Jospehine Kemunto in her sewing shop tells Joshua the ups and downs of her life in Kibera.With only 10 short days in Kenya, Board member Joshua Makori sacrificed precious family time to visit Village of Love, (in Kiswahili, Kijiji Cha Upendo). By good fortune he chose a Thursday, which coincided with the biweekly meeting of one of the clusters. All the women were eager to tell him how grateful they are for what has been done for them. “Without Kijiji, who knows where our children would be!”
They are amazed at the fact that people who don’t know them nevertheless care about them. One might think that the women would take the opportunity of a Board visitor from Canada to tell him about their needs, but in fact they asked if the program could possibly be expanded, to benefit more people around them who are struggling.
This was Joshua’s first visit to the Kibera slum. It touched him deeply. Addressing the guests at our recent Information Night, he wonders out loud at the fact that he has had to come to Canada to have his eyes opened to see the need for support.
Here in Canada, he says, people just don’t know the reality of poverty. When he tells his son that children in other parts of the world sleep hungry, his son thinks he is joking. He ponders the fact that at night his wife might ask him, “Have you locked the door?” In Kibera there are people who have no doors.
He was especially touched by two women: Mary Syombua and Josephine Kemunto.
Mary used to have so little materially that she couldn’t afford the dollar owed for rent and would quite often be evicted. Through Village of Love micro-loans and supports, Mary now owns her own house and actually rents out two rooms to others. She has become a landlady!
When Joshua visited Josephine at her sewing shop, Josephine was so intent to express her gratitude that she had to stand as she spoke rather than sit. Josephine had just returned from visiting her daughter at boarding school, where a prayer service had been held for all the children writing exams. Without Kijiji her daughter would not have had the chance to study and write this exam! The sole support for her 5 children, Josephine is now doing so well that she can support not only her own children, but also her brother’s children.
Joshua is impressed that in a place where no one would want to raise children, surrounded as they are by bad influences like gangs, drugs and criminal activity, the women achieve so much with the little they have.
“Sometimes,” he concluded, “We think that the future of children raised in these circumstances is set and inevitable, but we’re seeing that the children’s futures can be changed, for the better. They are not condemned to a life of extreme poverty.”