Despite the course around the river Thames being largely flat, running 26miles and 385 yards (42,2km) is a huge challenge for even the most fit individuals! Passing many of London’s famous landmarks en-route is a great opportunity to experience London in the most exciting of atmospheres. Runners often say the most exciting stage of the run, is approaching Tower Bridge to the throngs of supporters eagerly cheering everyone that passes by.

There was a double victory for Kenya as Wilson Kipsang and Mary Keitany were victorious in the male and female elite races.

ACE Africa’s stars were Phil Howard and Luke Mackowski who ran for ACE in this year’s marathon.

Luke Mackowski said ‘The atmosphere was fantastic. For me crossing Tower Bridge was the highlight second only to crossing the finish line.’The rain held off for most of the morning and even a few showers didn’t spoil the atmosphere. The support is always incredible at such events and really keeps the runners going.

Phil decided to raise money for ACE Africa and Save the Rhino after a trip last year to our project sites in Kenya and Tanzania. Phil raised a staggering £12,000 for his two chosen charities, and Luke Mackowski raised an impressive £1,600 for ACE Africa!
‘I was really blown away from the generosity of my friends, family and colleagues, ‘said Luke.

ACE Africa would like to congratulate Phil and Luke on their achievement and thank them for their incredible support. We really appreciate the time and effort involved in training for such a challenge, taking part in the event as well as raising money to support our community support programmes.

Just as importantly thanks to all those people who sponsored and supported Luke and Phil.

These funds will go a long way to support many orphaned and vulnerable children and families infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in rural Kenya and Tanzania.

If you are interested in running for ACE in a marathon or would like to take part in the upcoming 2012 British 10k London Run or would like information on similar events and challenges, please contact us now at the ACE office event@ace-africa.org or Tel: 020 7933 2994.

“Yalusi is one of the best groups in Bungoma East District and we are working closely with them to educate other groups in their neighborhood.’”District Agricultural Officer, Bungoma

“We can run kitchen gardens since we have been provided with planting seeds and now have the skills and knowledge on agricultural technologies. We can grow vegetables which we can provide to our families and sell the rest to gain income which is useful in buying household necessities.”
Wilbroda Khisa, Bungoma Group Member

Since Marvin has been identified through a Child to Child (CtC) club, ACE Africa has been helping him and his grandmother by providing the following services: assistance with school and examination fees, the cost of medication for the frequent infections associated with living with HIV, school uniform and nutritional supplements for 6 months to increase his weight to a healthy level. These measures have resulted in his full attendance at school. Furthermore Marvin was trained in kitchen gardening and provided with start-up seeds for his household where they now cultivate cow peas, kale and other nutritious crops for consumption and sale. Marvin’s good health and nutritional status means that he has a high chance of living well into later life if he continues to adhere to antiretroviral therapy.

Today Esther leads a life away from the threat of HIV, STIs and the abuse she once faced on a daily basis as a commercial sex worker. She had always believed she was HIV positive, however her negative status was revealed at the ACE Africa moonlight testing clinic. She is a strong voice in peer education and has provided counselling to over 30 women and helped them to start various Income Generating Activities.

“If it was not for the counselling, medical support and visits I got from ACE Africa, I would be where my colleagues are now – dead”
Esther Weswa, Bondeni, Satellite site in Bungoma Region

Thanks to the support of all those who attended and the generosity of our Auction and Raffle prize donors, the evening raised just over £5,500.  These funds will go a long way to support many orphaned children and families in rural Kenya and Tanzania, and ACE Africa would like to say a huge thank you to everyone for supporting the event and making it such a success.

We look forward to welcoming everyone back next year!

Climbing Kilimanjaro is a once in a lifetime experience, truly exhilarating with testing conditions. Temperatures fluctuate from freezing at night to intense heat during the day and oxygen levels at the summit are half those of sea level. It is an experience not easily forgotten and made up by the spectacular views at the summit! “At 5.50am on Wednesday 25th Jan 2012 after 4 days of climbing and 2 porters evacuated with altitude sickness, we successfully summited the world’s highest freestanding mountain Kilimanjaro”

“After our climb we were very fortunate to go on project sites in Arusha and see some of the amazing work ACE Africa does.”

Anthony Okoti, ACE Africa’s Founder and Project Manager, and George showed John and James some of the projects in Kimyaki and Mateves just outside Arusha, which are in the early stage of its’ second phase. The boys got a taste of the programmes that ACE Africa carries out in the communities.

First stop of the afternoon was visiting a support group who were involved in running a goat co-operative. The goats milk forms a vital source of nutrients for the support groups, many of whom are living with HIV and AIDS, as well as OVC and PLWA that the group are supporting in the community. Any surplus milk is sold at the local market and profits invested into group activities.

The boys were introduced to a group who ACE have provided with a Posho Mill and have trained in producing nutritious flour. The grains (sorghum, maize, millet and soya) which are ground into flour using the mill are used to create a nourishing porridge. As well as producing flour for their own use, they also sell some at the market, generating income to support at least 20 local children and provide them with basic essentials (soap, sugar, paper for studying, etc.) “The marvellous thing about these projects is that in the majority they were operated for and by women. During our day with ACE Africa we visited both projects and beneficiaries supported by the charity. Many of the beneficiaries are widows living with HIV and receive education, counselling and antiretroviral drugs. It was amazing to see the effect that these drugs had and if used over an extended period of time these people will live longer and better lives.”

“This has been a great experience for both of us and we look forward to supporting future ACE events.”

A big thank-you to John and James for their fantastic support. If you want to take part in a challenge such as ascending Kili and would like the opportunity to see ACE Africa programmes first hand, then please do contact us in the ACE Africa office, event@ace-africa.org / 020 7933 2994, we would love to have your support.

Jiggers or Chigoe flea is the smallest known flea measuring only 1mm and lives in soil and sand. Breeding female fleas embed themselves into the exposed skin of a warm blooded host (mostly under the toenails and fingernails), feeding on the hosts flesh and blood. The flea’s abdomen expends to the size of a small pea (5-10mm) producing over 100 eggs. Eggs are dropped onto the ground and the cycle continues. The complete lifecycle of Chigoe flea lasts about a month. Jiggers thrive where there are few made roads, dirt floors and animals mixing freely with people. Children are especially vulnerable because children commonly lack shoes in rural areas, so their feet are in constant contact with soil and dusty floors. Most classrooms are made of mud walls and earth floors, a good habitat for the bugs.

