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This is the full text of the artical which appears in the Autumn edition of the Steeple Magazine

The COGRI-Nyumbani Scotland Trust

Visit to Nyumbani 20th – 29th July 2008

 I felt it was prudent to make a visit to Nyumbani in advance of the scheduled team visit in Oct/Nov which, of course, was scuppered in February because of the political crisis at the time. Now that things have returned to normality I wanted to plan ahead.

It is so good to see how well the whole operation is working and this time I took another Rotarian, Frances Wilson, from my club with me.  Her comment after seeing it all was that I have been underselling it! We now care for almost 4000 HIV+ orphans which is quite amazing.

 The Village in Kitui district now has over 250 children and their grandparents installed in their houses, the school is operational and there is a general buzz about the place. The medical centre too has been tiled to a high standard and now occupies the whole of the original building as a new admin block has been built to facilitate all the offices etc. Guess what!  We now have built up toilets with seats! I think there must have been a few complaints from us mzungus about squatting!!!!

We very proudly put up the plaques on our four houses and Sister Mary assures me they will be home to four more families by my return in November. The communal washing area is still to be finished but all in all the area looks fine.

Lea Toto is thriving and registering more and more children each week. Kibera clinic was spared from the havoc wreaked by the rioting thank goodness. The slums are being rebuilt but we could see the scars of the violence still visible all around Kibera.

The most pressing thing I would like Rotary and friends to fund next is a diagnostic machine (£50.000) for assessing the amount of resistance the children are building up to the drugs they  are taking. We have one fourteen year old, Sammy, who is desperately ill and will not live. He is receiving the most excellent round-the-clock palliative care in Nyumbani (he is the lucky one, most kids do not get this kind of care or any care at all for that matter) having suffered three strokes, is blind and is being fed intravenously. When children have been on a certain medication for a long time they may build up immunity to that particular drug but we don’t know this is happening until it is too late to save them by changing their medication. We have another three or four kids we think may be in this position. This machine would also raise revenue for Nyumbani through testing for all the other hospitals in the city and around.

Since I wrote this report we have lost Sammy to this dreaded disease, more reason to help other kids in this situation.

Phew! It just doesn’t stop. We need eight more classrooms for the school in the village but that will have to wait!!!! 

I am returning to Nyumbani for two weeks in November with a working party and then again in February 2009 for two weeks with, hopefully, an entirely Scottish working party. Any volunteers? 

My own push this year will be to raise awareness of Nyumbani around RIBI (Rotary International Great Britain & Northern Ireleand.)  For those who haven’t seen it my website is: www.nyumbaniscotland.org.uk 

Alison Stedman