boys who want to live (again) at the school sponsored apartment. Some of them admittedly look awfully old to be in fifth grade but I promise you there they are.

On the other hand the Form One kids at Bumala seem very happy with their new home and schooling. They may miss their people back home but they seem to like their new bucolic home very much, and like many 15 or 16 year olds the most important people in their lives are their classmates anyway. I was amazed by how mature and sharp some of ‘our kids’ look these days. It warms the heart. Unfortunately I didn’t bring a camera with me to Bumala when I visited.

April is a holiday month between terms for Kenyan schools but I was able to have a craft day at the Kawangware school. We worked outside while the floor was drying with new hard clay covering. Five years ago we had resurfaced this floor but it has suffered the ravages of time so badly that it needed a new covering. For the smaller classrooms, we are tying a cheaper technique this term: we are simply completely wetting and smoothing the dirt floors now - during the off time - so that they can dry in an undisturbed fashion and hopefully quit destroying our desks with their gullies and holes. Such is life in our fairly muddy slum.

Thanks to some donations by Barbara Hoegen and her colleagues at the American School of Paris we were able to give the kids book bags and back packs to decorate on craft day. The baby class also got tin cups that they each put their own name on while the teachers helped decorate each one specially.

Finally I repeated the macramé class while a neighbor lady taught the older kids how to make beads from recycled paper. They are really very nice and I ended up buying a bunch of these necklaces in the hopes of selling them in Paris as an income generation scheme for the school. Here are 2 examples (please excuse the aging model but she was the only one available on such short notice):

Update on Needs:

My visit did remind me of just how much is needed for the kids, and I found that our “start of year” budget didn’t fully cover the unexpected restarting of the dorm and acquisition of all needed school supplies. I have identified a number of areas where we need to raise funds (beyond our monthly budget). These include:

• Books: each year we try to purchase some new supporting books for the teachers, and this year “social studies” is very important, in part because of the new Kenyan constitution that is now covered in the new texts. Text books are unfortunately expensive, so to get about 20 new books it will cost around KSH 30,000 (EUR 250, USD 350 – note that currently the exchange rate is about KSH 120=EUR 1 and KSH 85=USD 1).

• Shoes: we need lots of new pairs of shoes, like all years, and at about KSH 500 per pair. This will cost KSH 50,000 to 100,000 depending on how many kids we supply.

• Hoodies: the cold season is coming (yes, in June/July it can get down to +10 at night, occasionally even +5 and no one has heat). These kids need warm clothing. A sweater or a ‘hoody’ costs about 800/= each. We could use at least 100.

• Beds and bedding: for the dorms we will need some new beds and mattresses, and bedding with mosquito netting. All in all it costs around KSH 12,000 for a bunk bed that can sleep four. We need 3 such setups (KSH 36,000). It would be good to replace some existing mattresses as well (up to 10,000).

• Large Propane Cooker: I had wanted to buy the urban campus a gas cooker because I am ashamed of the fact that they still cook with charcoal and wood. Our analysis of the recurring costs makes it look like using the canisters of gas would actually be very comparable in price to buying charcoal or wood once they have invested the upfront cost.

• Computers: Though we got the computer center going in Bumala (thanks to a number of generous donations of laptops), we don’t have computers in Kawangware. We won’t try to start a formal computer centre there at this time, but the teachers would like some computers so we are looking for about 3-5 not-too-old laptops for them. Any laptop that accepts USB sticks is very useful for internet access.

• One student (Valentine, one of our Kawangware graduates) is entering Form 2. Last year she was at a boarding school in western Kenya but we lost our sponsor for her, so she moved back to Nairobi. We hope to put her in a high school in Nairobi, for a cost of about KSH 15,000 per term.

Anyone who would like to sponsor one of these needs, you are most welcome! (email us at mercy.center@gmail.com)

We also will be starting our regular fundraising for our monthly expenses (our Friends of MCC contribution is about USD 2000 per month, and we have already used up what we had left at the end of 2010 – so we’re getting started a little late here!).