Kevin’s foot and hand infested with jiggers before treatment

Heavy infestation may lead to severe inflammation, ulceration, fibrosis, lymphangitis, gangrene, sepsis, the loss of toenails, amputation of the toes, and in extreme cases death may occur. The jiggers menace deprives the pupils of concentration in class, affects extra curriculum participation often leaving children lethargic and slow in action. Children are often forced to drop out of school because of inability to walk due to excruciating pain. Adults who are attacked by the jiggers are entirely dependent as they cannot actively take part in day to day activities. Worse still, the victims face another challenge; these children and adults do not only feel the pain but also face the ridicule of their well-to-do peers and community due to stigmatization, which can lead to low self-esteem. In the area it is believed that jiggers infestation is a curse and once infected the individual cannot be cured.

To combat this ignorance, ACE Africa has taken a lead role to curb this menace by organizing anti-jiggers campaign activities in schools and in the community.

ACE INTERVENTION
With the support of Stars Award Foundation, ACE Africa has actively taken part in a new campaing to fight against jiggers. ACE Volunteers including trained Child to Child teachers, mentors, and other child rights defenders have taken a lead role in mobilizing the community during the anti-jiggers campaigns. The events have been organized both in Child to Child schools and community resource centres. This has been done in collaboration with Matibabu Foundation and Ministry of public health, an exercise that has seen many children and adults relieved from the pain. The campaign involved actual treatment of the pest, by using hydrogen peroxide, Lysol, among other disinfectants that have proved effective and economical. In order to prevent future infestation the ACE campaign included hygiene education.

Children sensitized on best practices to control the spread of jiggers Jiggers campaign in Nyalenya Child to Child school

OUTCOME
To this end, over 3,000 community members including parents and guardians have been sensitized on best practices to prevent and stop the spread of the jiggers; this includes keeping the house clean throughout, regular cleaning of bedding and clothes, ensuring that the children are always clean by taking regular baths among other hygiene practices.
Over 1200 children and adults have been physically treated and their condition has improved as evidenced from follow up. 60% of the children whose toes were disfigured and were forced to drop out of school are now able to attend and concentrate in class. 50% of adults who were infected and unable to fend for themselves are today independent and able to take active role in community development activities. Those who have been treated are now feeling better.

Kevin’s and his friend’s feet 2 months after treatment. ACE staff helps clean the nails as a routine hygiene practice.

Informative and factual messages disseminated during the campaigns have challenged the assumptions of people and the myths and misconceptions associated with jiggers have been reversed. This is evidenced from this quote

“………….these bugs have been a burden to my children, I thought this was a curse to my family, but now, you have given me credible opportunity to learn valuable lessons from this exercise, you have in deed challenged my assumption and attitude, I am sure if I initiate the good health practices we have shared, the bugs will be no more, you have given me the morale to fight the bugs,…. “ Nya Yenga a mother of 2 OVC who accompanied her children during the Jiggers campaign in September 2011.

ACE Africa identified Irene in 2008 at Bar Achuth Resource Centre, a local health facility. Since then Irene has been supporting many people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. Regaining strength through antiretroviral therapy and a good nutritious diet, she understands the importance and is an advocate in her community of good nutrition. Irene volunteered to become the area gardener, whereby she cultivates the demonstration garden within the Resource Centre. As a mentor gardener she educated community members on the need to grow locally available crops, she provided vegetables to people living with HIV and AIDS and orphans and vulnerable children and provided training on how households could establish their own kitchen gardens even when families had limited space through sack and trench gardens. Due to her enthusiasm, 80% of community members who have been linked with Irene have embraced the concept of kitchen gardening.

Irene has received further training from ACE Africa on organic farming and through this she has established a very productive kitchen garden at home for subsistence and sale as well. Through the sale of surplus she has saved enough money to move from a one-roomed grass thatched house to a three roomed iron-sheet house. Furthermore she has given back to the community by donating a piece of land to act as a garden for the Bar Achuth Moyle Community Support Group which supports malnourished individuals and/or those infected with HIV.

Irene has been recognized as an outstanding volunteer in her area and as such partnering organizations such as the Kenya Red Cross Society, Nyanza Reproductive Health and Matiabu Foundation have Irene on community home based care. Irene has played a very active role in the distribution of nutritious soya flour to ACE Africa beneficiaries, making follow-up visits at the household level as well as referring newly identified people living with HIV and AIDS to the resource center. Her first-hand experience of living with the disease has enabled her to nurture bedridden members of the community, encourage infected individuals to adhere to antiretroviral therapy and be a key advocate of voluntary counseling and testing within the community. She was actively involved with the ACE Jiggers campaign to treat infected children. Irene is a great example to others of positively living with the disease.

Over the course of the afternoon we chatted to students about their interests in development and their plans for the future. We discussed the programmes taking place at our project sites and hoped to raise awareness with them about ACE Africa. In total there were about 20 organisations taking part in the volunteering fayre, with some other small charities as well as large international volunteering projects. The fayre attracted over 400 students. Well done to Juan Blick who won a copy of ‘A Small Act’ on dvd about the power of education in Kenya in a raffle we held at the ACE stand.

For more information about volunteering and internship opportunities both in the UK and abroad with ACE please read our page volunteer and job opportunities or email on info@ace-africa.org.
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We have a few team places left for this years 2012 ACE Africa Quiz Night on Thursday 19th April!    Please click here for the 2012 Quiz Night Sign-up form or get in touch with us in the office on event@ace-africa.org or Tel: 020 7933 2997. Get together a team of 6 – 8 friends and put your knowledge to the test. Entry is £30 per person and includes pizza, salad and wine, and of course a fun and competitive evening of mental agility with legendary Quizmaster Ben Morton!

After the success of last year’s Quiz Night, we will once again be holding the event at Pizza Express, Olympia.  The evening will begin at 7pm with a cash bar on arrival.  Please try to arrive in good time as the quiz will start promptly at 7.30pm, and the evening will close by 10.30pm.  Pizza Express is located at Hammersmith Road, Olympia, London W14 8UX.  Please note that trains no longer run to Olympia, and the closest tube station is therefore on Kensington High St (circle line) and about a 10 min walk.  Please click here for a map of how to find Pizza Express Olympia.

