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In 2001, just outside Mumias, a village in rural western Kenya, Irene Mudenyo
found an abandoned baby in a sugarcane plantation on her farm. The baby, apparently
aged 4-6 months, had been left lying in a blanket and must have been there
for at least two days.
He needed immediate hospital attention, as he was in a bad way, severely dehydrated
and under-nourished. African Safari ants had eaten the skin on his back, and
he had suffered from exposure to the weather.
Irene tried to find the baby’s mother, and when that did not work out, she
went to the police to see what could be done about getting him adopted - but
they could not help. Irene had 12 children of her own, and felt that she was
too old to adopt him herself, so the little boy, now named Moses for obvious
reasons, went into a missionary orphanage, paid for by Irene's daughters.
As the months went by, Irene and her family decided that Moses would be better
off in a family environment, and one of her daughters paid for a carer to help
Irene bring up Moses. And that is where the whole idea of a day care centre
came from.
Their search for an orphanage for Moses had opened their eyes to the scale
of the HIV orphan problem in western Kenya. The only question for Irene and
her family was how best to provide care and education for more than just Moses.
The idea of setting up an orphanage was soon rejected as being impractical
and too expensive to fund, but a day care centre seemed to be a possibility.
One
of Irene’s daughters, Lorna Makokha, owned a road-side kiosk which was not
being used. Local fund-raising produced seed capital of £300, enough to start
up, and, with Irene, Lorna and some of Lorna’s sisters funding running costs
since then, the Noah’s Ark Day Care Centre came into being.
Started in 2001and located at Mumias in Western Kenya, it provided food, clothing,
medical care and welfare for the children in its care.
Lorna has passed away and funding and management of the existing centre become
too great a burden for the family, who do not live locally.
The NASIO Trust was then set up to enable this work to continue, to expand
and to be done better. (NASIO is a Kenyan name, used in honour of Irene’s mother.)
On the first day more than 60 children turned up for the fifteen places then
available.
After extensive fund-raising, a new enlarged centre was built at a cost of
£30,000+ for the care of the children. This was officially opened in November
2005.
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