New Girls Restart Centre

Wamboi

Here come the girls! For years we have been striving to provide the same Restart opportunities to girls as we provide for boys. As ever the obstacles have been many but here Mary Coulson writes about progress at last.

Girls' Restart

Faith, Grace, Wamboi and Njeri

"I am so pleased to tell you all that we have 4 little girls who entered our doors today! They are all sisters of our boys and so we have managed to bring families back together again from the streets. It is truly wonderful and we are so grateful to everybody concerned especially our Child Welfare Officer in Naivasha.

All the children are doing really well and you know we have the girls now, they are so sweet and their ages range from 10 months to 14 years. We have tried to initially is to team up the sisters of the boys we have so that siblings can be reunited.

We have Wamboi (2 and a half years old), Njeri (3) and Jane (13) who are sisters of our 3 boys Pilot, Alija and John. They were homeless after being abandoned by their parents. Jane had been "sold" by her father for £20 to a man in Nairobi to work as a maid (!!!) This happened when she was 11 and when she came to us she was a very unhappy, disturbed little girl who was clearly suffering a great deal from her experiences there. However, since she has been at the Restart she is smiling and affectionate and really starting to become her own person again. She is attending school and she is very caring of her two younger sisters. Njeri and Wamboui are full of character and full of life and very happy to be in a loving environment, they had been shunted around from home to home by the authorities and then we requested that these little girls come to us to join their bigger brothers.

We have Marion who is 13 and a half, rescued by the authorities as being in desperate need of care and attention.

Siblings - GG, Simon and Anne

Grace is eight, she joined her two brothers Nelson (10) and Elphas (3) at the Restart Centre in April. Grace is a very smiley, sweet little girl. Sadly Nelson the elder brother was beaten half to death by his mother using a donkey whip. The authorities rescued him and found that the injuries to his legs were so bad that when he arrived at hospital the doctors thought they might have to amputate them. Luckily they didn't but he was in hospital for two months. He still has scars all over his body but now he is with us, his scars are healing and he is doing so well. His little brother Elphas was totally traumatised but he is now starting to smile, and feeling at home at the Centre. Their mother is in prison and I believe will never be allowed to have the children again. It is such a sad state of affairs.

Ann (14) is the eldest sister of our two boys GG and Simon. This is perhaps the saddest story of all in as much as their drunken father tried to poison her and her two sisters and her two sisters died. Ann spent months in hospital and then was abandoned by her parents along with her young brother Simon (4). They had nowhere to go but knew their brother GG was with us, so they walked for miles and miles to come and be with him. Ann is attending school with the other two older girls and is gradually settling in. She is so happy to be in a loving environment and with her two brothers.

This little girl was called Angel as the child welfare safe home did not know her name as she had been abandoned in Naivasha when she was 8 months old. The mother must have had great hardships in her life to give up such a beautiful baby girl, but we have her now and she seems very contented. Along with the other baby boy we have called Darcey, he too was abandoned but at birth, in the hospital. We rescued him and he will be four months on the 28th May 2010. He is very small for he was being fed milk from a cup and the baby obviously did not respond. He is starting to put on weight and is a very happy baby who rarely cries". (May 2010)