Today, Feb 1, FAF received this message from Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya, an NGO that FAF helps support. It is sent in response to my Jan. 31 e-mail asking how we can help.

Dear Laura,

Thank you for being with us. Things have been difficult for us in Kenya and for us in WOFAK. Many of our staff members were not able to resume work i time, we are ever in a situation of deep anxiety and uncertainty, many of our clients have been displaced from their homes, many cannot access treatment services such as drug replenishments and scheduled hospital appointments. A number of women have been raped, including five of our members within the internally displaced camps.

Hunger and malnutrition has set in among a substantial number of our clients, especially those who are on treatment. However, Laura, we made several appeals to many of our partners and about 3 partners have responded with donations in cash to help support the displaced and those severely affected. From next week, we shall be distributing relief food to our clients, we shall be giving them sanitary towels, blankets and multivitamintablets. We are seeking help to provide relief to 500 women, displaced or adversely affected by these post-election crisis from our centres in Kisumu, Homa Bay, Busia, Nairobe and Mombasa.

We are quite humbled by the passionate responses, solidarity and humane with which our partners and the entire international community have shown to WOFAK and Kenya. We are sure that FAF will do its bit, at a time that will be convenient to them, to enable us to provide more relief. We are not sure of the next day, things are calm today, but tomorrow, new waves of violence erupts, pitting communities against each other and rendering many people homeless.

We wish you a prosperous new year and look forward to continued collaboration.

Sincerly, Charles Kaduwa

Program Officer, WOFAK

ROTARY GRANT APPROVED

Fabulous African Fabrics received the news this week that $13,800 will be awarded to The Good Samaritan Home in Nairobi, Kenya in February. The money was raised by the Dunedin Rotary North of Dunedin, FL along with other clubs in the Rotary District. That amount of money recieved a matching grant from Rotary International, headquartered in Evanston, IL. With the cooperation of one of the Nairobi clubs, The Good Samaritah Home will receive $14,000.

The funds are earmarked for high school tuition. Public high schools in Kenya require tuition, of about $300 per year at a basic school. The orphans of the Good Samaritan Home receive their elementary education on site. Through hard work and excellent teachers, many children score high enough on their exiting tests to enter high school. Every year there is a scramble to find enough tuition money to pay for all of the deserving teenagers. Any additional monies will go to food expenses for the children.

FAF Executive Director, Laura G. Salazar is a member of the Dunedin North Rotary club.

Today we received this message from the Good Samaritan Home.

Dear Laura Salazar,

Greetings to you from Good Samaritan.  We are very grateful of your continued effort to support this home and even encourage others to give hand to us.  We have already received the transfer of funds of $2020.

In Kenya we have been hit by serious riots, chaos.  There is lots of turbulences and tension all around.  By Gods grace we have not been affected directly but directly since many Mothers and children are popping in our center for help.  Nevertheless we trust that we are going to recover soon.  Pray for us and our country.

Lots Love

Mercy, Staff & children

Dear Laura Gardner Salazar

Much greeting to you from Good Samaritan. We are all fine at the center. The students are on their midterm. They will be closing their school on 24th of April to open the 2nd semester around First week of May. The no. [number] of children have continued to increase with time. For eg. [example] we rescued a baby girl 2 months (Jackiline) whose mother died 23 of Dec, 2006 from HIV/AIDS. Deborah born October, 2006, her mother is very sick in a serious condition of the same sickness. HIV/AIDS is sweeping lots of people and especially the home being located [in] a slum area. The no. have increased to 220 children. We have several of such cases ranging from one day old and above. We have 10 students who have not yet joined high school because we lacked no one to support their high school. But we hope for the best.

God bless you.

"To be honest, I don't think I comprehend the dimensions of havoc, disruption, discontinuity. . . . We say it disrupts the social fabric but we don't go deep enought to say what this means. It will be a different society." These words are from Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca and quoted in Twenty Eight Stories of AIDS in Africa. Mrs. Mandela went on, " . . . the grandparents have to fill the void, have to try to connect the chain of knowledge, experience, values, that goes from one generation to another--when you jump a generation, there is a void and you can't fill it."

Graca Mandela's accents the importance of the work Fabulous African Fabrics and groups like ours are making in Africa today.

Stephanie Nolen's book cited above has given me a lot to think about in the last week as I read the stories of AIDS impact. Be looking for more from this beautifully written book with its broad window to the struggle that is AIDS in Africa. And read Twenty Eight Stories of AIDS in Africa for yourself if you can.

Laura Salazar, FAF Executive Director