“NC Women Build Bridges with Comfort Dolls.” an article in the 2010 summer publication of the NC Diocesan ECW, was the inspiration for a project that has involved many women in Grace Church and the community. These women have knitted over 80 “duduza” dolls to be sent to the children of the Nyanya Project preschool in Nairobi, Kenya.

The Nyanya Project (TNP) is an organization that teaches skills to grandmothers raising their AIDS orphaned grandchildren in Africa. TNP opened a preschool for 40 children near the Kibera slum in the summer of 2009. There are now 80 children in the school where the grandmothers work as cooks and teachers’ aids. Grace Church’s Christian Social Concerns Commission has supported the school by providing money for swings for the playground and mattresses for rest period.

The duduza doll project originated in the Diocese of Vermont and was adopted by Juli Hauser of Burlington’s ECW; now, two years later, hundreds of the small, hand-knit dolls have been made by multiple parishes and sent to orphanages and children’s centers in Guatemala, Haiti, Sudan and Botswana. The dolls are about 6 or 7 inches high and made from scraps of leftover yarn. Although everyone follows a pattern, the finished products exhibit a variety of colors, styles and creativity. The vision is to have the dolls sent to the children in the preschool in Nairobi from the children in the preschool at Grace – a “child to child” personal contact.

Knitted Dolls for Africa

Thanks to the following women of our church and the community who have contributed to this ministry: Kathy Alexander, Bett Hargrave, Gay Hutchins, Kim Leonard, Kristie Miller, Marte Perrell, Mary Williams and Patty Younts.

The Nyanya Project is expanding its preschool model into Rwanda and if folks are interested we can continue to make the dolls. Also, we might investigate a local place that might need them. If any parishioners who knit would like to be involved, please let us know by calling the church office.

www.gracechurchlexington.org

Located in the heart of Nairobi, Kibera is where we trained our first grandmothers three years ago, and it is where those same grandmothers requested that we help them open a preschool – they said a preschool would help their own families as well as the families of many other grandmothers and mothers in Kibera.

“Other women here see how our lives are better,” the grandmothers told me. “They want what we have. All of us need a good place to put our little ones. We need them to be educated so they can have a different future. With a preschool, all of the grandmothers and mothers can work longer and make more money.”

We agreed, and in 2009 our first preschool opened in the Kibera slums. Our grandmothers earn extra income from TNP to work at the preschools one week per month. They assist the teachers and prepare hot porridge in the mornings and hot lunches mid-day.

And the interaction between the young students and the grandmothers is beyond anything we could have imagined two years ago.

During our visit to Kibera last summer, we saw what hope can do in the midst of struggle.

The Nyanya Project’s first preschool – the Nyanya Toto Preschool Center– now has close to 50 students, and over the last two years, all of its small graduates, approximately 30 students, have matriculated straight into public, primary schools.  Thanks to Teacher Elizabeth, these children speak almost fluent English, read and know arithmetic – and – they are teaching the grandmothers who work there how to read and speak English!

“Not only do they teach us how to speak English,” said Eunice Ombima, one of our grandmothers, “they correct us!  They come home at night and tell us ‘That is not how you say that word.’”

On most days, after the grandmothers finish cleaning the lunchtime dishes, you can see them seated in one of the small chairs in the center’s main classroom. Youngsters in their brown checked shirts and dresses gather around them to show the grandmothers what a certain word means.  They point out the simple words printed in English, and the grandmothers beam.

In countries where intense poverty rules decisions, girl children are the first to be pulled from school to help back at the home or on the farm.  This means that in Kenya today, two-thirds of the millions of illiterate Kenyans are women and girls. All but one of TNP grandmothers in Kenya is illiterate.

For these women, that reality is now changing.  Even at older ages, TNP grandmothers are reversing the trend and younger generations are seeing a future of possibilities unknown to the women who care for them.

Father Joseph, with grandmothers, students and TNP founder, blesses our preschool in Kibera.

After our meeting, Minister Nyikal arranged for two different departments of his Ministry to visit our preschool in Kibera.  They were impressed.

Delegates from Kenya’s Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Development visit the Nyanya Toto Preschool Center and new Sewing Center.  Lissel Mogaka, left, is the Ministry’s Assitant Director of Gender and Social Development. With him, associates, Lucie Njoki and Doreen Nkirote.

The preschool was larger than they expected, and the fact that there are a playground, three toilets and one kitchen sets us apart:  Students have facilities that are very rare in the slum areas of Nairobi. Best of all: Our preschool students have grandmothers to help guide them.

“What you have here is unique,” said Naomi Oroko.  the Ministry’s Kibera representative.

“Your preschool takes us back to the very origins of African culture when grandmothers were the heart of their families and their communities.  They held the knowledge, did the hard work and provided the love and guidance.

“We have an ancient African saying, ‘Who doesn’t listen to the elderly breaks a leg.’

“So your preschool is taking us all the way back.  The tradition is that we listen to grandmothers to teach us. You are doing the same thing here.