Please help support ACE Africa’s community development programmes in Kenya and Tanzania – by taking part in our annual quiz night you will be helping to give a better life to thousands of orphans and vulnerable children and their families. 

Please contact us in the UK office at event@ace-africa.org or 020 7933 2997 if you have any questions.

My main responsibility during my internship was to co-ordinate the auction and raffle prizes for the fundraising event. This in itself doesn’t sound like a huge amount of work but this was no ordinary charity raffle! The top auction prizes included a helicopter flight, luxury holidays and (my personal favourite) a meal prepared for you in your own home by a team of 2* Michelin chefs from The Square restaurant. There was an enormous amount of work to be done in liaising with the donors about terms and conditions and producing all the promotional materials on the prizes for the guests to read on the night. The reality was that the guests were going to be spending hundreds if not thousands of pounds on the prizes, so we couldn’t afford any mistakes!

Working on the Going for Gold! prizes was certainly my most important responsibility whilst at ACE, but I had the chance to be involved in many other aspects of the charity’s work. ACE is a tiny organisation, with just two full-time staff members (UK director Sam and fundraising officer Lizzy) and one part-time finance officer (Ade). What this means is that you have to become something of a ‘jack of all trades’. For example, I’m hardly an IT expert, but during my time at ACE I was often asked to help out with technical issues, including uploading photos to the website and getting the scanner to work (easier said than done!) These may sound like relatively simple tasks, but in a very small charity which isn’t able to employ a computer specialist it can be surprisingly difficult! You all just have to muck in as best you can, and it’s all the more satisfying when you do manage to make things work.

Another responsibility which I took on at ACE was to temporarily become the charity’s ‘Twitter master’, contributing to communications through the unforgiving world of social networks! It turns out that ‘tweeting’ is a something of an art form, but when it’s done properly it can be an excellent and completely free way for an organisation to promote itself. I tried to boost ACE’s Twitter profile during my internship, by following a range of humanitarian and Africa-based organisations and posting regularly about ACE’s activities and about developments in the news related to HIV/AIDS. I didn’t quite get ACE up to the fame of Oxfam or Save the Children but I did get over a hundred new followers so not a bad start! Any tweeters reading this, don’t forget to follow @aceafrica.

After spending the best part of 3 months at ACE working towards Going for Gold!, it was very exciting (and nerve-wracking) when the big night finally rolled around. My job on the night was to look after the display of auction and raffle prizes and make sure that they were properly distributed. I ended up being so busy on the night that I scarcely had time to appreciate being in the same room as Darren Gough! It was a wonderful occasion though, and fantastic to see everything fall into place after all the preparations. The evening as a whole made me appreciate just how much can be achieved by a small and dedicated team, with the help of some wonderful volunteers and some very generous donors.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at ACE and would recommend any young person looking for a great introduction to the charity sector to consider volunteering there. I had a chance to be involved in many different aspects of the charity’s activities and above all, I was given genuine responsibility and made to feel like an integral part of the team. When I first started applying for internships, I was very worried that I might end up spending three months photocopying and making tea, but there was no risk of that at ACE! It was a pleasure to be involved with the charity, and long may they continue their wonderful work!

Amina and her children

Amina is a single parent living with HIV, and trying to support two children in Mateves. ACE Africa first met Amina in December 2009. She was severely ill, bedridden, had no medication, had not eaten properly for some time and as a result extremely malnourished, weighing 31kg. Her husband had abandoned her leaving no one to take care of her or their children.

ACE Africa provided Amina with counseling, and placed her on nutritional supplements for one year due to her malnourised condition. She was able to access ACE Africa donated medication at Mateves dispensary for treatment of malaria, skin condtions and other illnesses. Amina and her children received food from the local demonstration garden. Amina is now physically and mentally strong, have joined a community support group and receiving continuous conseling. Her weight has almost doubled to 54kg.

Amina now runs a salon business after receiving training from ACE on starting and managing a business. She was linked to a microfinance institution that provided her with start-up capital. Amina is now in a position where she can can support herself and her two beautiful children.

“Were it not for ACE Africa intervention, I would not be alive today”

ACE Africa wants to increase HIV awareness amongst high-risk groups in rural Kenya, this awareness will not only protect high-risk individuals but also their families as these individuals risk transmitting the virus on if they do not know their status. Stop-over towns close to Bungoma are synonymous with long distance truck drivers and commercial sex workers. It is vital that these individuals are tested and counselled on HIV, to reduce transmission in the area.

The Moonlight voluntary counseling and testing service offers individuals the chance to get tested at night time, anonymously. This education and awareness raising regarding HIV status leads to behaviour change and character transformation amongst high risk individuals. If you would like to see how ester’s life (previously a commercial sex worker) was improved after she attended a moonlight counseling and testing session, please click here to link to the Global Giving website. £12 could provide 6 high-risk individuals with an HIV test, transforming their lives and their families for the better.

Since finishing his secondary education, Kennedy has supported ACE in a variety of ways. During his gap year, he climbed Kilimanjaro to raise funds for ACE alumni projects. Also during this time, Kennedy taught as an untrained teacher at a local secondary school, earning a little money with which he was able to support his mother and younger sister.

‘ACE Africa has got me out of nothing into somebody. Today I have hope to live tomorrow and for the future.’

Kennedy is currently undertaking a degree course in medicine and surgery at the University of Nairobi. Kennedy receives some sponsorship by the government through the Higher Education Loans Board to cover his tuition fees, whilst his subsistence is being supported by his bursary sponsor who was very impressed with his performance.

If you would like to find out more about the ACE Africa Bursary programme, please click here for more information.

Walter became very ill, and was unable to attend school. After running out of medication to treat his HIV, his weight dropped to low levels. At 12 years old Walter should have been attending his local primary school. Whilst Walter works hard when he is at school, his performance is not as good as it should be due to his low attendance.

