The only guarantees are faith and love

GIVE US A WAVE . . . Hadassah pupils offer a thumbs-up.

The Chron’s sports writer sums up his trip to Kenya with the Oldham Athletic Community Trust.


THEY drive on the left in Kenya, we were told on arrival.

Having just spent 10 days in the chaotic African nation, I am still not sure that is true.

The roads of Nakuru, full of enormous craters and almost satirical speed bumps the size of cattle — as if anyone really needs slowing down — have to be seen to be believed.

And the terrible state of the under-wheel conditions means that many drivers prefer to spend a lot of time driving on the best patch of land they can find, wherever it happens to lie.

As a passenger on the seriously nutty Kenyan roads, it is the better option to be oblivious to the chaos.

But turning a blind eye was not an option when it came to the children of the Hadassah Mission School.

The group of eight volunteers on the Oldham Athletic Community Trust's adventure were given a tour of homes belonging to parents. Mud buildings no more than three-and-a-half metres square, divided by a curtain into living and sleeping sections, housed families as large as six with no running water or electricity.

Despite such conditions, there was no shortage of smiles from the kids at the school, many of whom are orphans and an unknown number of whom are HIV carriers.

And love and faith were in abundance among the families and friends — none more so than in the four-hour church service we experienced. Sunday-best clothes were cracked out and some serious dance moves accompanied the solid two hours of singing, as a series of vocalists occupied the stage.

One of the three pastors in charge of the service had a pair of unmistakable scars around his neck. We later found out they were a result of a machete attack around the time of the last presidential elections in 2007.

Tribal unrest in Kenya is stoked by politicians seeking to maintain their privileged positions by keeping the masses at each other's throats.

Hopefully, the Hadassah children will be untouched by troubles when the elections arrive again next year. But around Nakuru, there are scarred men walking the streets without hands. And the pastor at the school told us a disturbing tale of collecting dead bodies from the nearby streets as the unrest spread in the Rift Valley.

Violence aside, the school — funded entirely by charitable donations — is facing a challenge simply to stay afloat.

The land it occupies at present is rented and the landowner will reclaim it at the end of November. A total of £10,000 needs to be raised to buy a new patch close to Lake Nakuru National Park, at which the school will be rebuilt. After that, there are future ambitions to expand into secondary and university education.

Whether that can be brought about remains to be seen. But there is no doubting the resilience and spirit of the people of Nakuru, young and old.

Hopefully, one day we will go back to see how they are getting on.