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Hotelier Builds Facility for Orphans in Kenya
John
Ngata Kariuki, executive director of Sarova Hotels, a leading hotel
chain in East Africa, is used to housing high-profile business people,
politicians and international dignitaries in style. But last August, the
people waiting to come through his doors were not his usual patrons.
For a moment they just stood and stared, taking in luxury to which they
between ages 6 and 13 rushed into their new dormitory bedroom,
gleefully threw themselves onto the bunk beds and rolled on the clean,
white sheets.
Kariuki's
new patrons, many of whom had never had a bed of their own,
were getting their first taste of life in Ngata Children's Home, founded by
and named after Kariuki, in Kirinyaga, the small village just north of
Nairobi where he was born 63 years ago.
The modest building will be both their home and their school until they
turn 18. Beyond providing beds, Ngata educates its orphans in
employable
skills such as carpentry, welding, tailoring and computing. It is part of
Kariuki's effort to do good and at the same time boost Kenyan
tourism--by taking on a small part of a problem the government has been
unable to address: -
dealing with 160,000 homeless kids, many of whom live and sleep on the
streets of the capital city of Nairobi, where they beg, steal, sniff glue
and
commit violence as a means of survival.
Driven by
poverty and AIDS, which has alone orphaned some 900,000,
Kenyan children continue to pour from rural villages into Nairobi.
Yet little has been done about them. Says Kariuki: "The government
cannot deal with street kids and hopes the private sector--especially the
tourism industry--can subsidize government effort."
Taking even one child off the streets helps, but the numbers Ngata can
accommodate are a mere drop in the bucket. Kariuki hopes his pilot
project will spawn others like it. Since the personal and financial
investment is a sizable one that few Kenyans can afford, the success of
the idea remains to be seen.
By
Kimberlee Acquaro, with reporting by Simon Robinson,
Time Magazine, February 19, 2001 |