In particular, we need to pay teachers salaries – these average about KSH 3,500 to 4,000 per month. We would love to get all our teachers sponsored this year – and we will be happy to put people in touch with teachers they sponsor, if interested – or at least to know who they are and what class they teach, etc. If we could arrange a monthly “virement” to feed into our monthly budget transfer to the school, that would be great.

And Finally: I met a few other orphans, who for varying reasons can’t go to MCC, but who also need sponsorship to continue their educations. One is too old for our program since she is trying to finish high school, one is too young and lives with her aunt far away from the school, and one is not healthy enough (at 10 years old, and though he is neither HIV+ nor suffering from epilepsy, he sometimes faints for no apparent reason so he is living with an uncle while looking for medical support). If you would like to develop a direct relationship with any of these kids we could help you work that out.

NEW NGO AND FRENCH BANK ACCOUNT

Luckily we’ve finally gotten our new NGO, “Amis de MCC” officially registered in France and have opened a bank account, and we are happy provide that information to interested folks (and to help arrange some “virements” :-). This will complement our existing NGO, Friends of the Mercy Children's Centre, which enables Americans to contribute tax-free. (see www.friendsmcc.org)

Regards to all,

Lili

A big THANK YOU to Sally Wilkinson and her team of gourmet lunch preparers for the amazing fundraising lunch they provided at the International Energy Agency last week. We raised nearly EUR 1500! Also thanks to Jim, Margaret and Olivier for their support, and to all those who came, donated and ate well... AND ALSO to Gillian Balitrand for raising over EUR 1000 via running in the Paris-Versailles race, October 2010!

Trip report: Lew and Lili Fulton, March 2010: “Springtime at the Mercy Children’s Center”

Okay so it is always springtime in Kenya…still Lew and I got to go visit ‘our kids’ at the MCC in Nairobi and Western Kenya in March, and had a great time. And here, finally is our report.

Kawangware (Nairobi) Campus

Things are not perfect in Kawangware, but we’ll start with some good news: our first graduation class (Class 8) took the Kenyan national exams, which must be passed to attend secondary school (high school). They did surprisingly well. We had seven students who sat the difficult exams. The big news is that one of our 2 passing students – Dancan - received the best score from all the 150 students in the Kawangware area of Nairobi.

Two of our 7 students – Dancan and Valentine – passed with high enough scores to be admitted to a quality academic boarding school in Western Kenya for their four year secondary education. They have both been sponsored by MCC supporters to the order of $50 a month so that they can continue their education. We got to visit these kids at their new school (pictures below) and they seem to be doing very well in their new environment. Thank you so much Francois and Jerry!

Like last year, in 2010 there are still about 150 students, in 11 classes starting from baby class, nursery and kindergarten, up to Class 8. They are spending pleasant days learning, sharing and growing at our Kawangware campus. Every one of them has shoes, a uniform and notebooks. Thanks to Kitsy McMullen for providing a full updated supply of all the different subject textbooks that are needed for each grade level, and to Nigel Sizer, Knox Presebyterian Church in Ontario, and several others for providing funding that covers to costs of teachers and food at the school.

We were finally able to get the 8th grade girls in for HIV counseling and testing. By doing so we also attracted the attention of an excellent national NGO that specializes in AIDS prevention and care in Kenya. LVCT (Liverpool Voluntary Counseling and Testing) is now planning to bring mobile testing and counseling services to the school and to give classes to the children, the teachers and the surrounding community on HIV/AIDS.

We have developed a partnership between MCC and an employee of the Solar Cookers International organization who plans to organize a children’s environment club for our kids within the Kawangware slum.

The MCC boys and girls have a soccer team that competes against neighboring schools in their area. They don’t yet have uniforms but they already have a competitive team. We are looking for a local sponsor for uniforms.

The teachers at Kawangware seem to be more of a team themselves these days then they have ever been. They are dedicated to teaching the kids and are trying to improve their classroom management techniques. Unfortunately corporal punishment and rote memorization are still the norm in many Kenyan schools but our teachers are trying to move beyond that to a more positive educational experience for our kids.

