PTA Difference

Today was the meeting of the school Parent Teacher Association where we decided which charities we'd be allocating money to this year. And as we each presented the projects from our year group's charities, the difference in material circumstances between UK normality & Kenya became so visible.

The children's home 5 minutes down the road, visited by my mate K today. It's the dry season, and their well is exhausted. They are spending money they would have used for food to buy water at present.  Please could we help deepen their well?

The project run by a mum at the school, an eye doctor, to offer eye tests to 200 Nairobi streetchildren, and then provide probably up to 25% with glasses, made from frames/lenses donated by the school and community.

The local school opposite the children's school.  540 primary aged children and 7 teachers, two of whom are the Head and her Deputy. A third of the children are orphans.  We pass these children coming to school and walking home each day.  We exchange greetings, but our lives are so different.  I remember once opening the boot to our car as a group of tots walked past. I'd just done a grocery shop, not much, two carrier bags full of vegetables.  Carrots, potatoes, onions, bananas - locally grown vegetables - overflowing.  The children crowded round, open mouthed. 'Look, look, look.  Look at all the food she's got there.'  Beyond their wildest imaginings that one person, one family, could buy that much food at one time, could have enough surplus in the kitty to buy more than they need for one day.   Chastening.  Last year our school changed the uniform and some mums delivered cast-off uniforms and outgrown shoes to them.  Today they reported back on the looks of pure delight on the faces of those children - orphans first, then the rest - who received a new hand-me-down set of clothes.  We're planning a welly boot and umbrella collection for them before the rainy season.

Kamili, the mental health outreach charity, set up by a mate and fellow school mum.  Mental health is nowhere near the top of the government's health priorities, yet the need is dire.  Some clients walk from Lake Victoria, some 150 miles away, for the monthly clinic and medication.  The story of one woman, both of whose brothers were schizophrenic. Untreated schizophrenics before the advent of Kamili, wearing her down, regularly throwing hard-earned food and clothes into the cesspit.  And now, one year on, how her brothers, with access to medication, can dig the shamba, even earn some money.  And how the woman herself has blossomed in relief.

A second children's home, with which SecondBorn's class was twinned last year.  A group of us had given money each month to help meet the food bill. A Friend from our Quaker meeting in UK had sent them £60, which had paid for chemotherapy for a child with cancer.  Their dilemma then, how could they take the money meant for food for all to pay for medical treatment for one?  The home sent their apologies today. They hadn't managed to put together a project plan yet, they were knocked for six that the child who had had cancer is ailing again.  Oh, the dreadful hand to mouthness of it all.

Even the KSPCA has more serious issues here. Yes, we'll be funding food and shelter for 10 stray dogs for a month. But why does it matter here? Not just because life as a stray dog is no fun for the dog, but also because scavenging dogs spread disease. The stray dogs in Ongata Rongai, 30 minutes drive away on Nairobi's outskirts, have rabies. And scavenging dogs, whether rabid or not, are more likely to bite passing children, spreading other diseases too.

And the hard choices. We, a wealthy school, are in many cases the lender of last resort, the national clearing bank which could underwrite a major project.  Is it better to fund one hearing aid for a profoundly deaf child, so that they can go to school, or with the same money, to fund glasses for 50 streetchildren?  Who else would fund the hearing aid? Yet think of the benefit for 50 children.

So, if we have children, if our children are clothed, fed, have access to water, have a parent alive; if they have the glasses they need, or access to healthcare when in distress, well then, by the standards of the majority of the world, we have everything to be grateful for, and much that we owe to others less fortunate.