A Breath of A Fresh Air

Yesterday I got a breath of fresh air- both literally and metaphorically.

We got out of Nairobi- away from downtown, the hustle and bustle, the insane number of cars putting fumes into the air and traveled out to a suburb called Karen where the air did seem fresher and cleaner. The grass was greener and there were more trees to gaze up at.

But as we pulled into the gates of Nyumbani, I got another breath of fresh air- children with the biggest smiles you've ever seen and the Nyumbani staff and volunteers who are making the world a better place.

In case you didn't read my earlier blog post, Nyumbani is a children's home for HIV positive children, and it was the first hospice center for HIV positive children in Kenya. It was also the first clinic in Nairobi to administer antiviral drugs. Nyumbani, a non-profit organization, is run by the Catholic Church and funded largely by USAID and private U.S. donors. Nyumbani currently has 103 children in their care and 86 children are on the life-saving antiviral drugs. The youngest child at Nyumbani is 6 months old and the oldest child is 25 years old and is currently attending university.

Nyumbani has served as home for more than 300 children. 60 of the 300 have died and many more have integrated back into the community. At Nyumbani, there is a dietitian, a full-time physician, and a psychological and spiritual counselor. In addition, there is a clinical laboratory where nurses can test children for HIV, TB, Malaria, Typhoid and other infectious diseases. The children live in several cottages supervised by house mothers. And the teens live in the youth hostel supervised by several mentors. The younger children go to a preschool on site and the older children go to area public schools.


Protus, the chief manager of Nyumbani, came and greeted us with a warm and welcoming smile. He spent an hour explaining Nyumbani's mission, Nyumbani's additional programs, and the politics behind the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief also known as Pepfar. Nyumbani began administering antiviral drugs (also known as ARVs) to their children in 1998 by buying them at full price ($500 per month per child) from drug companies through funds donated by outside donors and USAID.

But in 2003, President Bush began Pepfar which funds 19 countries with the means for administering better medical care and ARVs to HIV positive individuals. Since 2003, the number of Kenyans on ARVs provided by Pepfar has risen from 343 to 70,000. Pepfar works directly with 275 treatment sites in Kenya and Nyumbani is one of the lucky ones. Now they are receiving their children's ARVs for free, and the hope is that Pepfar funding will continue in the years to come.

As Protus was explaining Nyumbani's mission and giving us several materials to read on the organization, this quote resonated with me and has stuck in my head.

"The care of children with an incurable disease may not seem like a profitable enterprise, but as a humanitarian endeavor it is unsurpassable."


Nyumbani gives HIV positive abandoned children a second chance to live. Too often in African countries, HIV positive children are orphaned because their parents died from HIV/AIDS or they're abandoned because of the stigma surrounding HIV. In other words, they can be seen as modern day lepers. It was only four years ago that HIV positive children were allowed to enroll in Kenya public schools and that was due to Nyumbani winning a landmark case against the Kenya government.

Nyumbani focuses on the children's nutritional intake, psychological and spiritual counseling, education and making them feel like they're a part of a family. And the results speak for themselves- most of the children look perfectly healthy and most importantly happy.

Protus gave us a tour of the facility allowing us to stop into the preschool. As Protus opened the doors of the single-room preschool, Michael and I were flooded with tiny hands grabbing on to ours yelling "Welcome". One little boy, Mark, would not let go of my hand and pulled me inside making sure to grab me a chair to sit in. Then immediately the children formed two lines in the center of the room and began seeing a series of songs for us.

It was pretty remarkable to witness. My favorite was when they sang "We are H-A-P-P-Y, happy!" jumping up and down. As I was watching these children that are so filled with life and love, I thought of the countless number of HIV positive orphans who aren't lucky enough to come to Nyumbani, Because in sub-Saharan Africa, a child is orphaned every 14 seconds.


We also had the privilege of meeting Susan Gold, who is a Fulbright Scholar at Nyumbani. Susan's story is very interesting. Being in her late 40s, she's one of the oldest Fulbrights in history. She came to Nyumbani originally to work as an international nurse but with her Fulbright, she has created a sexual education teaching program.

In addition to teaching at Nyumbani, she has been traveling all over Kenya conducting seminars for children, parents and teachers. There is such a need for sexual education here in Kenya because it's hardly even taught in the school system or children only hear about the option of abstinence. Susan teaches children about sex, their bodies, their immune systems, HIV/AIDS, STD prevention and contraception options. Her program has been so successful that Pepfar is going to fund her to return to Kenya in February next year once her Fulbright is over so she can continue running her program until she can eventually hand it over to the Kenyan government to run.


All in all Nyumbani is an incredible place. There's actually a Swahili word that describes it perfectly" "ubuntu" which means "my success depends on your success."

Later that evening, we met a friend of a friend Anne Sweeney at an Ethiopian restaurant not too far from our apartment. Anne, an American from Chicago, has lived in Kenya on and off for the past 10 years. She just recently started a non-profit that works with refugee children in Kenya and tries to resettle them. We had a great meal (it was the first time I had eaten meat in a week!) but I was stuffed. Anne tells me it's common to get the "ET" gut after you eat too much Ethiopian food!

Today we're going to visit The Nation- the biggest newspaper in Nairobi that is going to host me these next 6 weeks!

By the way, all the pictures on this blog post were taken by the very talented Michael Jones!