Mikinduri Children of Hope

New program director in place in Kenyan village after program’s consultant murdered

BY MARY MACKAY THE GUARDIAN

After a tumultuous few weeks, the Mikinduri Children of Hope (MCOH) Foundation is back on track with a new program director for the village of Mikinduri in Kenya.

There was much sadness and confusion in the wake of the tragic loss of the MCOH program’s Kenyan consultant, Silvanos Otieno, who was murdered on Christmas Eve in the driveway of his Nairobi home.

Fortunately, Joseph Kathiwa had already been hired as the program director by a selection committee before Otieno’s untimely death.

This put minds at ease with regards to the continuation of MCOH’s many projects in this rural African village.

“(It’s essential to have) someone hands-on in the village, somebody who can literally go and check out feeding programs, check out the wells, work with the sewing centre, monitor the bookkeeping, etc. And that’s what Joseph Kathiwa’s job is,” says MCOH president Ted Grant of Cornwall, who flew to Kenya as quickly as he could following the loss of Otieno.

Not only was Otieno’s death a tragedy in that a fine man, husband, father, son and friend was lost to all who knew him, it sent MCOH into a tailspin.

The foundation no longer had their trusted man on the ground in Kenya and the people of Mikinduri were fearful of the fate of the many projects that were underway in the village.

It was crucial that Kathiwa had just been hired, but someone from MCOH had to go Kenya to facilitate the introduction of this new co-ordinator projects.

And as part of the recent partnership with a Canadian child sponsorship program called Christian Childcare International (CCI) the first step was that the foundation hire a project director to work as a liaison within the village for the child sponsorship program.

Kathiwa was to go to Mikinduri on Jan. 3 to start the CCI project but the tragedy on Christmas Eve changed everything.

Unfortunately, the day before Grant’s flight was to leave, violence in reaction to the recent election in Kenya broke out in fierce force, causing concern for his safety.

“(But) I felt it was important for me to be there to show solidarity with Seline (Otieno’s widow) and her children,” he said.

“I thought it was important to show solidarity with the people on the (Mikinduri Community Development Committee in Mikinduri) that had committed themselves with making this thing work with Silvanos.

“And also equally important was to, if you can imagine being Joseph having only being in the village once and now to go in the village and say, “Hi, I’m Joseph. What’s my job and who are you?’

“So I wanted to be there and introduce him by positioning the various issues and projects and people and the various politics are far as I understood them to be. And having done that it was the absolutely right thing to do.”

It is tradition that Otieno be buried in his ancestral land but the riots and ongoing tribal tensions made travel by land impossible.

“As it turned out another organization came to the table, the organization that he was consulting for and they paid for a flight to fly his body (to his ancestral land),” Grant says.

They also ensured that Otieno’s wife and children could attend the burial.

“They had no choice,” Grant says.

“It was dangerous. I mean the people were stopping cars and pulling people out of cars and if they were of the opposing tribe it wasn’t pretty. It was dangerous.”

Due to the danger and tight schedule of meetings in Mikinduri he could not attend but instead paid his respects during a memorial service in Nairobi.

A fund created to help Otieno’s family has raised about $3,000, which will be used for school fees for his children.

His wife is continuing with her plans that she had made with her husband before he died to return to computer school.

With Kathiwa in place, Grant is looking forward to the child sponsorship program moving ahead in Mikinduri.

“Our partnership with CCI is a great step forward for the destitute children,” he says.

“It is our hope to have 500 kids sponsored within three years, wow!

“We’re going to have 75 kids sponsored by the end of March and in that village can you imagine what that means? It’s huge!”

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 9:37 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.