Walter’s case was identified by ACE Africa through a community volunteer. Immediately Walter and his grandmother were offered counselling and guidance sessions, to highlight the importance of adhering to the correct dose of antiretroviral medication. Walter was also provided with nutritional supplements to improve his health. The family were supplied with seeds and agricultural tools to establish a kitchen garden to increase the availability of food to the family. Walter was provided with a new school uniform to replace to torn one he had previously been wearing.

Since ACE Africa’s intervention, Walter’s health has significantly improved and he has been very thankful to ACE. “I feel fine. My body no longer aches the way it was in the morning. Talking to you has made me recover. Continue visiting us.” ACE staff will continue to support the family to ensure that progress continues.

This year we were delighted to be supported by many sporting celebrities, who took part in a ‘It’s Not a Question of Sport!’ spoof show hosted by Paul Farris from Juice Events (complete with blonde wig ‘a la Sue Barker!’). Former British Number One tennis player, GMTV presenter and Strictly Come Dancing competitor Andrew Castle captained one team, with team-mates former professional footballers Andy Townsend and Sam Ricketts. However, despite their best efforts, they were narrowly beaten by former England cricketer and Strictly Come Dancing Winner Darren Gough, who led his team of tennis player Jeremy Bates and pentathlete Steph Cook to victory.

Later in the evening, BBC auctioneer James Lewis hosted the Auction featuring some wonderful prizes kindly donated by ACE supporters. Prizes included a week at a deluxe Thai villa, a dinner for twelve cooked by a team of chefs from 2* Michelin restaurant ‘The Square’, and a helicopter ride over London. Click here to see details of this years Live Auction and Silent Auction lots!

Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, ambassadors, pro-bono contributors, table hosts and guests, we are thrilled to announce that the dinner raised over £55,000. These funds will help ACE Africa continue to run our life-transforming programmes in Kenya and Tanzania and will make a a huge difference to the lives of many children. Click here for the full Programme of the evening. Photos from the evening can be seen here on our Flickr stream.

Please note that we have extended the deadline to take place in the ‘Friends of ACE’ Africa Trip Prize Draw. The draw will now take place on World AIDS Day (1st December 2011), so you still have time to enter! Please click on the link for details.

ACE Africa would like to thank everyone involved in this years dinner, and helping to make ‘Going for Gold’ a success.

For any queries or information on ACE Africa’s work, please contact us at:

Tel: 020 7933 2994

Email: ukdirector@ace-africa.org

Last chance to sign up for The British 10k London Run on Sunday 8th July! With just 16 days before the Olympic torch arrives in London, what better way to get fit, experience all the atmosphere of the London Marathon and the Olympic route, but only have to run 10km! With over 20,000 runners last year, and more expected this year, the atmosphere is guaranteed to be amazing.

Sam, Lizzy and Tash in the office are all taking part (and even some of our trustees!), so please contact us if you would like to join our team of ACE Africa runners this year and take on this great fun fantastic challenge – Click here to find out more.

By taking part in an ACE event, you are helping raise vital funds for ACE Africa’s community development programmes in Kenya and Tanzania, and giving thousands of orphans, vulnerable children and their families the chance for a better future.

If you are busy that day and can’t join us, please support our runners by sponsoring them at RACE 4 ACE!

Thank you from all of us at ACE

ACE selects children for bursaries who are the most destitute in society, and who have no hope of further education. This may be because they have been orphaned or left in highly vulnerable circumstances through HIV/AIDS or because their parents, though alive, are HIV positive and in financial distress.

We are looking for new Sponsors NOW for the 2012 school intake. Please see the report on the success of our bursary programme so far and read here for information on how to sponsor a child in the 2012 intake. If you would like to sponsor a child please complete the sign-up form and standing order form. The subscription is £380 (plus Gift Aid) annually and is a 4 year commitment. Sponsors are able to correspond directly with their child.

For any enquiries regarding our 2012 Bursary Programme please contact Priscilla White, Bursary Programme Manager Tel: 01843 291835 or email: priscilla@pawwhite.co.uk

If you would like to read about a sponsors humbling experience with the children they sponsor in Kenya please read Paul and Shan Daniels account of their visit this year, and discover how sponsoring a child’s education really can change a life for the better.

To illustrate the great impact bursary programmes can have, please watch this inspiring film ‘A Small Act’ which documents the story of a young Kenyan, Chris Mburu, whose life drastically changes when his education is sponsored by a Swedish stranger. If you would like to buy or stream ‘A Small Act’, please click below. 10% of proceeds from this link will go to ACE Africa.

ACE Africa have one copy of ‘A Small Act’ to give away. The first person to contact us by email on info@ace-africa.org will receive a free copy of the DVD.

At the end of the assembly, ACE Africa was presented with a fantastic cheque for £1,857.90!!  ACE would like to say a big thank you to the staff, children and parents of Merlin School, Putney for raising a huge amount of money, which will go a long way in supporting our orphan support programmes in East Africa.

Please do contact the ACE office if you think your school, or your child’s school would be interested in supporting ACE Africa, and hearing about our programmes with communities in Kenya and Tanzania. Email: info@ace-africa.org Phone: 020 7933 2994

They have raised close to £750, which will go a long way in supporting children infected and affected by by HIV and AIDS in rural Kenya and Tanzania. If you feel inspired to take part in a similar event and raise vital funds for ACE Africa, please contact us on 020 7933 2994 or email info@ace-africa.org

ACE Africa works within Mateves and Kimyaki, Arusha region, and the contrast between landscapes was incredible to see. Unfortuantely Mateves is in the midst of crop-failure as the rains have failed to come. Please click here to read about my experience in Tanzania!

Thanks to the support of our sponsors, contributors and volunteers, ambassadors, table hosts and guests, this years event ‘Going for Gold‘ raised over £55,000 which will go a long way to help ACE continue to run our life-transforming programmes.

The most memorable ACE beneficiary I met throughout my 4 weeks was a lady called Elizabeth, living with HIV. It was eye-opening to see the great work of the ACE counsellor, Eva, bringing a smile to Elizabeth’s face and providing encouragement to adhere to anti-retroviral therapy as well as providing her with nutrious flour regularly to ensure she remains healthy. Please click here to read more about my experience with Elizabeth and the other inspirational people I met within the communities.

My visit began to Bungoma, the original ACE project site, established in 2003. Here the projects are entering the final phase of ACE Africa’s 10 year model and the extraordinary impacts the programmes are having on orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWA), guardians and the wider community were very visible to see.

