Oasis of hope where Aids orphans get a life

By Paul O’Callaghan

Ms Shiundu Kweyu is counting her blessings. Despite living with her mother and five siblings in a one-room shack in the Kibera slum, she considers herself extremely lucky.

Her story is as inspiring as it is astounding. A chance conversation overheard through mabati-tin walls, saved her school life.

On that momentous day, she heard a neighbour discussing St Aloysius Gonzaga School, a Catholic secondary school in Kibera, which first opened its doors in 2004.

With a father dead from Aids related complications, and a mother in fragile health, Shiundu had given up hope of ever receiving a post-primary education.

Free school

On hearing about the new fee-free school in Kibera she presented herself to Mr Dionisio Kiambi, the school principal. The rest is history.

"If not for St Aloysius School, I would be working as a labourer, househelp or doing laundry and I would not have this bright future," she says. The school arose from the work of members of Christian Life Community (CLC), a Catholic Lay movement that visited people suffering from Aids in Kibera. Time and again, they observed that people living with HIV expressed concern for their children’s future, especially their education.

In 2003, CLC sponsored the first 12 Aids-affected children to attend secondary school. Before the year ended, the leaders of CLC met with their Jesuit chaplain Fr Terry Charlton, to discuss what else could be done to assist bright, Aids-affected youth.

Meagre resources

Despite its meagre resources, a decision was reached to step out in faith and begin a secondary school for the youth.

The school would be a college preparatory school in the Jesuit tradition with an education that would produce "men and women for others." It would be a fee-free school serving youth who otherwise could not access further education.

Today, demand is so high and the need so great that some students go to great lengths to gain one of the coveted places and has led to some amusing incidents.

A few years ago, one earnest candidate presented a death certificate of a man he claimed was his late father.

However, he forgot to check the date of death. If he had, he would have discovered that the man he called his father died over 20 years before he was born!

Fast-forward to today and the school of 265 students has ambitious plans to build a permanent school in May, which will eventually serve 420 students.

As well as providing students with breakfast and lunch daily, the school also seeks to satisfy the students’ hunger for learning by paying their fees, books and writing materials.

But the help doesn’t end there as Shiundu explains.

"The teachers at St Al’s care for both our quality education and our personal well-being. We are able to talk with them about our problems at home."

These problems are countless. Without electricity, many can’t study after sundown.

Even for those lucky enough to have artificial light, study is frequently disrupted by family members who live, eat and sleep in the same room. Neighbours’ domestic rows, loud music and raised voices from the all-too-prolific Busaa (traditional beer) clubs don’t help either. When it was discovered that some students wore their uniform seven days a week because they had nothing else to wear, a special budget was set up to assist in buying clothes.

Bright future

Yet, despite the myriad problems, enthusiasm and humour abound.

It is remarkable to meet young people who have every reason to be hopeless yet instead focus on their plans and hopes for a brighter future.

This message of hope is a recurring theme when you talk with Ms Jill Juma, a biology and chemistry teacher at the school.

"I go beyond just being a science teacher. I want to teach life skills and empower young lives with hope," she says.

"Providing free education is lifting the burden of poverty for families and enlightening their otherwise dark world with hope. This infectious ‘Yes, we can’ approach has spread to the students. "This is the school of hope," enthuses Atieno Perez Okomo, a grateful Form Four student. "The teachers at St Al’s really care for us and give us hope."

Striving for a better future is expressed practically in a unique six-month voluntary community service programme undertaken by Form Four graduates.

As Principal, Mr Kiambi explains, "our mission and hope is that our graduates learn from the example of benefactors and then perhaps one day return the favour and pass it on to others."

Giving back

Working in schools, health centres, parishes and orphanages, the young people ‘pay forward’ to their own communities what they themselves have received from donors they may never be able to thank personally.

To this, Shiundu is glad to have overheard that conversation at that very moment.