The Good Life Orphanage

Are you sitting down, yes after weeks of going from one government department to the other we finally got our first two babies today, the court hearing started at 9.00am & we got the children out of the hospital at 4.10pm, never knew there were so many pieces of paper to be signed, we then asked for our papers relating to the children, a one page Court Order & a letter from the Department of Children telling where the children were found by Good Samaritans, that’s all they know.

Gracie is a six month old girl who is malnourished & needs TLC, Michael is a beautiful baby boy about 8 weeks old we think, they don’t know when they were born so it just a guess by their size. It was a very humbling experience going into the hospital to pick them up, two sometimes three little babies in a cot, they don’t cry because no-one responds to them so they just lie there & look up at the ceiling, they are so helpless. There are other orphaned abandoned children in the hospital but because there is no budget to feed them, they only get two small cups of milk per day, imagine a newborn baby trying to feed from a plastic cup because there are no bottles.

Thanks for the prayers, they were answered!

It has been a great week, all the prayers you have all been saying for us have been answered, after a shaky start on Monday with trying to make sure everything was in place, the Department of Children Inspection team of six along with six other people from neighbouring orphanages came yesterday, they could not believe the project and the concept we are working on. When the youth officer saw the acre farming plot he was delighted as he said as in many countries people emphasise on becoming doctors, lawyers or bankers but no-one encourages children to work the land and be able to be self sufficient on what their surroundings have to offer. When we explained about our plans to encourage the more academic children to continue their education & the children gifted with their hands to learn a trade he was delighted, as the less academic gifted children in this country are just pushed to one side.

When they arrived Peter (a trustee) and Matron Josephine did the grand tour, they met the House Mothers & House Auntie, the girls had the place spotlessly clean and made everyone feel very welcome. Then after about an hour of looking around they interviewed Peter, Josephine, Kevin and myself about what we wish to achieve & what way we are going to run the orphanage. The most unusual question “How many children will be sharing clothing”?, when we said every child will have their own towels, bedding & clothing they were amazed! They enquired about the admission criteria and the children being 0-5 years, we said that although we know there are many orphans we feel that the younger children can benefit more from our project if the grow up within it from a young age and they agreed with our plans. At the end they said the orphanage will be registered in Kenya as a Charitable Children’s Institute and we have to contact them on Monday to see when our first children are being admitted.

What a relief, we now can concentrate on the most important thing, bringing these poor little orphans into the orphanage & giving them a better life & thats what it is all about. We will make sure each orphan comes directly from the Department of Children & we have a committal order with each child’s background & their parents’ death certificates. Our Matron, Josephine, seems very capable so she will deal with the day to day running of the project, over the next four weeks we have lots of paperwork to get in place, needless to say Kevin is now planning a few days fishing as his typing skills leave a lot to be desired and he has worked so hard on getting the buildings and plot into shape, the matron has allowed him a few days off - believe it or not she told him off the other day for driving too fast and rising dust, she is a very brave woman!