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Founder of Kenyan school to speak March 14
This was a good week!
Learning has been going on well.
On Wednesday we had some interruptions due to the political skirmishes.
The children had to leave early before the situation got worse.
The teachers escorted the children home ensuring they all got
home safe. Sad to say that the situation worsened in the evening
and we thank God that none of our staff or children was caught
up in the skirmishes.
—Lilian Nderitu, administrator, Grace School
from the Grace Journal, January 2008
The political situation seems to be improving with fewer
killings. The two main political party leaders are having mediation
talks led by his Excellency Mr. Koffi Annan. We continue to pray
for the situation to improve.
—Lilian Nderitu, administrator, Grace School
from the Grace Journal, February 2008
The director of Grace School, the Rev. Samuel Wambugu, will speak
at 11:50 a.m. March 14 in the Goins Auditorium.
The public is invited to hear Wambugu discuss the challenges of
educating children in Limuru, Kenya, who face almost impossible
circumstances: not only are they living in a war zone, but half
of the 120 students are orphans, because their parents have died
of AIDS.
Wambugu is a Kenyan Presbyterian minister. He and his wife, Monica,
founded Grace School in 1997 as a means of giving street children
a safe place to go. They provide food and family assistance to
most of the students there.
The Wambugus are in Knoxville for five weeks, updating supporters
and raising funds for the school.
The couple came to Knoxville in 1999 in order for Samuel Wambugu
to serve a yearlong pastoral counseling residency at the University
of Tennessee Medical Center. They returned to Kenya with enough
financial help to transform Grace School from a primitive two-room
building to a modern campus.
Most of the funding used to run the first- through eighth-grade
facility comes from Knoxville residents, 14 Knoxville churches,
a local foundation and the East Tennessee Friends of Grace School.
The faculty are busy educating the poorest kids in the area, but
they know the children in a refugee camp within sight of the school
are in desperate need also. A school counselor spends three days
a week in the refugee camp counseling the children, who are known
as “internally displaced persons.”
“Most of the IDPs are really traumatized as the violence
has been marked by very brutal killings,” school administrator
Lilian Nderitu wrote to East Tennessee Friends of Grace School
this month.
“Violence has claimed more than 800 lives in Kenya since
the election, as mobs have blockaded roads, attacked people indiscriminately
and burned down buildings with people locked inside.”
Kenya has been the scene of ethnic and political violence since
its December presidential elections, which were strongly marked
by tribalism. Limuru, a mountainous village situated about 30
miles west of Nairobi, is home to tea plantations and many slums.
The town is faced with high unemployment and homelessness in addition
to the violence, sickness and hunger.
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