Please click here to read about my week in Bungoma and the inspirational people I met.

The event raised a grand total of £2,421.50 for the Rosie Dwyer Art Project at the South End Academy in Bungoma, where 90% of pupils are orphaned due to HIV and AIDS. Money raised for the project is used to sponsor the teacher, David, who continues to do sterling work in teaching pupils arts and crafts.

Huge thanks to the Dwyers for their tremendous ongoing support and their endless supply of imaginative fundraising ideas!  To find out more about the family’s ongoing tributes to their daughter, visit http://www.rosiedwyer.co.uk.

If you would like to organize your own fundraising event to help raise funds for ACE Africa, take a look at our fundraising ideas at http://www.ace-africa.org/fundraising-ideas.aspx or contact us at info@ace-africa.org.

In becoming a ‘Friend of ACE’, you will have the chance to actually see ACE Africa’s community orphan support work ‘on the ground’. All Friends of ACE will be entered into an Africa Trip Prize Draw for a fabulous one-week visit to one of our project sites in East Africa! Please click here for details of our 2011 ACE Africa Trip Prize Draw!. The trip is a one week visit (for two people) to one of our project sites in either Kenya or Tanzania. We will organise and pay for your flights and accommodation, and arrange for you to spend up to 5 days visiting our project site and some of the community members you are helping (see T & C). It is a wonderful way of really seeing how your support is making a difference. Why not combine it with a safari or beach trip and enjoy a longer stay in either Kenya or Tanzania.

We have extended the deadline for entries, and the Draw will now take place (and the winner announced) on World AIDS Day (1st December 2011). So please sign up now and send your completed form to us before 1st December 2011!

Click here for details of our 2011 ACE Africa Trip Prize Draw!and our Friends of ACE Form.

In Bungoma, the people in the satellite project areas are dependent on food purchased from the farmers. Both subsistence and commercial farmers often grow food in excess. A rise in prices and inflation has put pressure on more than 1,000 ACE beneficiaries. Schools in the region are also suffering, and ACE is feeling the strain of contributing to Southend Academy and other institutions.

In Siaya, the persistent lack of rain resulted in a poor harvest last season. Food shortages have been experienced in several households. ACE Africa is responding to the needs of 600 such cases in Bungoma and 1,200 for Siaya.

Rhoda is pictured here with her five grandchildren. Rhoda is 86 years old and suffers from impaired vision. She lives with her 5 grandchildren after they lost both parents. She is too weak to work due to her old age, but needs to provide for her grandchildren. Rhoda cannot afford the high cost of food, and frequently the family goes hungry. One of the grandchildren is HIV positive and has to undergo the agony of taking antiretroviral therapy on an empty stomach. Three of the children should be attending school, however over the last three weeks due to their lack of strength to walk to school or even concentrate, they have been absent.

Take on a fundraising challenge
Take inspiration from one of our fantastic fundraisers above, and why not organise your own event or personal challenge? We still have places on our 2011 Kilimanjaro trek (20-29 October) – click on our ‘Events’ page for information. We can help you set up an online fundraising page, send you an ACE t-shirt and arm you with ACE Africa material to help you fundraise! Contact us at event@ace-africa.org

The group has been trained in nutritious supplement production. They have also been provided with a grinding machine which has enabled the group to produce nutritious supplements for beneficiaries within the Bukembe project site as well as the surrounding community. The group grow and manufacture soya products (flour, milk and sausages) and nutritious flour. The group is making an average income of Ksh 45,000 (£375) a month.

In addition the group have been trained in proposal writing and resource mobilisation. The group were successful in receiving a grant for £2916 from the Government of Kenya Ministry of Agriculture to expand their soya products manufacturing business.

In June 2011, Nzoia Schaa attended the western province annual trade fair and won first prize in the best small trade stand.

Sack gardens are easy to establish, utilizing available space outside the house, as well as making use of available water. They do not require heavy labour to establish and maintain (this is especially important for people living with HIV/AIDS and orphans and vulnerable children, whose energy levels are frequently low). Most importantly they produce highly nutritious vegetables for OVC and PLWA. Kimnyaki resource centre and 10 beneficiaries receiving nutritional supplements have been trained in the development of sack gardens. This programme will be expanded to schools and other beneficiaries in all ACE project sites over the coming months.

The first ACE Africa Kilimanjari climb was undertaken in September 2009, by a group of 11 from the UK (including Juliet Cockram, the ex-Director of ACE in the UK), joined by 2 of the now-graduated students of our Kenyan school programme for orphans, and several staff members from Tanzania and Kenya. The ACE Africa Kilimanjaro climb raised over £20,000 through online sponsorship, and brought a team of people – some of whom did not know each other at all – extremely close together. The climb was followed by a celebration in Arusha with staff from ACE Africa’s Tanzania team, as well as several of the Kenyan team, and visits the next day to ACE Africa’s project sites around Arusha to witness first-hand how the money raised will be used locally.

Why not sign up to climb Kili for ACE? Take a look at the itinerary from a recent trip run by the expedition company that led the recent Comic Relief climb.  Trekkers fly to Kilimanjaro Airport, staying in a lodge before commencing the trek.  Join other ACE supporters on the 6-day Machame Route trek (20 – 29 October 2011).  Beach or safari extensions are usually possible at the end of your trek. 

Please take a look at the brochure from a recent trip Kilimanjaro 2010 – Brochure. Please contact us at event@ace-africa.org if you’re interested in hearing more.

We work with several charity adventure companies and can recommend many different dates and routes according to your preference.  You can also learn more or book directly through them at Action Challenge or  Charity Challenge.

Take a look at ACE Africa UK Director Samantha Kite’s blog on her recent fundrasing challenges culminating with the Kilimanjaro climb in September 2010 – click here

It was a fantastic atmosphere with a brass-band providing the entertainment before the dreaded start. The elite runners were off with a flying start (probably having finished by the time the final ACE runners made it past the start line!) Team ACE was dispersed throughout the 25,000 strong crowd, running alongside various characters including fairies, horses and even a jar of mustard!

