Aids day post

Jana, as part of our department's CSR/Christmas cheer, we linked up with 2 other small depts to visit St Teresa House of Hope Children's home off Gilgil - Nakuru Highway. It's a magnificent facility built by Italians for the Catholic church. Yaani, when we got there, all were in agreement that the needy ones weren't the kids, who were all girls, save for 1 boy, but it was us!!!!

The facilities were state of the art, DSTV, solar water heaters, washing machine, fully loaded kitchen and the finishing was top quality, puts even a digs in Kileleshwa to shame. But that's where the story gets interesting. The home was open in July, and caters for 19 kids (between the ages of 3 - 13) currently but with capacity for 100. It has 19 workers in total i.e. 3 sisters, cook, tailor, gardener, house mothers, teacher, and general workers. So the Italians set up this nice facility but there's no sustainable way of keeping the home running. So for all the fancy set up, food is in short supply!

Our boss who comes from Eldoret, came across the home on one of his trips and found out their situation. He organized for the visit, and set up a plan where the department christmas cheer fund would be used to provide food for the home for the entire year, split in 2 lots where the next load will be delivered sometime after march. I gained new found respect for the man! We also held an impromptu harambee and raised 14k to buy uniforms for all the kids, once again down to the boss.

All the kids in this home are HIV + and are under anti-retrovirals. Some are orphaned while others are brought by parents/social workers who are unable to provide for them. It was interesting hanging out with them and playing and just spreading the season's cheer around. Makes you realize the value of life.

Today, for the aids day celebrations, we had a one hour aids awareness session at work for 1.5 hours where professionals gave talks on living with the disease, treatments and demystify issues. Guess AIDS is real and we all have a duty to protect ourselves as well as one another.