“I would stay and suffer with them …”
Kasola and his three brothers are the only witnesses to their mother’s death.
Their neighbors in their rural Kenyan village often had to break up violent fights between the boys’ parents, but the day of the tragedy, nobody else was around. Their mother was found dead from a head wound, and their father was arrested. In one day, 4-year-old Kasola and his brothers lost everything.
After the funeral, everyone returned home, leaving the three younger boys alone with their older brother, who had severe physical challenges. Their grandmother, Rael, surveyed her grandsons and their dilapidated house, and knew she couldn’t leave them. But as a woman in her 80s, she had no idea how she would care for them – but just knew that she couldn’t abandon them.
“I was unsettled knowing that the children were alone,” says Rael. “None of the other relatives were keen on taking them in. They were innocent yet suffering. I had to do something! I would stay and suffer with them.”
Rael struggled from the beginning. The family often went without food, and the boys often begged for food from the neighbors. Soon the children showed signs of malnutrition and intestinal worms. Their bodies were covered in sores and their bellies were bloated.
“They are innocent and did not deserve a death sentence too.”
- Rael
The boys also had to drop out of school since Rael could not afford fees, books or even clothes. This raised the attention of Onesmus, the principal at the local elementary school. When he went to investigate why the children had stopped coming to school, he was shocked at what he found.
“It was a very sad state of affairs,” he says. “I am a pastor at a local church and I am convinced that God has a plan for every one of these children. So I went to the Deliverance Church Nzalae, because I knew there was a Compassion program there.”
Ruth, a social worker at the Compassion center, remembers the day she met the three boys on her first visit to their home to register Kasola and his brothers.
“The living conditions were deplorable,” says Ruth. “There was no bed or mattress for the boys to sleep on, just a pile of rags. We also quickly realized that the children were shy and afraid of people. They had suffered a traumatic experience that had not been dealt with.”
Once they were enrolled at the Deliverance Church Nzalae Child Development Center, Kasola and his brothers were immediately re-enrolled in school. The center provided school uniforms, shoes, school fees and books, and each boy excelled in his studies. Kasola, in particular, is always among the top five students in his class. In addition, each child has been enrolled in counseling, helping them process the death of their mother.
Compassion staff also focused on ensuring that the boys were fed and treated for malnutrition. Because of your gifts to Highly Vulnerable Children’s Care, Rael gets special provisions each month, which she uses to buy food, clothes and bedding for her grandsons.
It has been three years since Kasola and his brothers first registered with Compassion. The difference between those skittish, emaciated boys, and the active, healthy ones today is nothing short of miraculous.
“My prayer for them is that they would live up to their God-given potential,” says Rael. “The reason I decided to stay and look after them was to make sure their lives would not be cut short by this shocking incident. They are innocent and did not deserve a death sentence too.”