How to feed 75 kids on less than £1 a day...

Chebukuyi – pronounced: [cheb-kwee]

Star of Hope - in Chebukuyi village (see pronunciation above!) is a home for orphans and vulnerable children - children who have lost either both or one of their parents, and have no-one to care for them – and children whose parents are not in a position to take care of them. Before taking in boarders, the children all attended the school part of Star of Hope – where they received porridge and lunch – and for many this would be their main meal of the day – not having dinner when they went home. Many had been physically or sexually abused at their home or the home of their guardian – and many were suffering from recurring illnesses, as their guardians were too poor to take them for treatment. The children taken in as full time boarders were the most in need – and all, when I arrived, were suffering from malnutrition.

My first few weeks in the village were taken up by finding out how the centre had been running for the few weeks the boarders had been living there – and the ways in which I could help out. Boarding schools are much more common in Kenya than in UK – and it is very common for children to attend boarding school both throughout high school and primary school. Therefore the idea of boarding full time wasn’t a foreign concept to these kids – but some are as young as 3 years – moving away from their family home was a big change for them, however bad the conditions were where they came from.

So we had around 75 attending school – and all school kids would receive porridge at break time. Out of these 75 there are 34 kids who receive lunch as well – these 34 are the most in need, in that they are the least likely to receive food when they go home. So during the first month of my time in the village I realised we had very little money to feed so many kids – and they had been struggling to get enough food to feed everyone. We grow a lot of the crops on the land – maize, beans, green spinach, cabbage, bananas, peanuts, sweet potatoes and cassava. However at that time we hadn’t grown enough to feed all kids, purely due to lack of land and poor weather.

Usual meal of Ugali (cooked maize flour) and kunde (type of green spinach) - eaten everyday!

Added to this when one of the boarders became sick – we would have to pay to see a doctor – as there is no such thing as free health care in Kenya! I actually spent every day of the first two weeks in hospital with at least one of the kids. There had been an outbreak of typhoid – and therefore we had a few kids receiving antibiotics but one girl Beverline was so severe she required daily injections for 7 days. Each injection cost us £1 – some days we were able to haggle her down to 70p. But in total her treatment cost £10 including the drugs. Therefore straight away I knew this would be one of my tasks for the next few months – eliminate typhoid.

Diseases such as malaria and typhoid take a serious toll on the children –it can leave them very weak for weeks on end. But it was also then that I realised the sheer toll it takes on the parents. Parents who only earn 70p a day just cannot fathom spending £10 to treat an upset stomach. They will visit the local witchdoctor and receive some herbs to grind and mix with water before they go to the clinic and are then unable to feed their families the next week.

Drying maize - this would last a few weeks

So these first few weeks were a struggle – we would eek out less than £1 a day to feed all the boarders – but even this small amount wasn’t easy to find and we would run out of money sometimes. Trying to understand this from a UK perspective is not easy when £1 is such a trivial amount –we wouldn’t even attempt to feed 20 kids 3 meals a day on such a low daily budget!

However this was one of the challenges I enjoyed the most – with such a small budget we had to be inventive, and really had to source out and barter with local farmers for the lowest price for maize, our staple food. The house mother and cook must then have thought I was truly crazy when I then proposed that we must improve the kids’ diet – by buying more food! As the majority of the kids were malnourished – this was an important improvement to then ensure their future health. Therefore we increased the amount of porridge each day, so each kid got a good amount. We added milk to the daily diet – so each morning the boarders received a large cup of sweet milk tea. We also introduced regular fruit into the diet – so we had bananas and oranges twice a week.

Porridge time!

As this was a new set up for all the kids we wanted to make it special in some way and the way we did this was to have a special meal on Sunday – we had chapatti and rice and lentils and cabbage! It is hard to describe the sheer excitement of the kids during the day as they looked forward to dinner! They would be jumping around, talking about eating chapatti and having some orange! This was always one of my favourite days – and I’m not going to lie - the thought of Sunday dinner was pretty exciting for me too! When you eat the same food for lunch and dinner for a whole week – the thought of a piece of chapatti and some rice really makes you hungry! However cooking all this over one small open fire was pretty challenging – and rolling out chapatti dough on a small wooden board on the dirt floor is quite an art to master.

I will write later about the wonders of the Lifestraw water filter system – but as regards the basics of food – this is really how we managed to feed so many children on just pence a day. The creativeness of our house mother and cook was incredible – and even when you thought there was no answer, somehow we would find food somewhere. We also replied upon the incredible generosity of parents and local villagers – we would find bags of maize sitting at the entrance of the centre – so that even those with so little themselves couldn’t help themselves but to give a little to help us out.