The support that the general public and ACE supporters showed along the whole route was amazing – providing a great source of encouragement to everyone taking part. ACE runners really enjoyed the event, passing many of London’s famous landmarks en-route and soaking up the sun. It was a great personal achievement for everyone involved. We are still waiting to hear who the fastest ACE runner was, we will keep you updated!

ACE Africa would like to say a big thank-you to all of the runners who kindly ran in support of ACE in the 2011 London 10k Run. We really appreciate the time and effort involved in training and taking part in the event. Just as importantly thanks to all those people who sponsored and supported our runners, helping ACE to raise vital funds for orphans and vulnerable children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in rural Kenya and Tanzania.

Currently the 17 ACE 10k runners have helped us raise over £9,000 (including Gift Aid), through their fantastic fundraising efforts. Hopefully over the coming weeks, more money will trickle in and we may reach our target of £10k for the 10k! Thank-you again for supporting ACE!

If you are interested in running for ACE in the 2012 British 10k London Run or would like information on similar events and challenges, please contact us now at the ACE office event@ace-africa.org or Tel: 020 7933 2994.

Watch this space for details!

ACE Africa (UK) is currently looking to appoint a new Finance & Admin Officer.  This role is a part-time paid position (20 hours per week).  Please click here for the ACE Africa Finance Officer Job Description,  and send your CV with a short cover letter to our UK Director at email ukdirector@ace-africa.org.

Applications should be received by 1st July, 2011 and candidates should ideally be available to start on 1st August 2011.

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Congratulations to Tim Pike for leading his team ‘The Wit Tank’ to victory!  Well done to everyone else for putting up a valiant effort in answering Quizmaster Ben Morton’s extremely tough questions this year.  Click here for the 2011 Quiz Night Scores to see how other teams were placed. 

Thanks to the support of all those who attended and the generosity of our Auction and Raffle prize donors, the evening raised a fantastic £8,000.  These funds will go a long way to support many orphaned children and families infected and affected by HIV and AIDS in rural Kenya and Tanzania, and ACE Africa would like to say a huge thank you to everyone for supporting the event and making it such a success.

We look forward to welcoming everyone back next year!

Destiny of a Child and ACE Africa are offering two exciting challenges to take place in Tanzania. Choose between the following:

Climbing for children – Mount Kilimanjaro Summit Trek (5,896m/19,340feet) following the Machame route. Join a group to scale the heights of Africa’s highest mountain! This route is considered the prettiest but slightly more challenging. Accompanying each group will be a leader, doctor and number of guides and porters. Climbing Kili is a once in a life time experience with testing conditions including temperature changes, from freezing cold at night and hot sun during the day, oxygen levels at the summit half of those at sea level. However these challenges are more than made up by the spectacular views at the summit! The project is limited to 3 groups of 20 climbers.

Building for Children – Build a school classroom in Tanzania
If you prefer to stay closer to ground the other exciting unique opportunity on offer is to participate in building six Child Welfare Centres in primary schools where ACE Africa has Child to Child Health clubs. The group who take up the challenge will be supported by local builders. The classroom built by the team will specifically be used as the Child to Child club room, as a library and a place where children can do their homework. No special skills are required to take part. This project is limited to 6 teams of 6 people.

Each participant will be required to raise a minimum of £1,500 in sponsorship for either of these challenges in addition to covering the cost of participating.

Please click here to see the full brochure. Please contact us in the UK office at event@ace-africa.org or 020 7933 2997 if you have any questions.

Please support our ACE Africa runners in the London 10k Run!! Text RACE04£1 (or £5/10) to 70070. Funds go to ACE Africa’s orphan support programmes.

Thank you!

The 2011 event, held on April 15 at the New Kisumu Hotel was a great success as it saw ACE Africa attract new local donors; with many partners, businessmen and individual philanthropists attending. Music was provided by the famous rhumba band that specialises on social issues, J’Amnazi Africa band, entertaining guests into the early hours of the morning. Nearly 80% of the guests who attended in 2010, supported ACE Africa once again at this years event.  In addition we were supported by new partners including Vicky Winkler from Heart Foundation who having just arrived in the country flew to Kisumu for the occasion as well as Edita from People in Peril Association (PIPA).

The occasion raised KShs. 265,000 or GBP 2210. The pledges will be added to the final tally after they have been counted.

We would like to thank all those who supported the event and to ask them to continue supporting ACE Africa. The money raised  from the event will go into direct aid for needy children and we will keep all our partners updated. We would also like to welcome those who were unable to support us this time to join hands with us as we continue supporting children in rural Kenya.

Asanteni Sana!

THE ACE AFRICA BURSARY PROGRAMME
If you would like to make a difference and give a child hope for a better future, please consider sponsoring a Kenyan child through secondary education by taking part in the ACE Africa Bursary Programme. Contact us for information on our Bursary Programme or click here for details – Sponsors Information and  Sponsors 2011 Sign-Up Form.

If you are interested in finding out more and would like to be considered for our 2 year ACE Ambassador scheme, please contact our UK Director at  ukdirector@ace-africa.org

ACE Africa’s Bungoma office was established in 2003, and so the projects here are now entering the third and final phase in ACE’s 10 year programme.  Having visited Tanzania in October last year and spent a few days in Arusha – ACE’s most recent project site, I was impressed with the difference that  work in Bungoma is making with the local communities, and the impact it is having after 7 years into the programme.  It was very evident from our field visits that many orphans and vulnerable households have benefited enormously from ACE’s presence.  We saw thriving kitchen gardens (albeit waiting for the rains), well-established CtC (Child to Child) Clubs, busy resource centres where effective Child Rights Committees meet and community members may go to for advice and counselling, information, nutritious flour, training in agriculture, and I met many people whose lives have been transformed and who have been empowered to continue to change their lives for the better.

I met several alumni students who, having benefitted from secondary education through the ACE Africa Bursary programme, were now volunteering at the ACE offices in both Bungoma and Siaya to gain work experience whilst waiting for their results and in the hope of going on to tertiary education.  My visit to Siaya made a huge impact on me.  Not only is the ACE programme here at an earlier phase in the model, but the Siaya region is more rural and is far more arid than the Bungoma area, so many people face additional challenges.  By comparison, the visit to Siaya was more harrowing as I witnessed the daily struggles of so many people. However, as in Bungoma, I left with an overwhelming feeling of optimism, where before there had been desperation.

