Giving gifts is a traditional response to this season that revolves around the most significant gift the world has ever known. Our own gifts during this holiday season are given for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we give from our heart letting love choose the gift. Other times tradition, family pressure, or even self-centered motives are the true driving force behind our giving.
So when I came upon an opportunity to help at Tania Integrated Rehabilitation Centre to briefly assist Maasai orphan children I knew this was the path of a gift that would touch upon true joy. The center is situated on Maasai land and was founded to assist the Maasai children who have been ostracized by their own society as well as Kenya at large.
Basically this center is a home for disabled children (most are abandoned due to cultural shame and other issues), street children, orphans, and Maasai girls rescued from early marriages (Maasai girls are often given in marriage to much older men, as soon as they hit puberty, age 12, but are often promised before this). The center is about 35 kilometers outside of Nairobi and in short is one of only a few such facilities that attempts to address a growing cultural and social problem.
The basic objectives of the center are to ensure rights for all children, provide basic education, minimize the number of street children and child prostitution, and discourage social cultural practices such as early marriage and FGM (Female Genital Mutilation).
A unique story with this center is they are working with an abandoned girl who had been taken in by baboons. The girl had some form of disability and was therefore abandoned in a field as a young child. Apparently a crying baby was enough to invoke compassion by a mother baboon. The girl was spotted by a woman farming who noticed “a monkey that looked different from the rest.” Eventually the woman was able to steal her away from the baboons and brought her to an orphanage center where they cleaned her up, cut her hair that was almost as long as she was, washed and did all they could to get rid of worms, fleas, etc. The girl, now moved to Tania and called Charity (not pictured below), is adjusting to humans but still is silent and has hands bent inward from walking on “all fours”. Rehabilitation will be a lifelong process for her.
Another unique situation with this center is that around Christmas time their management works hard to provide families in nearby communities to foster the over 120 children for a few days so they can be part of a family during Christmas as well as know what it means to have a family. That a family would break away from the cultural norm and take in a child for a few days is amazing, yet to do this during a holiday time is phenomenal. Yet there were about 30 children that the home could not find a foster family for. These children, including Charity, saw their friends leave one by one to enjoy family life in an incredible effort to become “normal.” I’m sure these 30 children felt alone and left behind because when I showed up I had two boys holding my hands the entire time refusing to let go, even for me to open a gate door. They showed me their shamba, farm/garden, chickens, etc. but most importantly their bed they slept in. It was a source of pride but also one of the few things that they could tangibly hold onto as theirs. I can’t imagine how lonely they must have felt at night with all of their bunkmates gone. A usually bustling dormitory quiet and missing companionship.
Christmas is about Christ who came to give us the opportunity to have a family beyond ourselves. It was to the left behind of the left behind that I donated and gave, as your Christmas gift, so that they may have a family Christmas dinner, as well as a few other meals, and know that they were not forgotten. Merry Christmas!
nehrely there 