The Challenges:

Conditions in the Kawangware slum seem to be getting worse. It is now seen as one of the more dangerous areas of Nairobi. While we were in Kenya the Nairobi police were caught in the act and filmed while they shot and killed seven Kawangware residents for what was clearly only very mild provocation. Luckily this made national news and the country is appalled, and some police were arrested, so in the long run maybe some much needed reforms will be implemented, but for now the media coverage only highlights just how vulnerable our Kawangware students are. It is not the ideal place to grow up.

The rents in Kawangware keep rising and the common area near the school is shrinking as more dwellings get built. So we are now looking to eventually change locations, and are considering various options from purchasing a building (very expensive even in the slums of Nairobi) to cutting back on the number of grade levels and seeing about sending the older students to board at our Bumala school. But we won’t make any changes before 2011.

We have five graduates who did not do very well on their national exams. I know these students personally and they are not at all stupid. It is obviously a tough exam. I hate to quit supporting those kids now but they could only continue their educations in technical high schools if they got sponsorship as well as some guidance (which Charles and Pius may be able to provide) A couple of them have returned to their rural homes.

One of our five graduates who is not in high school – Snoreen – has fallen ill with what appears to be rheumatic fever. Thanks to a fundraising effort by One Child’s Village in Edmonton we have been able to cover her doctor’s fees for the time being. She has been at the hospital for over a month now, and is expected to stay 2 more weeks because her kidneys were damaged by the illness as well. But I just spoke to the doctor who says that her long term prognosis is very good for complete recovery.

We continue to house 25 of the older students in a dormitory, and we changed location last year to a great building with cleaner, very secure apartments. But it is quite expensive to cover the costs of feeding and housing the kids who stay there. Since in Bumala we have now built a building that can serve as a dormitory (see below), we are considering moving some of our older kids out to Bumala and only to keep one of the two apartments that we are presently renting in Kawangware.

We are presently only offering a hot school lunch to 40 of our day students for the time being because the high cost of food and fuel. Others who have somewhere else that they can get lunch leave the school at lunchtime each day. We are not happy about this and a top priority is to feed all the kids at least one healthy meal a day but for now we are not succeeding in this goal. We continue to try to qualify for support from either “Feed the Children” or “World Food Program”, but the bureaucratic hurdles are formidable.

Overall, we are very proud of the teachers and students in Kawangware, and look forward to graduating our next Class 8 – close to 20 students – during 2010. Best of luck on the exams!

Bumala Campus

This was our first visit to Bumala in two years and it was really wonderful to see how much progress they have made out there, as well as what a healthy, friendly environment those kids are growing up in. Because MCC owns land in Bumala (5 acres), the school has been able to invest in lots of permanent structures. One Child’s Village has been an amazing benefactor in this regarding, funding most of the construction.

Good News

Using 2 of our 5 acres that remain unbuilt on, Charles has just planted crops to increase the self reliance for our school feeding programs.

The school is growing rapidly. Compared to 2009 when we had about 150 students, going into 2010 the school has increased to nearly 250 students, since more and more people from the community are asking to have the kids they know, or are caring for, accepted at the school. The school continues to enroll only orphans, but there is no shortage of supply. Given the low cost of food and good cooking facilities at the Bumala school, all the students are fed breakfast and lunch daily. Despite the rapid increase in numbers, they almost all have uniforms and shoes and they are even receiving nursing care, including treatment for the 50 or so kids who are HIV+.

In terms of facilities, thanks to the development projects of 2009, the school now has:

• Seven buildings, including 4 classroom buildings, a kitchen, and a multi-purpose building with offices and future dorm rooms
• Electricity hookup and wiring and lighting throughout most of the buildings
• computer classroom and sewing classroom with which they now provide training and workshops for other students from the Bumala community in these rooms
• Assembly hall and an overhead projector for “movie nights” and presentations
• Dormitory rooms that can house up to about 32 students (not yet occupied)

The Bumala branch of the Mercy Children’s Centre now has classes up to Kenyan class five level. This means that we have seven classes in all, including the two preschool classes. We also have a few older students who are paying for certificate classes in computers and sewing. This is the beginning of income generation for the school which will hopefully grow over time, making the school more self-sufficient.

