Photo/ELVIS OGINA/NATION Scholar Cherobon,15, with her cousin Nelly Cheruto after their re-union at their home in Kawangware estate, Nairobi on July 5, 2011.
As Schola Cherobon waved her grandmother goodbye, her heart fluttered with excitement.
She was on her way to Nairobi with a neighbour, who had promised to take her to a “nice” school there.
Schola had never been to the city, but like many others in her village in Kapsabet, she had heard about it often enough to be curious to want to visit.
As she and her neighbour, who she knows as Mama Rono, boarded a bus to Nairobi, she could hardly contain her anticipation.
Schola, a 15 year old, lived with her grandmother, following her parents separation several years ago.
She had been a class seven pupil at Mombor Primary school, when this neighbour approached her grandmother, and convinced her to allow her to take Schola with her, with a promise to take her to a better school.
As it later turned out however, this promise was never fulfilled. Had Schola not been a smart teenager, right now, she would be scouring dirty sufurias, scrubbing floors, and looking after a three months old infant.
She says that when they arrived in Nairobi in late April, Mama Rono took her to a friend’s house, who promised to introduce her to the school’s headmaster the next morning. This woman would later tell her that she had been brought to her home to work as a maid.
“Mama Rono alinidanganya ati atanipeleka shule mzuri, kumbe alikuwa anataka nifanye kazi ya nyumba,” Schola narrated in Swahili. (Mama Rono lied to me that she would take me to a good school, yet all along, she wanted me to work as a maid.)
The teenager does not remember the name of the estate she was taken to, nor the name of the woman, though she recalls that she had three children.
“She has three children – the first is seven years old, the second four, while the youngest is three months old,” Schola says.
Instinct told her that she risked sleeping in the cold that night if she told the woman that she did not want to be a house help, and so she decided to keep quiet until morning.
Schola says that the night she spent at her employer-to-be’s house was one of the longest she has ever had, adding that she slept very little.
“I spent the night thinking of how I would run away the next day,” she says.
Come the following day, Schola strategically sat near the door, just in case the woman tried to lock her up when she expressed her desire to return home.
“After breakfast I told her that I did not want to become a maid, and wanted to go back home,” she narrates.
The woman, Schola says, became angry, and threatened to tell Mama Rono that she was becoming uncooperative, yet she had offered to “help” her.
“When I asked for bus fare to return to Kapsabet, she angrily told me that she had no money,” Schola says, fiddling with her hands.
Terrified of the big risk she was taking, walking off into the unknown, but determined to go back home, Schola walked out of the house, leaving her clothes behind, with no penny in her pocket, nor any idea of where she was headed.
All the broken-hearted girl knew was that she wanted to complete school and achieve her desire to become a high school teacher.
Somehow, she found herself at a bus stop. It is here that she met a kind woman, who offered to pay her fare to town after Schola lied that she was to meet a relative in the city, but had lost her money.
When they reached the City center, she thanked the woman, alighted, and begun to walk, her destination unknown. “I just wanted to go back home,” she says, fighting back tears that threaten to spill at the distressing memory.
After walking for a while, she spotted a policeman, and courageously approached him.
She quickly narrated her story, and to her pleasant surprise, the policeman held her hand and informed her that he would help her to find her way back home after helping her to record information at the police station where he was based.
“I had always thought that policemen are harsh people,” Schola says with a shy smile. The policeman took her to Kamukunji Police Station, where she was booked as a lost child.
“The police officers were kind, and the place had beds. We were also given hot meals,” she says of the three days she spent at the police station.
She was later transferred to Nairobi Children’s Remand Home, where she stayed for close to two weeks, before her relatives traced her, following a feature in the Daily Nation a month ago.
On 22nd June, DN2 published photographs of 57 lost children, being housed at Nairobi Children’s Remand Home, and Nairobi Children’s Home. Schola was one of these children.
It is her cousin Nelly Cheruto, who lives in Kawangware, at the outskirts of the city center, who came across her photograph as she casually perused the Daily Nation.
