Choirs take their music on a charity mission

NHIF Choir members go through their paces during the visit to the Sisters of Charity Home. [Photo: George Orido/Standard]

While the recent Mashujaa Day festivities were spent in revelry amongst most Kenyans, others got together and chose to share their merriment with the less fortunate in society, wrties GEORGE ORIDO

The drums are beating, the cymbals hitting as the the vocals synchronise in this beautiful melody by the NHIF Choir members who have set to share Mashujaa Day with the most forgotten, deserted and banished members of our society.

Today, the songs of joy, of love and of promise of our land reverberate at the Sisters of Charity Centre situated in Otiende Estate, Lang’ata and the air is definitely warm with a rich element of fanfare.

As the group led by Nick Emodia goes through the paces with accompanied synchronised and graceful dance movements the audience is responding.

Some scream, others twitch and yet some just gaze.

Most of the audience members today are people with special needs whose relations, including parents, literally deserted them due to their physical and mental impairment.

But one thing is for sure, they are happy and one can tell it not only from their broad and generous smiles but also from the deafening applause and screams at the end of each and very number.

But in this noble endeavor where musicians recognise the struggles and the sheer struggle these young people go through every minute of their lives, NHIF Choir is not alone, students and staff from Kenya Utalii College on Thika Superhighway have also landed here under the directorship of the talented Robinson Ocholla.

The choir has brought in the useful variety of musical choices, but also join in a mass choir when celebrated maestro Mwalimu Wasonga of Kenya Daima and other songs, join in to conduct and lead. It is different and the house goes gaga.

There is little doubt from the performance that music has such a curative effect as well as spirit –aising impact in humans.

“I am so happy today because I have really enjoyed the music from the groups here. We hope you come every day,” says Veronica Lamparan who has had the time of her life dancing, and occasionally taking over the drums and playing along.

Veronica and her colleague Sarah Kasaram joined the choirs in the song and dance defying their individual challenges.

“When the Permanent Presidential Music Commission (PPMC) approached us to visit the needy in the society we chose to come here because we thought they deserved recognition and we would use music to commune with them and celebrate our freedom and our heroes together,” explains Mr Emodia.

On this day, he did not go to the Nyayo National Stadium where his team would normally entertain Kenyans live on national television.

Yet no one could capture the mood as well as Sister Deo Cornelia, the assistant in charge of the centre run by order of Mother Theresa Sisters of Charity of the Catholic Church.

“On the last day you will be asked, when I was sick, did you come to see me, when I was hungry did you feed me?” she says borrowing from the Biblical scripture and explaining that the gesture of “witness evangelism” was a good thing.

One of the sisters who attends to the boys explains that the children are either abandoned on the streets, in hospitals or mental facilities across the country.

“As sisters of Mother Theresa our calling is exclusively to serve the most abandoned by society and this is their home,” shares Sister Mildred who confirmed that even in the event of death they are the ones who get to bury them.

Most of the children are in wheelchairs, and can hardly do things on their own. The home is a reminder that no matter how callous humans can be, by divine grace hope can be kept alive by the very dedicated work of people like the nuns.

The visiting choir members notonly offer the serenading music.

They also contribute foodstuffs and family products for use by the centre that raises hope against hope.

Missionaries of Charity, as they are popularly known, have similar facilities in Huruma as well as Kasarani with a total population of more than 1,000 people.

“We are very glad to have made this decision to come here and we have involved over 20 choirs today to offer music as well as provisions to such homes across Nairobi as a way of making these populations feel a greater sense of belonging,” says the PPMC official Thomas Wasonga who had to leave in the middle of the pogramme as he rushed to State House to assist with the entrainment programme there.