Click here to read my account of the humbling experience of meeting some of the community members in Bungoma and Siaya.

The visit has helped me understand the complexities of the ACE Africa model in partnering with local community members to provide a holistic, sustainable solution to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS, and to empower local people to continue to make changes to transform their lives. I am confident that after ACE’s 10 year programmes reach their conclusions in each project area, the legacy of the changes will continue.  It has given context to my role here in the UK to raise awareness and funds for this incredible charity, and has helped me understand the impact that the ACE model is making and how the funds are being used to give people a better future.  There is of course more work to be done, but with the passion and commitment of the wonderful collaboration of ACE staff, volunteers, local partners and community members, there is every hope that if the ACE momentum continues, then life will continue to improve for many people in desperate need.

I am very grateful to all of the ACE Africa staff in Bungoma and Siaya, who gave me such a warm welcome, and who worked tirelessly to organise our visit. A huge heartfelt thank you to everyone, and particularly to the drivers Edwin, Peter and Martin whose skills at negotiating pot-holes are second to none!

Samantha Kite
ACE Africa UK Director
February, 2011

From a small gathering of thirty, attendance was representative and included, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Development, Dr James Nyikal, representatives from the department for Gender and Social Development, Ministry of Finance, National Council for Children Services, the Children’s Department, Dfid, Unicef, World Bank, HelpAge, Concern and ACE Africa as one of three grassroots organisations present.

The debate addressed the short and long term and diverse issues that affect children who are the sole carers of the sick in resource poor areas where there is a high prevalence of HIV and AIDS. The forum aimed to increase awareness and responsibility from all sectors for the wellbeing of child carers and will be used as a lobbying platform to include the needs of caring children in the Children’s policy sessional paper as well as greater commitment and funds from multi lateral and government agencies.

The ACE Africa community orphan support programme model was discussed and will be disseminated to all present including government and other partners for discussion. The debate and shared learning will continue with the aim of establishing a best practice model approach which can be scaled up.

Spreading Child to Child across the continent…
Lillian Bwire, ACE Africa Child Rights and Welfare Manager was requested to visit Kampala, Uganda by Mr  David Ssenoga, who represents SEC Educational Consultancy working with over 100 schools in and outside Kampala. Having visited an ACE Africa Child to Child school in Ugenya District, Siaya, he was inspired to start the CtC approach in Uganda and through intricate and complicated communication systems, contacted ACE Africa.

In November, Lillian visited Kampala to assess the training needs and then returned in January to train 33 teachers, representing 20 schools in the Kampala region. The teachers will visit ACE Africa in Bungoma for a follow up training in May 2011.

Congratulations Lillian (Mama ACE!) as an accredited CtC trainer she has trained and established Child to Child clubs in over 160 schools in Kenya and Tanzania – engaging over 12,000 children in health clubs and changing the lives of thousands …. watch out Uganda!

ACE Africa ED Augustine Wasonga in Addis…
The ACE Africa Executive Director, Augustine Wasonga visited Stand for the Vulnerable (SVO) in Addis Ababa earlier this month. As the Kenyan implementing partner of the Duke University global study on Positive Outcomes for Orphans (POFO), ACE Africa (Kenya) is recognised as having achieved high standards in research and Augustine was invited by Duke on a four day trip to SVO to provide them with training on management and community engagement and the POFO research principles and practices.

The training included a day working on POFO Research (interviews in the community, visits to community, data security, ethical issues in research, data handling- analysis, crosschecking, cleaning and entry and submission to Duke), a day on staff motivation, productivity and institutional strengthening and the final day involved training and sharing experiences on community engagement, volunteers and challenges, community contribution and resource mobilization.  Albeit a heavy work load, Augustine was well looked after and enjoyed the new and diverse experience of being in Addis. Members of SVO will make a follow up visit to Bungoma in May 2011 where further on site training will take place.

Chaired by the inspiring Annie Martin and supported by a wonderful team, the DoC group of almost sixty arrived fresh from the UK – intent on climbing Mt Kilimanjaro with the aim of raising an enormous amount of money. Throughout the arduous days that followed, a slow and ever declining trickle of climbers returned – only a few beaten by the beast – who were then thrown into an altogether different emotional and physical challenge – visiting the rural, impoverished communities where ACE Africa works. A far cry, from the comfort of supping a gin and tonic and window shopping at the Arusha Hotel but by all accounts it was a moving and unique experience for those that visited us.

The 1st of February saw the triumphant return of almost fifty climbers who had peaked the summit of Kili. Congratulations to all! The day culminated in a gala dinner at the Arusha Hotel where Joe on behalf of ACE Africa (TZ) and accompanied by Anthony and George, received an enormous cheque – both in size and content – an astounding £20,000 – which will go directly to

our Child Rights, Protection and Health programme here in Arusha.

We are so grateful for this amazing support and are looking forward to nurturing and strengthening friendships and a long term partnership with Destiny of the Child in the future.

THANK YOU!

Praxides is HIV positive but has been empowered by education about risk reduction through the support of ACE Africa and is living proof that positive living can surmount all barriers.  Feature news article on ACE Africa’s project site in Bungoma, Kenya. Click here to read the full article.

This article looks at the short-term emergency and long-term development issues of HIV and AIDS.  ACE Africa’s Augustine Wasonga gives his views on the impact of nutrition and basic health care as tools of helping to manage HIV and AIDS”  Click here to read the full article

Eddie and Sarah’s mother died today… Sarah is the only member of her immediate family who is not infected with HIV. At twelve years old, she exhibits a deep sadness – in her eyes and her gait – testimony to the grief she has experienced in her short life. She has become an adult before her years, taking on the role of carer for her sick parents and sister; cleaning wounds and soiled sheets, providing food, water and comfort to the family. She has watched her family die and been robbed of the carefree innocence that we so readily associate with childhood.

Eddie is eight years old. He does not know he is HIV positive or that he will die of AIDS.  There are millions of children like Eddie and Sarah living on this continent, millions experiencing the same grief.  Here in Bungoma, there are very few who are not infected or affected by the ravages of this pandemic.  The numbers are not abating, the statistics are getting worse.  Like a flooding river, HIV is engulfing humanity in its powerful path. Those left on the bank watching are collecting the drift wood, they are trying to make sense of  this chaos.

