Today I met Janice, a 13 year old girl who is need of a sponsor that is going to make her feel special. Her father died of HIV five years ago and her mother died of the same in 2007. She has lost two brothers and a sister to the disease and she herself is infected. She has been living with her aunt and uncle since she lost her mum, her two surviving siblings have been sent to live with relatives elsewhere.
Carol, her aunt struggles to feed the family, she and her husband have no formal employment and they try to scrape a living by washing clothes and doing small jobs. They have their own child and care for two other orphaned children. Often they cannot pay the rent and have to borrow from money lenders.
When you have lost almost all your family to the same disease that you are carrying, how do you think about the future? When you see your guardians struggling, how secure do you feel? There was an air of sadness about Janice that is hard to describe. It was like she wanted to stay in the background and not impose on anyone, and yet in many ways she was a typical 13 year old girl, she loved looking at the photos we took with the digital camera and dreams of being a maths teacher when she grows up. There are so many children like this in Mathare; Janice's aunt was affectionate with her, but you could tell the financial strain on the family was too much.
We hope that if the support for Tushinde continues, we can reach out to families like this; who are helping HIV orphans, with food parcels and other support that is required to keep the family together. In this way, the child may not be seen as an extra mouth to feed, but a welcome member of the extended family.
