Where We Found Home

One day, Baba and Mama’s little home was bursting with too many babies! What were they going to do? They thought how nice it would be to own a piece of land that would be big enough to build a home on it for all the children to grow up in. And big enough to take in the new babies they knew would keep coming!

So, that’s just what Baba and Mama decided to do. They looked for a piece of land until they found just the right spot. The land they chose was very beautiful. In Kenya, many of the trees have large, bright-colored flowers on them. And in the places where it rains a lot, all the flowers and plants grow big and tall, and the grass turns a pretty, deep green color. There is an explosion of color everywhere–even the dirt has a red tint to it.

And at night when the sun sets, the sky turns all shades of pinks, yellows, oranges, and reds. It looks like a beautiful painting, except it’s new each evening because it’s always changing a little bit. It never gets tiring to watch. This beautiful land was the perfect place to build a children’s home to remind them that they will always be loved and taken care of...

During this time, the older children are in school. They walk just a short distance from their house to the schoolhouse. Doesn’t it sound nice to have such a short walk to school? It was important for Baba and Mama to have a school on their own property so the children could get an education. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to have to drive a couple hundred children to school every day because there are no buses?

After school, the children have time to play. They can swing on their swing set or they can run around and play soccer, which is very popular in Kenya. All over Kenya, there are always groups of children who gather after school to play soccer on the side of the road or anywhere there is a patch of grass or dirt big enough to run around on. But usually none of the children have a soccer ball to play with…so they make their own!

Children will find plastic bags, enough to make a big ball out of them, and then tie rope all around them to keep the bags together in the shape of a ball. And this is how most Kenyan children play soccer. Sometimes they even play with bare feet, and they can still run fast and kick that ball hard! Thankfully, the children’s home has soccer balls, but there never seems to be quite enough for all the children to play with!