The kids can put on a pretty professional welcome show. They sing and dance well. In fact it has been recommended that they might be ready to compete in a national music/dance competition.

Challenges:

The incredible growth of the Bumala campus is hard to keep up with both managerially and maintenance wise. But our staff (now 25 including 15 teachers!) seems to really be doing well and the kids are clearly thriving.

Despite our three large water storage tanks water is still a big problem: the well that we had built a couple of years ago has run dry. For now the school is buying water from its neighbors. We are negotiating with a local NGO that has dug a very deep bore hole to get water provided from there.

Charles and Pius have planted a number of trees – a couple of papaya trees are already bearing fruit. But we should continue to plant trees aggressively to ensure that 5 years from now there is plenty of shade and home-grown fruit.

Bumala is doing so well that we dare to dream of self sustainability. We may be able to add a secondary (high) school on the premises that could take in paying students along with ‘our’ orphans who pass the national exam. This could potentially cover much of the entire school’s operating costs. Developing this would involve a big push and will require funding for construction and initial equipment. We will plan this out during 2010, do some fund raising, and see if this is a possible project to undertake during 2011. If some students from Kawangware move out to Bumala, we could begin by offering just Form 1 (first year of secondary school), for which a room is already available.

We are still cooking with inefficient stoves and firewood. Given the Fultons training in energy management and appropriate technology, we really should be better able to manage some technology transfer here. But some customs are hard to change!

Kakamega

Yes there is a budding new campus at Kakamega, but it is just a pre-school. Pius’ hometown of Kakamega (tucked right up into an ancient rainforest in Western Kenya) has plenty of AIDS orphans of its own. They wanted to send some of their little ones to board in Nairobi or Bumala but since there was no room, they decided to start teaching 75 little orphans right there in their own town, in a half built brick building on a country road. With three volunteer teachers and a volunteer head master, they can provide a basic schooling for these kids. Some of the local families are chipping in porridge everyday so that they can have a meal. Mercy Children’s centre has provided some uniforms and guidance.

We visited the school and of course the kids were adorable. The teachers begged us for support and since Lili and Lew are suckers, we agreed – but for now at least we have agreed to personally provide a small amount of monthly support as long as the number of students does not increase! They agreed to keep it to the pre-school classes and to 75 kids, as they believe they can place most of the kids in a local elementary school from first grade on. So we have pledged to provide them with 150 dollars per month. But since all our supporters have done so well to relieve much of the burden of funding Kawangware and Bumala we Fultons might just be able to cover this cost.

Summary

In conclusion thanks to on-going leadership on the parts of Charles and Pius, strong commitment of all the teachers, and to your incredible support, the Mercy Children’s Center is still going strong. We are improving the lives of nearly 500 Kenyan kids who don’t have a lot of other options. I could see how they have grown over the years and I was beyond grateful to see them thriving.

It has been an economically tough year around the world, but people have been generous. Hopefully in 2010 this will continue - these kids’ still need our help.

Thank you so much for your continued support,

Lili and Lew Fulton

Mercy Children's Centre, Kenya: 2009 Year in Review

By Lili and Lew Fulton

Dear all,

Although we Fultons haven't been to Nairobi since March we have been in good touch with Charles and Pius. I figure now is a good time to update y'all about how we are doing at the Mercy Children's Centre.

Thanks to donations from many people, with especially important contributions from Carol Bohnenkamp and Acton Presbyterian Church, we are managing to maintain our operating budget of 2000 dollars per month and have been able to feed the kids and pay the teachers for another academic year. This is no minor undertaking and we are proud of ourselves and very grateful to you! I have to remind myself that each day spent in a safe school is a major accomplishment in the lives of our kids and even our teachers. Though we also have to remember that we give each teacher only 45 dollars a month to live on. And, of course, they are allowed to eat lunch with the kids (which, given the rising price of food, these days all too often only consists of rice or corn meal).

