A Father's Playground

Last night Lois and Ernie invited us over for a curry. Ernie makes one of the best curries I have ever had, he has baked us a couple loaves of bread too. We might have to pack Ernie up and bring him home with us, I wonder if he weighs too much to be checked baggage?

Lois was telling us that even though the Bush administration spent billions on African aid (much of which went into politicians pockets), they withdrew any funding for family planning because most family planning included abortion as well as pregnancy prevention and aids protection.

Ignorance is the lock and education is the key to most of the world’s problems, it is no different here. Ending family planning education ended teaching people how to be responsible adults. The result was an explosion of little mouths to feed, many HIV positive.

Peter and Carol have started a nursery school to prepare some of the poorest children in Vipingo for primary school. Today we had to opportunity to go to the school, The Future Hope Nursery School. Most of these kids are HIV positive and many orphaned by AIDS. The school was a one room school house with kids from ages 3 to 8, about 35 in the classroom. The teacher was Montessori trained and seemed to be excellent, she had a great command of the classroom and was teaching the kids numbers through a neat little song. The kids were so cute in their little blue uniforms singing their number song.

Here are a couple of their stories:

Age 7 years, Chonyi tribe, her family is Christian. She tested positive for HIV in 2005 after both parents tested positive, she is on ARV's (retroviral therapy). Her father died in April 2007, her mother is sick and on ARV and TB drugs and is unable to work. She has two other siblings, Pransicah is the youngest.

Age 4 years, Choni tribe, his family is Muslim. His father died of AIDS in 2007, his mother has tested positive for HIV but is in denial and therefore not yet started ARV. The children have not been tested due to the mother's denial of her condition. He has a 10 year old sister, an 8 year old brother and a younger sister, 1 1/2 years old. The mother looks after the family by selling palm wine, a wine (sap) that comes out of palm trees much like you tap a tree for maple syrup.

Age 6 years, tribe unknown, her family is Christian. She was found on the streets of Mtwapa. Silviana and her siblings were Chokoraos (street kids) for two years. The mother is HIV positive, a drug addict and a prostitute. The children are now living with their step-grandmother. The grandmother is not working and relies on her eldest son to provide but he doesn't want the kids in his house.

Get the picture of what these kids are dealing with here???

We can feed starving African children until the cows come home but the problem will only be solved through education. Peter and Carol are doing a wonderful job with the nursery school through their fund the Vipingo Village Fund (www.vipingovillagefund.org). They are similar to Dustin’s GreenHouse in that they fund all administrative costs personally, so 100% of all donations go to educating and feeding these kids.