Idaho faith: Help those half a world away for the holidays, and save Kenyan families

To millions of people in Kenya, my native country, a meal is all they are praying to have for Christmas.

Caring Hearts and Hands of Hope, a Boise-based nonprofit organization that operates a boarding high school for vulnerable girls and another one for boys, has been raising awareness to help people survive. The current famine, like many in the past, is the result of a lack of rain for four seasons.

You might have seen skeletons of cattle or the emaciated bodies of those about to die lying on the grassless soils of Kenya. We see famine relief workers holding bowls of liquid food for young children whose bodies have shrunken as hopeless parents watch. The pain seen on a mother’s lifeless face that is placed in between her bony hands tells of how a famine punishes the living before death claims them.

Your heart breaks when you know what happens to families, women and young children. Famine breaks families. As I continue to monitor the famine in Kenya, I recall a woman who was remotely related to my mother coming with her two children to live with us in 1966. (We were not better off but we had one meal a day, which was more than she could provide for her babies). She had been forced to leave her unemployed husband when he couldn’t provide for them.

When famine strikes, families break up, with each grown member going their own way in search of food. Mothers, like the woman who came to my home, take children with them. Some of these families may reunite, out of necessity, once the famine is over. There is no guarantee they will ever be the same again.

This brings to my mind another huge problem. Young girls, sometimes even when they are still of elementary school age, are given to marriage for “practical reasons.” That means there is one less mouth to feed in her family. There is also a chance of getting a dowry, no matter how meager that is. In the face of death, the unthinkable happens.

When a young girl is pulled from school and given to marriage (most likely to an uneducated older man), that is perpetuation of the circle of poverty. Her daughter(s) will likely be subjected to the same short-sighted “survival escape.” Over the years, we continue to provide the girls at our school bags of food staples to take home when schools close as a way of protecting them from being forced by their starving family into a marriage.

We can help save a young girl from being forced to marriage, a family from breaking up and/or being claimed by death. A $230 donation can provide 5-6 people enough food for 30 days — enough to survive until mid-January 2023, when some crops are expected to be ready for consumption if it continues to rain.

Rain is finally back, and by March/April, the agony of famine may become simply an awful memory.

All of your support, 100%, will be used for food relief, and your donation is tax deductible. To help, please mail a check to Caring Hearts and Hands of Hope, P.O Box 7152, Boise, ID 83707, or donate at caringheartsandhandsofhope.org. Thank you for sharing your blessings with those who desperately need help.

Vincent Muli Wa Kituku is an author and speaker for business organizations, schools and Christian groups. He is the founder of Caring Hearts and Hands of Hope and Caring Hearts High School, a vulnerable girls’ boarding school in Kenya. Contact him at (208) 376-8724 or vincent@kituku.com . The Idaho Statesman’s weekly faith column features a rotation of writers from many different faiths and perspectives.