The Good Life Orphanage

A phone call on Monday 1st December could never have prepared us for the day ahead. The Department of Children in Kilifi has two orphaned children who needed rescuing immediately, off we set for the Vyambani Area which is about 30 miles from the orphanage in the interior. We met the village chief as he needs to give hs blessing to the children coming into our custody, first surprise not just two children but a family of six whose father had died four months previous and the mother had died in childbirth on 19th November, the new baby boy died three days later.


The village people were trying to look after them, we were taken into the jungle about 20 mins from the village to their house and at the side was the grave of the mother & the new born baby, three boys, 11, 4 & 3, and three girls 8. 6 & 2 years old. We were told by Department of Children that we could only take the youngest two, then we were told by the chief that we could take them all apart from the 8 & 6 year old girls as they were going to another orphanage, after animated discussions with the Department of Children, they agreed we could take the three youngest children, then the heartbreaking part we had to tell the oldest 11 year old boy that we could not take him as he was too old for our orphanage.

The chief asked us then to take he five children to the courts for committal orders & we had to leave the older boy behind in the village, a lot of tears from us but the children were just so excited to get into the minibus, they had never been in a car before & never saw a road, when we went over Kilifi Creek Bridge they were screaming with delight, we then had to take our three youngest & give the older girls to the woman from a girls orphanage. The three little children never cried just climbed into the back of the minibus and we continued our journey.

Onto Zion Clinic ,which is also run by a charitable organisation from Sweden, for the usual malaria & AIDS test & Thank God they were negative, so we now have another three children in Maguire House, they only speak their native tongue & when they saw the TV in the communal area last night they were asking what is this??

It broke our heart to split the family but as the village people said they will help look after the big boy & it is easier to feed one mouth compared to six. Things like this make us really appreciate what we have and also thankful that by the support we receive, we can help these poor children by giving them a chance when all else has failed.

Jambo from a very hot & sultry Mombasa, we arrived here on 8th February after deciding the civil unrest had not effected the coast as much as we were led to believe. On arrival at Nairobi Airport we were amazed to see only a trickle of people from the Kenya Airways & Virgin Atlantic flight were actually staying in Kenya, the majority were transferring to Zanzibar & other places. Nothing could prepare us for the scenes in Mombasa, we stay in Nyali and although the riots & trouble have not touched down here, there was not a tourist to be seen, the hotels are empty and thousands of staff have been laid off until further notice with no pay!! Spent two hours in Whitesands on Monday evening and only saw three tourists, the peace agreement signed on Friday is so important because this country needs to get back to some sort of normality so people can support their families.

Enough about the problems the 27th December elections brought, our orphanage site is looking unbelievable, all through the two months of turmoil our builders have kept up the momentum & although there has been a problem getting specialist materials everything is going great. The first two houses will be complete by 17th March 2008, the Office / Stores will be complete by the 30th March 2008 and the Farm Managers small house on farming plot will be complete by Mid May.

We are so pleased with the standard of work throughout the site, they have though deeply about how to make the buildings low maintenance and utilise the space correctly. The actual houses are big and as there are four massive bedrooms we have decided that each house will have eight to ten children. We have employed the Matron who seems very capable and the Farm Manager David, he is a very hard working young man who just gets on with things. We are still interviewing for the House Mothers but we know we will find the ideal people soon.

So it is all systems go, we have a final meeting on Thursday with the Department of Children regarding our registration as a CCIS in Kenya and once we receive this The Good Life Orphanage will be legitimate & recognised by the governing bodies in this beautiful country!!!

Check out more pictures on our flickr page!