“Bringing grandmothers and grandchildren together is like reigniting the light of the way it used to be.”

Thank you, Ms. Oroko. We hope to open more preschools where grandmothers help show the way.

He believes that entrepreneurs will change the future of African countries and that reconciliation can come through a shared vision of work – through businesses that encourage both Hutus and Tutsis to work side-by-side, share the profits, and give back to their communities.

In a meeting with Nygahene in Kigali last August, he said, “The best way is for Rwandans to forget about differences is to have one common goal.  What can we share?  With one common goal, there is nothing to lose.”

TNP grandmothers in the Jabana Hills outside of Rwanda

He also reflected on the importance of his own grandmother in his life and what a vital role grandmothers play – for their families, their communities and beyond.

“Grandmothers were the strong ones, tough.  They always showed us the way.  I remember my own grandmother this way. If grandmothers had been remembered, the genocide would not have happened.”

This piece was presented at the annual “Vagina Monologues” event at Wake Forest University, was performed by theatre major, Aleshia Price and filmed by the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Visit The Nyanya Project’s Facebook Page to view the video.

Opening credit:  Fish for Sex
Closing credit:
Actor:  Aleshia Price
Video:  Greg Hudgins and Bill McCord, UNCSA

By Linda Faltin

Linda Faltin is a minister and volunteer with The Nyanya Project. She returns with us to Kenya and Rwanda this summer for the second time. She will reunite with Emmanuel and we are sure, return home with more stories and amazing linkages.

On first glance, they couldn’t be more dissimilar.  Austin- tall, robust, white-skinned, living in a small North Carolina city, surrounded by a supportive extended family; attending a free public high school; looking forward to getting his driver’s license and being able to drive the family car.  Emmanuel- short, slight, brown-skinned, living in a village outside of Kigali, Rwanda; orphaned and living with an older sister, her husband, and young son; attending a secondary school whose fees would be out-of-reach without assistance from friends in America.

But look again. For these two wonderful young men share something vitally important, something deep and basic: the love of learning, the value they place on higher education.  Austin, in eighth grade, already taking the SATs and placing in the 95th percentile; Emmanuel, in the equivalent of eighth grade, taking the national exams and placing in the 95th percentile, enabling him to qualify for a secondary education…both of them displaying an extraordinary intellect and the desire to learn.

I met Emmanuel on my 2010 trip to Rwanda with The Nyanya Project, while visiting with our grandmothers outside Kigali. He introduced himself to me and I was immediately captivated by his smile, his personality, and his obvious intelligence. He shared with me his love of music, languages, and his great desire and determination to go to university, to get an education in physical therapy so he can work with those in his country who are physically handicapped (and they are many, due in large part to the 1994 genocide). And in our admittedly short contact and conversation, I determined to help this young man in whatever way I could and to enlist the assistance of others in my circle of friends and family.

I met Austin in the small congregation I am now pastoring just outside of Lexington, NC on one of my first Sundays there following my African trip. As part of my sermon, I showed the photo of Emmanuel and talked about his great desire to receive an education, sharing the fact of school fees and the reality of the difficulty for families like his to come up with the monies to keep children- even incredibly gifted and intelligent children like Emmanuel- in school beyond the primary grades. And I shared with the congregation my determination to help in whatever way I could to enable this deserving young man to get the education he so desired. I could not help every child, I told them, but I could help one.

The next Sunday, following the worship service, Austin came up to me in the office. “Pastor Linda, here is something to help with Emmanuel’s education.” And he shyly handed me a one-hundred-dollar bill. Tears filled my eyes as I thanked him profusely for this gift, telling him how much that would mean, how significantly it would assist with the next semester’s fees. A smile spread over his face. “I know how important school is to me. I just couldn’t imagine not being able to go,” and, accepting my hug of gratitude, he slipped out the door.

It was only later that I learned from his grandmother, also a member of the congregation, that this money, which I had assumed was from his family, was actually Austin’s own, saved from gifts given to him, from his allowance, from doing various chores. And now, Instead of spending it on all of those many things teen-agers enjoy buying and having and using, Austin had- in response to the story of the need of a young boy like himself- given all he had at that moment to help…to contribute in some small way (or not so small, actually) to enable that boy in a far-away place, that boy he would probably never meet, to stay in school for another semester. So is the power of story…

Maddie was awarded a Chambers Grant to develop this site, and some of the proceeds will be donated to our work at TNP.  So. we hope that you will take a moment to check out Maddie’s beautiful vision for a kinder world.

And as she goes to work with schools in India for one year as the winner of another social entrepreneurship grant, we send her off with love and much gratitude. The world is already so much better for having Maddie in it.  All of our families in Africa love her as much as we do.  Asante sana, Maddie, thank you.

Visit The Snap Project website.

http://www.hercampus.com/school/wakeforest/her-impact-nyanya-say-what

http://thecitizen.co.tz/sunday-citizen/-/8382-how-i-realised-my-life-long-dream