Our Orphanage Experiences by Addie Price

Hey everyone. I’m going to talk about the orphanage that Caitlin, Angela and I visit weekly. It’s a girl’s home, sponsored by the Lion’s Club, for 24 girls between the ages of 5 and 15. Some of the girls seem to have living relatives, but usually the relatives are too old or destitute to take care of the children. The orphans all live and help cook in this home, and their school is right down the road. For the first three weeks, we visited the children on Saturdays, but this week we helped out at the primary and nursery school, made up of both girls from the home and children from the local villages.
The first weekend we visited, the girls were extremely shy, quietly mumbling their names when we asked but mostly avoiding all eye contact and conversation. But in the weeks since our first visit, there has been incredible change. The girls are much more outgoing, choosing to join us in games that we bring up as well as introducing us to some of their own games. We played “Who Stole my Letter?” the Kenyan version of “Duck-Duck-Goose” and we taught them “Patty Cake” and “Ring Around the Rosy.” One week we brought crayons and paper, something that they rarely get to use, and their discomfort and awkwardness at using the bulky crayons was noticeable (many of them opted to use plain graphite pencils instead).
There was one girl in particular that has captured our hearts. We have been careful not to make favorites, but Jessica is the youngest orphan at the home. She is the shyest and when the others began opening up to us, she pretended to want nothing to do with us. She often stood on the outside of where we were playing, doing her own thing and occasionally peaking over at us. I was finally able to get her to respond to a question I asked (she told me the Swahili word for dog was Mbwa). We hope through our continued involvement and play she will open up even further.
This week we visited the school where the youngest children attend. There were 4 rooms, each with about 30 kids aged 3-6. I even had a 2 year old in my classroom but she was the youngest they’ve ever had. When we were there we helped the children copy their letters and numbers. Each of them had a single notebook and half of a slightly sharpened pencil. They were very attentive and focused for such young children. After English lessons, we went outside and played games with all 4 classes together. It took them a while to catch on to the “Hokey-Pokey” and “Simon says…”, mainly because most of them only speak Swahili, but by the end they were shaking all about and having a great time. We plan to go back again next Thursday. Hopefully through continuous and prolonged interaction with the children, they will feel more and more comfortable being with us and opening up to us. After working most of our time with college students and faculty at Egerton University, it’s been a great change of pace to spend weekend mornings playing and laughing with such happy and fun-loving kids.