We may not be able to do everything

Down a small embankment forcing the heavy rains away from a paneled wooden door, which scraped along the gritty floor of a darkened room we entered.

It took a while for my eyes to adjust from the daylight in to this hovel of filth.
A torn and dirty sheet hanging from rusted nails from the soot-covered webs for privacy lifted and there a small child stood with his mother with a baby in her arms.

The whites of the child’s eyes began to fill with tears and then a squeal; To this small boy we are beings from another planet, our white skins, our bodies a confusion of smells from odour to exotic perfumes.  The squeal turns to a cry of panic, I take the baby from the mother and she lifts the child up over her already swollen pregnant belly.

The child’s cries are soothed but the tiny head remains turned away, we see now little legs of a severely malnutrition body. As the little boys body is further exposed ribs press against his darkened skin, his crying subsides.
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The baby that I hold too young to care about our differences looks at me inquisitively and laughs, eyes bold.

he mother 20 her youngest child of 5 grips on to the side if her mother’s dress, not a word is uttered.
The home for these 3 children and the mother cannot be duly described. Sheer poverty, filth. The mother abandoned by the father of the children, unemployed, illiterate relies on well wishes for food. The hovel in which they live overdue months of rent which threatens them to be all put out into the street.
This is just one ‘family’ house visits we tend to with our volunteers, our work is not just our children at the school and orphanage but into the community to help where we can, to continue to make a difference.
‘But how can you make a difference, there are so many of these cases?’ I am asked, ‘and where does it stop?’
We can make a difference by firstly tending to the mother by fetching her water to help clean the hovel to a more hygienic level, help her by taking her children to a pediatrician and providing food.
Then by teaching the mother a skill of mat making, giving her our detergents which we make for her to sell within her own area so that she can gradually sustain her family, counsel her on family planning  it all adds up to making a difference, and where does it all stop.?
It doesn’t, we cant possibly do everything, we cant possibly take on the whole of our slum here in Kaptembwa but the cases that we find and those that come to us out of sheer desperation we have made a commitment
It overcomes me; the tragedy of these lives overpower me. You can’t just throw money into helping fix a problem this can’t be done. There is a culture here that has come out of illiteracy, born into dire poverty, born into sickness and born into a community like so many millions around the world of a forgotten people.
Today I am finding it hard to ‘cope’ with all that I see, to cope with the feelings of helplessness, but then when I look at our children in our orphanage, healthy now, happy and in an environment that will produce young educated Kenyans of tomorrow, and our school children whose voices resonate throughout the school yard remind me, no we cannot help everyone but we can help so many and after all we are doing something and in the scheme of everything… that counts.