Our experience began 2001 when we met Dr Thiga Laban on a GSE
visit. We worked with the Rotary Club of Murang’a to help
the Sabasaba District Hospital, which is a small district hospital
about 90 km North East of Nairobi. It serves some 60000 people
from the surrounding area, many having to walk to the hospital
for treatment. We supplied various items of surgical hardware and
general items for use in the hospital, e.g. Peak Flow Meters, Tape
Measures, Stethoscopes, Scissors, and Clamps, for Thiga to take
home with him.
We then set about collecting more items of a specific nature,
e.g. laryngoscopes and ophthalmoscopes. Murang’a Rotary Club
then asked us to help in their own project, a Children’s
Rescue Centre catering for AIDS orphans, children maltreated by
parents, and others who had been evicted from their homes or abandoned
in strange far away towns. The children were thrown out because
of disability and all were cared for in a 1 bedroom squat by a
21 year old girl, Elizabeth Kiarre.
Our collections took on a more diverse form and we started including
in the crates toys, clothing, school books, pencils etc. In fact
the last crate they received contained our most ambitious pieces
of equipment in the form of a portable x-ray machine, and an electric
Autoclave. In the crate we included, blankets, pillows, children’s
shoes, toys, and writing sundries. Such was the excitement in Murang’a
that a special presentation ceremony took place, attended by a
government representative, and trees were planted in honour of
Walkden Rotary Club.
We were then approached by Kanazawa South Rotary Club in Japan
with a view to a Twinning Agreement, which we gladly entered into.
During a visit we told the club about our work in Kenya. They asked
if they could also help in any way and subsequently became our
partners in the Rescue Centre Project specifically but they also
had an interest in the hospital.
We are now a truly international, although small, Rotary Aid Agency,
embracing England, Japan, and Kenya; all working in peace, love
and harmony for the good of those less fortunate than ourselves.
Last year members of Walkden Rotary Club visited Kenya to view
our project. This year Members of our Twin Club, Kanazawa South
visited us on a goodwill visit, which we are hoping to reciprocate
in 2008. Recent efforts have meant that the Rescue Centre now has
4 female goats that give milk for the children and soon there will
be 30 chickens delivered to provide eggs. This may lead to a small
business selling any surplus to help in funding the running of
the centre by way of paying rents or school fees for the children
to attend school. We have plans to continue supporting both the
hospital and the centre and have recently paid to make improvements
to the local Primary School classrooms, whilst the Worsley Rotary
Club have bought new gates for the school.
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