(As a side note: you can rent a room in the slums of Nairobi for as little as $15 a month so we hope $45 is a living salary. On the other hand, just to illuminate the disparity in life in Nairobi -- our modestly appointed by very well placed house cost us $1500 a month to rent when we lived there. And Sadie couldn't find a safe place to live for less than 700 a month when she went back to visit. That is because we wouldn't let her live in the slums -- these people are living at a comfort and security level that we really couldn't accept).

Meanwhile, in Bumala some great things are happening thanks to efforts by Charles, Pius, the teachers tehre - and also to One Child's Village (especially Todd Lorentz and Cristelle Audet). They have led fundraising efforts and funded an expansion of the campus out there. They have bought another 3 acres of land adjacent to the school (so we now have 5 acres in total for growing food), built a volunteer guest house/dormitory, two additional classrooms, a computer room with 6 computers and Internet, a sewing room with 3 sewing machines.

One Child's Village has also invested in major capital improvements, including better kitchen facilities and a 12-hole latrine out in Bumala. Finally the campus is even getting electricity installed throughout the entire complex. It is an amazing advance in this region to have electricity in our school so that now we can have computer classes and maybe even a movie night. (That bit was funded by a grant from FAWCO). But since their money has been completely earmarked for capital investments, our monthly operating costs remain funded out of the $2000 per month mentioned above. For more on their projets and vouter program You Can check out www.onechildsvillage.org.

In the long run we hope to move all our students from Kawangware to Bumala because the countryside setting offers a much healthier environment to grow up in. We are hesitant to make the jump however on the grounds that in Kawangware most of the students have extended family who are helping to raise them. Almost everybody would be very happy to send their children off to a boarding school up country largely for the obvious reason that this would cut out their costs in helping with the children's daily needs. The families of the kids would be more than happy to trust the Mercy Centre to take over full financial responsibility of their nieces, baby brothers or cousins. But for us the financial commitments to making this move would be large and irreversible -- once we take full care of the more nearly 300 kids full time they will truly be our wards. So in the meantime we are continuing to operate the school and pay rent in the slum (including for 25 of our students' accommodations) because it is working and for now that is all we can afford.

So for the short run while One Child's Village is making major capital improvements in Bumala we are experiencing added costs in Kawangware. The new baby classes keep coming in as our original kids grow up. Charles and Pius have been told that they cannot bring in every underpriviledged child they meet in the slum and it is very hard for them to keep the class sizes down to a manageable size. Logically, there will always remain this tension between providing a solid education and healthy childhood to the relatively lucky few who are adopted into our school or spreading our money more thinly to a larger clientele who we ultimately can't afford to keep. Don't forget that Kenya has 1.5 million orphans and no government programs for them.

Back in the states we have established another website and a charity entity which allows tax free donations to the ‘Friends of the Mercy Children’s Centre’ out of Piedmont California. Check it out at www.friendsmcc.org

Finally, while Charles and Pius feel a strong pressure to expand to more little kids Lili can't stomach the idea of letting the big kids graduate and head out into their wide world without our help. We have an 8th grade graduating class this December of 7 students. We paid their way to another charity based private school for the last two years, and they are sitting their exams now. They are roughly 14 years old and will get the Kenya primary school certificate if they pass their exams. To send them to secondary school will be very expensive, and to not send them to secondary school will be very hard.

Then next year's class of 8th graders amounts to about 15 kids and each younger class grows proportionally. The future is frankly far from settled. We are working on several different fund raising schemes but it is quite a challenge to keep up with our rising costs. Clearly we have already bitten off a very big project here and we need all the help we can get in chewing it.

So thank you in advance for any donations, or even fundraising ideas or leads you can help us with. Remember every last cent of the money that is sent to Friends of the Mercy Children's Centre is spent directly on the children.

Donations can be made directly via paypal on www.mccentre.org or sent by completely tax deductible check to Friends of the Mercy Centre, 172 Wildwood Ave, Piedmont CA 94610.