Home Visits and New Friends

Last week we carved out a day to take Bramwel and Eugene to visit their parents and Bramwel’s mom, Irene, took us to meet a few kids in her community with disabilities.

We started off by walking out to Bramwel’s house so that he could say hi to his siblings and have a cup of tea.

Bramwel leading the way through the maize fields to his mom’s house.

Enjoying a nice cup of tea.

After that we began our home visits. Before a child is admitted to Precious Kids Center we usually go to the child’s home. This way we can get a clear picture of their situation and needs. This way we can assess exactly how needy the child is and then base our next steps on how to help them off of what we saw at home. It is also helpful because many of our parents don’t have phones, so in case of any emergency, we are able to easily find their parents.

Our first stop was to see Isaac. This time of year it is very rainy so many of the roads are too muddy to pass with a car. So we drove as far as we could and then walked the rest of the way to Isaac’s house. Issac ran to greet us and we talked with his parents. He has Down Syndrome, is seventeen years old and is currently in the sixth grade at their local primary school. Typically, we don’t take older children into PKC but we were able to encourage his parents to keep working hard to care for their son.

Then we went to see Lydia. Unfortunately, we didn’t find her parents so we just had to talk to the neighbors and are hoping to go back when her mother is home so that we can get more information. Lydia is currently in school, but she is non verbal. She seems to hear and after you tell her something she moves her mouth like she is speaking, but no sound comes out. A girl like Lydia is usually very vulnerable because she can easily be taken advantage of, so her mother leaves her in the care of the neighbors children when she needs to leave home. More about Lydia to come soon, once we are able to connect with her mom and schedule a follow up visit.

After these two visits, we took Eugene home to spend a few hours with his siblings. They were so happy to see him and it was the sweetest little reunion.

 

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PO Box 2021-30200, Kitale, Kenya

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