a day in the life of...

The call to prayer is floating through my window… the mosque in Naivasha is not so far away so I hear the call sounding out across the town around this time every day.

Today the interns ran the first day of a series of seminars on some key issues for secondary school students. Around 30 students turned up which was encouraging for the first day. Today’s sessions were on human rights and stress management. These kids don't have much of an idea of what their rights are and how they can demand them so it was good to see the interns making them aware of these kind of things. As I watched them standing at the front and holding their own in front of students barely 2 years younger than them I felt so proud of them. Some of these interns used to be my students when I was teaching -- they were just 14 years old when I first met them back in 2004. I have had the chance of watching them grow and turn into leaders of their own generation. It's been a privilege.

In the morning some of the commercial sex workers who we sent to another NGO for training in jewellery making (the NGO has been paying them for the products they make and selling them on) called us -- the person who runs the NGO is leaving the country for three months so they will not have any work for that time. My colleague and I stood there as they asked us what we could do as they do not want to go back to the streets. Our organisation is young -- it will take us time to look for buyers for their goods so at the moment we have to depend on this NGO to give them work by finding a market for them. I'm sure that given time these women will be able to organise themselves into a group and we as an organisation will be able to find a market, but that is not going to happen overnight. In the meantime we have the headache of knowing that house rent is due on Friday…It's hard... standing in front of somebody who you know very well may be forced to sell her own body by the end of the week.

At lunchtime, another of my former students turned up at the church where the workshops were being held. She was in a bit of a state. Her sister gave birth to her first born child on Saturday – the delivery was smooth and she was just fine on Saturday night. On Sunday morning the family got a phone call to say the new mother had passed away from high blood pressure. She was 23. The heartbreaking thing was she had been in a terrible state at the end, bleeding through her nose, falling onto the floor and being too weak to stand up. The nurses just stood there and watched -- she died there -- on the floor. I sat and listened to the story as this girl told me how she hadn't eaten since Sunday -- food tastes like sand right now. It makes me angry because it is so unnecessary. With better treatment her sister could still be alive, and even if she were to pass away -- where was the dignity which should have been her human right? The culture around here means that people are discouraged from talking about those who have passed away… but I could see the release in this girl's face as she talked about her sister, how much she loved her, what kind of a special person she was. We went to see the family and take the baby to hospital. I'm a bit concerned as she's drinking cow’s milk which I don't think and be very good for a newborn. The doctor didn't see her though as he was busy in a meeting.

So all in all it was quite a tough day. But at the end, before we went home we prayed… it's good to get things off your chest and talk about them with God. I know it must hurt him seeing these things… we're just waiting to see what he will do during the course of the week.