Growing Up With Irene
Jinja, Uganda is not an easy place to live.
There are many places around the world where there are cities with slums. Jinja, however, is a slum with slums. So much so that Gladys, our Africa Child Care Coordinator, told us it was a “very difficult place to be.” She called it “heartbreaking”. And Gladys is certainly no stranger to poverty, considering her work in Kenya serving orphan children in the slums there.
It is a place where people exist. Their days are filled with the struggle to find enough food for the day. Whether that be the results of very meager pay for those who can find work, or their own efforts to grow their own food or raise a few animals. Simply put, the options are few. For many, they simply beg from others who have little to give.
Many of the mothers there are single, with no education and no skills. Most have multiple children, but no means to care for any of them adequately. Each time they have a new child, they send the oldest child away to fend for themselves or try to find someone else to care for them. It was the same for them as a child in most cases. Cultures of poverty exist everywhere and children are born into them by no fault of their own. Without intervention, they are part of a perpetual cycle that is exponential with each new child that is born.
For these children life holds no hope. Their days are spent searching for food and shelter. They wander the dirt streets near kiosks looking for scraps of food. They beg and they steal if they have to. They certainly don’t go to school and their future has seemingly already been written for them by the father who abandoned them and the mother who couldn’t care for them.
When we first met Irene Nangobi, Director of both Fresh Fire and Life of Favor Children’s homes, it was in 2003. The homes she directed were some of the first we helped outside of Russia. We were shocked at the conditions the children were living in.
The buildings were not much more than four walls and a roof. The children were dressed in rags and looked malnourished and unhealthy. Little did we know that they were among the lucky ones in their community.
From the beginning, it was clear that Irene loved helping orphan children. It was also clear that she was a very resourceful woman, when you consider all that she had done with little or no resources. Such a rare thing for someone with very little to find a way to help others! But God had put it on her heart to help the orphan children in her community and she was going to find a way. Did find a way.
Many of the orphans in these homes have lived their entire lives there. A few have come and gone for various reasons, but for most this has been their home since they were very young. They have grown up with Irene.
They have been witnesses to what can be done simply because someone cared, simply because you cared enough to share what God has blessed you with.
But the orphan children in these homes aren’t the only witnesses. It’s the entire community. I wonder what they must think as they have watched over the last 17 years as the lives of these children have transformed. I wonder what kind of influence it might have on the way they think.
I wonder because they too have watched as the children became well-nourished and healthy. They watched as the children went to school every day and went to Church. They watched as the home itself was transformed to the point where it now has acres and acres of agriculture. Bananas and groundnuts and much more. They watch as the children reap the rewards and bring in their harvest. Watch as the children care for their hundreds of chickens and reap the rewards in the form of precious eggs for their meals every day and plenty more for the community.
They have watched as the children in this home have grown from sad, little children with no hope, to healthy, happy young adults. They have watched as nine of these children graduated from secondary education and moved on to college and vocation programs.
They will be witnesses to these young adults becoming nurses and engineers instead of just another child begging on the dusty streets of Jinja, Uganda with no hope.
It’s hard to put into words how thankful we are for what you have done for these nine young adults and all of the rest of the children in Fresh Fire and Life of Favor. But when I think about their lives when we first saw them and think about what they have become today, I definitely feel like a proud parent and so should you.
When we first started helping these children, our mission was only about three years old. So, in a sense I guess we have all been growing up with Irene.