Rtn Keith Otter: New Hope Childrens' Centre, Kenya

Today we were able to present Kids Inspire with a cheque for £800, representing the surplus we made when we ran our Santa’s Grotto at the beginning of the month.

The speaker was our member Rtn Keith Otter, who told us about the visit he and his wife Pat made to the New Hope Children’s Centre in Uplands, Kenya, in May. Keith and Pat met on Christmas Eve 1970 when they were both working in Kenya.

New Hope was founded by Anne Chege some 25 years ago when a local Christian businessman, who knew of her voluntary work visiting children’s homes around Nairobi with food and clothing, suggested she start her own children’s home and offered a house he owned in Uplands rent-free for five years.

Anne moved into the house, went out searching for children sleeping rough in need of housing, and appealed for volunteers to help her. One of those volunteers, Cecelia, is still with her 25 years later and is now her deputy at New Hope.

There is one famous story about Anne coming across some girls begging on the streets and saying to them “Come and stay with me and I will beg for you.” New Hope is still funded entirely by voluntary donations Anne raises from local and overseas donors.

New Hope now owns its own land and buildings. They benefit from having their own borehole, paid for by donations; the public water supply only flows on two days a week.

Keith and Pat went as part of a group of six from Witham-based charity Hand in Hand. The day the group arrived the police brought in a three-month old baby boy that had been found abandoned and just a few days later they came again with an 11-year old boy they had picked up from the streets of Nairobi. All new arrivals are tested for HIV but this is simply to discover whether they need the appropriate drugs; there is no discrimination against them and no stigma in the wider society.

Not all New Hope’s approximately sixty children are orphans. Some have been taken in by New Hope because they were living in intolerable conditions. Keith showed us a picture of one small wooden shack where, ten years ago, one grandmother had been living with her eight grandchildren. The grandmother is now housed in the “Grandmothers’ Village” New Hope established with funding from a UK donor. Her grandchildren, having been through New Hope, are now making their ways in the world as adults. Keith and the rest of the group met two of them, one a teacher and the other the proprietor of a beauty salon. They also met other adults who had been at New Hope as children, including nurses, beauticians, accountants and an agricultural consultant.

All the children are given good food and decent clothes and sent to school and, if they wish, eventually to further training. They sleep in dormitories, each one with its own house mother. There is also a mother and baby unit housing six mothers and their babies at the time of the visit. Orphaned and abandoned toddlers sleep in cots as the same room as the house mother. The children’s clothes, apart from their school uniforms, are sent out from the UK. It is New Hope’s proud boast that no child there has ever gone to bed hungry, without somewhere comfortable to sleep or without decent clothes to wear the following day.

The visitors from Hand in Hand stayed at New Hope for three days before moving on to see other projects the charity supports. During this time they were made to feel very welcome and were able to interact with the children and join them in activities. On the Sunday morning everyone from New Hope went to the nearest African Inland Church for the last 3½ hours of a very lively 4½ hour service.

Keith told us that the worst part of the trip to Kenya was the hair-raising road journey to the Masai Mara National Reserve for a final short game safari. But that, as he said, is another story.