“I immediately called my mother in Kapsabet to find out if indeed it was Schola in the newspaper,” Nelly told us.
After determining that it was indeed her cousin, she called the phone numbers provided, and explained that she was related to Schola.
Schola left for Kapsabet early Monday morning, two weeks ago, escorted by Jane Matagaro, an official at the children’s home, to ensure that she arrived home safely.
Schola wasn’t the only child that was reunited with her family, following this feature. Another is four-year old Brian Oniang’o.
He was taken by a Good Samaritan to Kilimani police station in December last year and later transferred to Nairobi Children’s Home in Kabete, on 6th January 2011.
The children officers at the home christened him “Edwin” since he could not speak, due to a congenital condition known as tongue-tie.
His mother, 22-year old Rose Atieno, says that Brian got lost a week before Christmas last year. “I had left him in the house watching television in the company of two of his friends, as I went to fetch water nearby,” Atieno, who lives in Kibera, says.
When she returned, her son was gone. His two friends, three, and two years, did not notice Brian walking out of the house, since their concentration was on the television.
She says that she and her husband, with the assistance of their neighbours, looked for Brian for five days, but their search was fruitless.
“We hardly slept that night,” Brian’s father says, adding that he only got to realise how miserable he had been when he saw his son’s face in the paper.
“I cannot even begin to explain how traumatic it was for us – these six months have been terrible…terrible,” Atieno says, holding her son’s hand tightly.
Atieno is five months pregnant, and says that even though she was really looking forward to the birth of her second child, there would still have been a vacuum, since he or she wouldn’t have replaced Brian.
We were interviewing this couple at the Children’s Court a fortnight ago, where they had turned up for their son’s release. Lucky is his name…
Another child who was reunited with his family on the same day is eight year old Lucky Ondari. He got lost three months ago while playing with his friends in Nairobi’s Eastleigh estate.
His uncle Wycliffe Luvai, saw Lucky’s photograph as he went through the paper, early Wednesday morning.
“I had just reported to the construction site where I am working, and since I was still a few minutes early, I borrowed the newspaper, to catch up with the news,” says Luvai, a casual labourer.
Wycliffe says that Lucky disappeared from home in March this year. “We looked for him everywhere we could think of for two days, before we reported the matter to the police station,” he says.
The standard three pupil at New Pumwani Primary school says he was playing with friends outside his home when he saw a trailer. Marveled by its huge wheels, he decided to follow it.
By the time he satisfied his curiosity however, he was in an unfamiliar place, and could not trace his way back to their home.
Lucky, who is fondly referred to as Junior by friends and family, says that he was picked up by a policeman, who took him to Buruburu police station, before he was transferred to Nairobi Children home in Kabete.
According to Ms Christine Ondieki, the children’s officer in charge of Nairobi Children’s home, once a guardian or relative has identified a child who got lost under their care, before the reunion takes place, there’s a process that needs to be followed.
The first step involved identifying the reasons that may have led to the disappearance of the child. “If the child ran away from home due to either neglect or abuse, we handle it differently from say, if he or she got lost while playing with friends,” she says.
After going through the identification process with children officers at the home, a report is then written to the Children’s Court, recommending the release of the child to the respective guardian or relative.
Ms Ondieki says that before the child is released, children officers first survey the home environment to find out whether the living conditions are suitable. The Nairobi Childrens’ Home houses children below three years, while Nairobi Childrens’ Remand Home takes in those above three years.
Both of these homes, located in Kabete, take care of the lost children for six months only. If they have not been claimed by then, they are placed in other children centres, so that they can be enrolled in school.
However, the two institutions keep the children’s records, to make the identification process easier in case their relatives turn up later. The incredible journey towards finding these children, begun when several Daily Nation readers expressed concern about the rising cases of lost children in the country.
This led to congestion of these two children’s homes, which are only supposed to act as holding units before the children are released once they have been identified.
We visited these homes, and took photographs of the 57 lost children, which we later published. By the time Living went to press, 25 of these children had been reunited with their families.
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