MY FIRST OFFICIAL VOLUNTEER DAY

So today I started my volunteer career. 

I have been talking, thinking and dreaming of this moment for OVER 12 months and the day has finally arrived.  It may have taken me awhile to get to this point, but it has all been timed perfectly and I am ready to now tackle the next chapter of my life in Africa and in Kenya.

After seeing the orphanage last week there was no real time, appointment or meeting for today.  I asked when was it a good time to show up and was told that 12 noon is a great time as that’s when all the babies are waking up from their mid-morning naps.  I could just turn up at any time and to be honest I am not sure if they even expected me to come back.  I found Mary after I arrived and her reaction was ‘you came back’.  So that just cemented my thinking that The Nest must get a lot of people (mzungu’s) through their doors that ‘fly in and fly out’.  They volunteer their time, whether it be a day, a week or maybe a few weeks maximum and then they leave and more mzungu’s fly in and the same routine repeats itself.  I know I am going to have to prove myself to the ‘house mothers’ that I am here to stay and that they can get to know me and not worry that I am going to be leaving in a few weeks.

To give some more information about the place where I will be coming to twice a week from now on-The Nest is a project for the rescue, rehabilitation and integration of children in conflict with the law & children of imprisoned mothers.  The program reaches out to prevent the children of imprisoned mothers from fighting for survival on the street. The Nest rescues affected children and improves their living conditions during the imprisonment of their mothers. We rehabilitate and later reintegrate them and their released mothers with their extended families and society at large. We also work to create public awareness about the plight of children whose mothers are imprisoned for petty offenses.

The home was officially opened in 1997 by the founder and director Irene Baumgartner.

The Nest is registered as a Charitable Trust in Kenya and the program is not affiliated with any organization but depends entirely on private donations from within Kenya and friends abroad. This makes their fundraising very challenging and they trust in the continuous support of friends and well-wishers – some of which have dedicated their attention to the Nest for many years.  They welcome ANY kind of financial support, be it large or small and guarantee that the funds will be used exclusively for the overall welfare of the children and their mothers. They also welcome local donations like food, firewood, stationary, utensils, and clothing.  It is amazing I have already had a few enquiries from back in Australia on how they can help knowing that there is a person actually here on the ground and that they can be sure that I will make sure that everything that is sent and donated to me goes to where it should be and the longer I am at The Nest I can know what they need and what they don’t. 

The children of imprisoned mothers are committed into the Nest’s care by the Children’s Court. They are housed in the Children’s Home, located in Limuru, 20 km northwest of Nairobi. Here, children receive holistic care and formal education for time their mothers are imprisoned. The children’s home was officially opened in 1997.  Many children are traumatized after experiencing crime or abuse and the arrest of and separation from their mothers. Counselling, provided in the Nest’s loving environment, can heal the wounds they suffer in body and soul.  This is for the ‘older’ children and the Children’s Home is around a 40 minute drive from my place. 

I’m volunteering at the Halfway House, which is located in the Northern suburbs of Nairobi and only a 5 minute drive from my house.  This place provides emergency accommodation for up to 10 mothers with young children upon their release from prison. Here, mothers and children are reunited, often for the first time in years. Along with counselling, spiritual and moral support, and civic education, the women rebuild their self-confidence for reintegration into society. Specifically, the Nest offers imprisoned mothers and their extended families the following services:

Counselling, advice on how to get legal assistance and support with bureaucratic matters.  Following their release, the Nest empowers mothers economically through enrolment in credit schemes, training courses, self-help groups, and by helping the women find employment. All of the Nest’s activities are carried out in close cooperation with the officials of Prison Headquarters, Children’s Court and the Children’s Department.  On so called “visiting days” the children are taken to see their mothers in prison. For most mothers and children this tends to be a very emotionally stressful experience…  To date, they care for 100 children—ranging from newborn to 17-year-olds. In order to maintain the bond between the children and their imprisoned mothers, the Nest ensures the children regularly visit their mothers in prison. We also care for a number of abandoned babies for whom they try to find loving families.

So that is the background of where I find myself today and after speaking to Mary, I said ‘put me to work’ and the next 4 hours flew by as basically I got the privilege to cuddle and ‘love’ the babies as they required.  I wanted to know the name of each baby I held and eventually I will want to know they story of how they got to The Nest and also get to know all 17 babies that they currently have in their care.  From the moment I arrived to the moment I left I had a baby in my arms and I have to say how amazingly behaved they all are.  I settled in the playroom and as the babies woke up they were brought here after they had had their nappies changed and been fed.  It was just after 12 noon, and last time I was here there were a lot more babies awake than what there was today and after spending the afternoon there a lot of the babies had runny noses and chesty coughs, so I think they were sleeping due to medication and feeling a little off.  There was also no Mzungu’s this week, where last week there were at least 8 here.  There was this week 4 girls who would have been around 8 years old who were here with their volunteer mothers.  So to start with they were all over the babies and it was sweet to see them so committed to helping.  What 8 year old wouldn’t want to hold a cute baby in their arms?  So today I had Cora, Louie, Samson, William, PK and I spent a lot of time with an older child Rachael, who I think would have been around 18 months and had what looked like cataracts on both her eyes.  When she looked at me she had to turn her face to see me out of the corner of one of her eyes that wasn’t totally covered by tissue scar.

