I’m currently staying on a farm with the Odoyo Family, who are basically the patrons of the Dago Dala Hera Orphanage. The farm is about a 5-minute walk away from the Dago Kogelo Primary school, and the Orphanage is another 3 minutes beyond that. There are about 55 orphans in all, all supported by a feeding program ran by the Odoyos and a Canadian sponsor.
The Orphanage is basically a girls dorm, housing about 20 girls at night. The building itself was made possible from a donation from a Peace Corps volunteer in July 2002. While they would have liked to house both the boys and the girls, the government here makes it illegal to house both sexes in the same building, so the executive decision was made to house the girls while they wait to raise the money build a boys dorm.
The kids there are some of the sweetest you will ever meet. Most of them are shy around white people (Mazungus) because they see so few of them, but also I don’t think they get much personal attention from many adults. Sarah, the Canadian volunteer, while she was here, was great with the kids, teaching them duck, duck, goose (which they call “Dok dok dok”) and playing with the skipping ropes and listening to them sing.
I have been spending most of my time elsewhere with Edwin Odoyo, but the times I’ve been over at the orphanage while they’re playing, I taught them how to use a Frisbee and recorded some of their songs with my digital voice recorder. They had never seen either of those things, so when I first threw the Frisbee or played back one of their songs they all burst out laughing.
The kids are taken care of by 8 different volunteer mothers, who rotate throughout the week with the cooking and supervising of the children at night. They do it completely without pay except for eating some of the meals they cook.
But, through talking with Edwin, the program always seems to be in jeopardy. “If our donor stopped paying for the feeding program we would have enough money and food saved up for about five weeks.” After that, they wouldn’t be sure what to do. His ultimate dream is to buy an eleven-acre piece of land right next to the farm. By doing this, the whole program may one day be completely self-sufficient, with them growing their own food, and even selling any excess they may grow back into the community. At this point the land is full of sugarcane.
There are always ways to help the program even in small ways. Did you know that for 10,500 shillings (135 dollars) you could bring a mobile clinic here every three months for a whole year and immunize all 55 orphans from malaria? For an additional 15,500 shillings (200 dollars) you could provide all the orphans with medicated skin cream (for ringworm and scabies, which almost all of them have) for the entire year?
You would be surprised at how much a little donation of just about ANYTHING helps someone here. An old pair of shoes can go to someone who has never owned shoes. A package of pens could go to a school that can’t afford them, ten dollars could feed a child for weeks.
Sometimes it’s hard to look at what some of these kids have to go through every day. But when you see something really appreciated, it’ll touch your heart.
A donor in the states sent me along with reading glasses to give to each village I go to while I’m here, and the first people I brought them to were the teachers at the Dago Kogelo Primary School. One teacher admitted he had problems seeing the words on the pages of his student’s homework, and when he put on a pair of glasses he exclaimed, “I can see!”
Here’s an excerpt from the thank you letter from the headmistress of the school:
To Whom It May Concern: May I take this time on behalf of the Dago-Kogelo Primary staff, through the hands of Brother Alex to thank you very much for having donated to us very good glasses for reading. This will enable us to cope up with the present dynamic in Kenya which is always exhaustive to the bare eyes.
I just have to smile when I read that.
Alex Salkin
Dago Dala Hera Orphanage
Alex Salkin is a 24 year old graduate of Willamette University with a B.A. in Anthropology. He just returned from a 6 week trip to Kenya through the Village Volunteer program (www.villagevolunteers.com). If you have questions or comments, please contact Alex.Salkin@gmail.com.