ANB-BIA SUPPLEMENT

Whenever 6-year-old Omar becomes ill, Nkirote has to rush to the nearest hospital to call the volunteer nurse for help. This is something that Nkirote has been doing since little Omar came to stay with her

At 65, the childless Nkirote has been given a second chance of motherhood at the «Pepo la Tumaini Jangwani» HIV/AIDS Community Project. The Project’s name roughly translates, means «a wind of hope in the desert or wilderness». The fact that Nkirote has been accepted in the Project and has the chance to take care of other people’s children, has gone a long way towards assuaging the pain of rejection from her family, after failing to have children of her own.

It’s a unique arrangement. Nkirote has been mother and grandmother to little Omar for the last two years despite not being a blood relation. Two years ago, Omar joined the increasing number of orphans in Kenya, after loosing his single-parent mother to the ravages of HIV/AIDS infection. It was after the burial of his mother that neighbours took him to «Pepo La Tumaini», as the Centre is commonly known.

«Pepo La Tumaini»

The Centre is situated on the Kula Mawe Estate, on the outskirts of Isiolo town in the Eastern Province of Kenya. It is a community-based HIV/AIDS programme providing palliative care to those infected and affected by the disease. It serves the pastoralists’ communities of Borana, Somali, Samburu and Turkana among others, including some farming communities occupying this arid area.

The Centre mainly caters for women abandoned as a result of socio-cultural issues, HIV and AIDS infection, together with children orphaned by the disease. At the Centre they live in family units where the women are given between 6-8 children to take care of.

Today the community has suffered yet another loss. One of their members has died from Tuberculosis (TB), a disease that has become increasingly prevalent with the onslaught of HIV/AIDS. The Centre’s coordinator, Hadija Hassan, sadly remarks that death is an every-day occurrence for the community, as most of their members are already ailing.

Education fights poverty

Visitors from the Poverty Eradication Commission (PEC) have come to support this community complete a classroom. The Centre also provides early childhood education to the orphaned children up to Standard Three, before placing them in formal schools. The PEC, implementing the 15-year National Poverty Eradication Plan (NPEP), envisages increasing the school enrolment rate by 15%, and increasing school completion rates by 19% during the Plan’s first six years. The overall objective is to achieve universal primary school education for all by the year 2015, in line with the 20/20 pact endorsed by leaders at the World Summit for Social Development (WSSD) in 1995 in Copenhagen.

The Plan sets out to use a combination of policy and management initiatives, focused on increasing primary school enrolment and completion rates, for the most disadvantaged groups of people — and this amid shrinking levels of resources. Education is being seen as a component that can effectively fight poverty in Kenya.

According to the Kenya Economic Survey of 2000, the number of institutions of education is estimated to have increased by 3.1% between 1999 and 2000, and this was attributed to early childhood development programmes initiated by the Government and other development partners.

Investing in basic education is currently seen as an effort that will greatly contribute to the overall goal of economic and social development through higher labour productivity, improved nutritional status and enhanced partnerships in national development.

The Centre’s history

Hadija Hassan is a teacher by profession and admits there were many difficulties in having the Centre accepted by people living in the surrounding community. Most of them are Muslims and very reluctant to admit to the existence of HIV/AIDS, let alone its effects.

It all started way back in 1994 when Hadija and four others attended an HIV/AIDS awareness exposure conference, organized by the Kenya Pastoral Programme — a programme sponsored by the Danish Development Agency. At that time, talking about the disease was unheard of. Quite the contrary to what took place on 9 September 2001 when Muslim women gathered at a Workshop in Nairobi, to discuss the challenges they were facing as a community because of HIV/AIDS.

After some time, the Centre started receiving cases of those affected and infected by the disease. The staff accept cases no matter the person’s religious and ethnic backgrounds. They are united in the cause of consoling the rejected and disheartened.

Volunteer teachers and social workers now run the Centre. The Local Authority allocated them the 2-acres of land at Kula Mawe area, on the outskirts of Isiolo town. With the help of homeless boys locally known as «Kusanya» or «collectors» who also regard the place as a shelter for themselves, the volunteers were able to put up huts and other structures for the children. The «Kusanya» boys, have been brought into the project by the Brothers of Charity, and strongly identify themselves with the Centre, which they regard as their second home.

Hadija Hassan says, from an initial 36 people, the Centre has grown to accommodate about 97. Its guiding light is to give hope to people as they continue grappling with HIV/AIDS and poverty. The Centre also provides care in the home (i.e. «Home-Based Care») to 610 of their members, together with 400 other non-members who have come to appreciate the services provided.

Volunteer nurse Pauline Kinyua says the Centre needs an assortment of drugs costing about US $2,464 per month to cater for the growing number of cases. The Centre has only been to do so with the support of friends and partners. One such staunch friend has been Action Aid which gives them a general drug kit twice a year.

The «Kusanya» have risen to the challenge and made a handcart for the Centre, which has been very handy in transporting the sick to hospital. Hadija says they have also received overwhelming support from the local community which in time had come to realize that HIV/AIDS is a major cause of poverty because of the increasing loss of active and productive members of the local community. Creative and innovative ways of dealing with the causes and symptoms of HIV/AIDS and poverty are thus needed.

The children

Children at the Centre are disadvantaged when compared with children living in conventional families. Apart from being real orphans (because their parents are dead), they also have to grapple with debilitating diseases as a result of their sero-positive condition. The four volunteers at the Centre, Edward Limo, Abdi Ibrahim, Pauline Kinyua and Hadija Hassan, are driven by the desire to provide hope to the affected and to fight the stigmatization that accompanies the disease. They are also determined to ensure that the children get the necessary education that equips them with essential skills for living a fulfilled life.

Their motto could be something like: «Where there is no vision, people perish».