The playroom is a great place for the babies and as I was getting ready to leave the second round of children were starting to wake up and as per the lunch routine they were bought to the playroom and placed into one of the 14 bassinettes that they have in the room.  There are also some high chairs and 4 kids play stations, the ones that the babies lie under and knock around the hanging soft toys.  The room is surrounded by bench seats and there is a change table that pretty much only 2 women change the nappies so as to be able to free us to play/comfort other children in the meantime.  They certainly have a system, it works and everything moves and gets done like clockwork.  There are additional staff that are making the formula milk, that do the never ending washing and then they also need to feed themselves as well.  You should have seen the washing lines.  They would have been at least 10 clothes horses drying with hundreds of baby items catching the sun’s rays and drying.  Just imagine what washing you have to do with one baby, times that by 17 babies and for those mothers out there it gives you an indication on the amount of washing that gets done each day.  I will offer to take some of the larger items to be washed home, like blankets and sheets, but I guess that will have to wait, again until they know I am ‘for real’.

Not many of the ‘house mothers’ made chit chat with me the whole day.  I actually expected that and I know that I am going to have to do some ‘time’ before they know that I am not a ‘fly by mzungu’.  I’m not saying that they were nasty, far from it, and I wasn’t scared to ask questions or say something if I needed to, they weren’t ‘not’ approachable-but if I am to be working with the same ‘core’ ladies I am really going to have to work hard to prove myself and 95% of that will be done just by turning up twice a week and proving my commitment to the babies, to The Nest and also to them.  I can also understand where they are coming from and other expats and I have spoken of a similar thing.  When you talk to people in the expat community one of the first questions you ask is how long are you here for?  As harsh as it sounds, you dint want to go to the expense and emotional attachment to people that are only here for 3-6 months as you out all your time and energy into a friendship and then they ship off home.  It is similar here; the house mothers don’t want to pour all their time and energy into a mzungu that won’t be there next week.  I get that-but I know I will get past that and we will all be rocking friends in the coming months.   

A German doctor turned up during the course of the afternoon and it seemed like it was a standard call.  He was checking over the smaller babies and it was sweet the way that they were handled.  They were stripped down of all their clothes and wrapped in white cloth as they were weighed, limbs moved, their heads and ‘parts’ checked and then he would ask about their weight from the last visit, how are they feeding and what if any questions did the nurses of The Nest have about other children.  As mentioned there were a lot of babies with runny, snotty noses and a few that had a rather dry, loud cough, so they were also looked over by the doctor and then they were explained /shown how to administer the medication to the babies.  It was nice to see the daily running of the programme and to me, as an outsider looking at face value, the babies are well cared for, well fed, well dressed and are getting the required medical attention if needed and to think I am now going to be a part of this magnificent organisation, it makes me happy and to make the difference to a small babies day is all we can do, that day turns into a week and then hopefully with them finally reuniting with their mothers and living a loving and nurturing life with where they should be, in their mothers arms.  There seemed plenty of ‘house mothers’ around and we all had babies in our arms and there really wasn’t a lot of crying heard at all in the nursery where I spent a lot of my afternoon.  They really are well behaved babies and only cry when they need a change, a feed or I guess a little TLC.  At one point I had a 3 week old baby in my arms, I had Louie in a rocker on the floor and I was rocking with my left foot and I had PK in another rocker which I was rocking with my right foot.  Talk about multitasking and I loved every minute of it.  Looking into their BIG baby brown eyes, as they looked back at you, you wonder what they are thinking and all I can think of is to show them a smile, some kind soothing words, even if they are in English, and hope that they feel comfortable and loved in the warm arms of someone who cares.       

The time came for me to leave and the ‘house mothers’ didn’t look shocked at all.  I wanted to scream from the roof top that I was not like all the others, but only time will prove that to them.  I actually didn’t want to go and I don’t think there would have been a ‘good’ time to leave as there are always babies who want to have a hug and a cuddle and they were all waking up from their afternoon naps as I prepared to leave.  I spent a lot of time with Louie today, and he started to cry from the rocker when I had to get up and go.  Talk about heartbreak.  So all I could do was smile at the house mothers, tell them all I would see them all tomorrow and then I popped into the office to let Rachael know that I was leaving.  Besides Mary, she was in the office a lot and I assumed that she was a supervisor of some sort.  So I spoke to her to let her know my intentions, I was living here, I was planning on coming twice a week and that I could also help out in other areas, like setting up a Facebook page and anything else computer related I could also help with.  I think Rachael appreciated what I said and welcomed me and she said she looks forward to welcoming me to The Nest and I am happy to be here.

So that was my first volunteer day and as nerve wracking as it seemed this morning seems a distant memory now tonight and I feel I am in the swing of things already after one afternoon and I am looking forward to going back tomorrow for another shift of babies, cuddles, milk burps and smiles.