Six weeks later

I return to the family home. I am struck by the difference in Eddie. Without access to Anti Retroviral Therapy (ART) he has rapidly declined and started the long and painful journey towards death.  It is no longer a myth. It is there in all its ugliness; the boils, the rashes, the sickness, the resignation and lack of energy – the uncertainty.

‘I know I am dying, I know I have AIDS. I will die like my mum and dad.  I am not scared but I don’t want my friend Brian to know that I am dying.  I don’t want him to know because he wont be my friend anymore.  I don’t want anyone to know because then I will be alone’ …. such is the stigma that surrounds this disease.

Six months later

Eddie is dead.  According to his grandmother, in his final weeks and days, he resigned himself to death. He became withdrawn and quiet. He sat under the tree alone and thought. He read his bible continually and prayed. In a matter of weeks, he skipped childhood, adolescence and adulthood and at the age of eight, became an old man waiting to die.

Now in 2011

ACE Africa is now able to help children like Eddie, providing them with counselling and support and nutritious food, linking them with social services and the health clinics to ensure that they access ART and basic medication. Children like Eddie are able to go to school, attend child health clubs and have their rights protected, safe in the knowledge that they have pretty much as good a chance in life as any other child.

Sarah today

Sarah won a four year ACE Africa Secondary School Bursary to Cardinal Girls School, Bungoma in 2004. She then volunteered in the research department with ACE Africa on the Alumni programme, took a certificate course in French language and now, with the support of her ACE Africa sponsor, is taking a BSc at Kenyatta University, Nairobi.  Her home is still with her grandparents in Bungoma.

The names of the children have been changed to protect their privacy. The photos by Patrick Drummond were taken in Bungoma in 2003 and are not of those cited.

In addition, ACE Africa’s approach towards community care and support of orphans and vulnerable children was recognized as solid and appropriate with a strong research base which has resulted in an effective ‘best practice’ model to be replicated elsewhere.

The Stars Award is backed by Price Water House and the New Capital Philanthropy and the patron is Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan.

For further details see the Stars Foundation website or click here for the 2010 STARS Awards Brochure.

ACE Africa Founders  Joe Waddington, Augustine Wasonga and Anthony Okoti were all at the Awards Ceremony at Forbes House on 2nd December 2010, and Augustine did ACE proud with his acceptance speech.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT – We are thrilled that our work is now being recognised at the International level.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO SUPPORT US!

‘The family can’t cope with this disease – the bonds that have bound them for centuries are breaking down. Our hearts are heavy, our bodies are broken and our communities are fragmented. We cannot cope with the children. We need help.’

These words, spoken an age ago, were a heartfelt cry from a community health worker in rural Bungoma, Western Kenya in early 2002.

What struck me about his plea was that he did not cry for hand outs of money or food, scholarships or shelter, rather he unwittingly conjured up a tragic picture of families, whole communities and a culture crumbling under the effects of HIV and AIDS. As a last ditch attempt to salvage hope for his children, this tired, tragic but resolute figure was crying out for help. Help for his community.

Today, in partnership with ACE Africa, not only has this community survived but they have rebuilt their lives to sustain support for over 50,000 orphans and vulnerable children – themselves – providing them with food, medication, shelter, clothing, school fees, psychosocial support and love. Through helping people to help themselves – they have been given back their pride, hope and self reliance.

The story of ACE Africa spans nearly 8 years – an unexpected journey started by myself, Augustine and Anthon – an unlikely team, but a team with the skills and determination to listen to and understand the needs of a small community and to do something about it.

This is a story of dedicated staff, loyal supporters, the changing of culture and communities within the context of HIV and AIDS, the complex and political world of donor aid and the humbling testimony of courageous individuals and communities who, given the chance, have the will and motivation to take responsibility for their lives and the lives of their children.

It has been a crazy and tough journey and continues to be…… this is our story…

Joe

As part of our partnership, The Egmont trust Executive Director Linnea Renton, visited the project between 27th and 28th October 2010. On the morning of 27th, Linnea was met by the Project Manager and the Logistics officer at Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA) and driven to her hotel to settle in and refresh. She then driven to Kimnyaki project area where she visited Olmotonyi primary school Child to Child Health Club and met with the two trained teachers (one being the head teacher of the school) and club members. Two songs were sung one to welcome her and the other on the effects of HIV and AIDS a person and a poem on orphan hood. She also visited their CTC garden cultivating amaranth, tomato, black night shade, spinach. In their discussion, the two teachers noted an increase in the level of children involvement (both club and non club members) in the management of the garden and establishment of kitchen gardens by teachers and CTC members after learning and getting seedlings. She gave a vote of thanks to the school and club members in “Kiswahili” which surprised them. Linnea then visited three of beneficiaries of nutritional supplements, medication and counseling in the company if the Counseling and wellbeing officer where they shared their status, health condition, challenges of being widows in the cultural and economic context and the changes they have experienced as a result of using the support from ACE Africa. One beneficiary visited was very sick with severe cough, chest pains and could not eat properly due to wounds in the mouth. The ACE counselor organized for her to get ACE donated drugs from nearby health centre through the activator and the nurse.

On the 28th Linnea visited Ilikishiru group that was trained to manufacture and market nutritional flour. They demonstrated nutritious flour is manufactured, packaged and prepared some for all to taste “The porridge is very tasty and filling” Linnea said. The group also shared with Linnea how they manage the Posho Mill, incomes they receive from grinding and selling nutritional flour and OVC they support. She then visited Mateves demonstration garden that was cultivating spinach, onion, black night shade, capsicum (cold pepper) and kales used to support OVC, and has a water tank that the gardener uses to store water for irrigating crops in the garden. She then met with two members of the child Rights committee and had an in depth discussion on child rights and women issues and how the ACE programme can help mitigate through the established Child Rights Committees.

Later she met with all staff in the office and shared her feedback. Key issues that she noted was that she was able to see how the different components of the programme interlink and work and also the known the context and environment in which the programmes works in. She acknowledged staff commitment and community willingness in implementing programme activities to benefit OVC. She expressed Egmont continued partnership with ACE Africa in the future and encouraged sharing feedback by Egmont partners on what is useful and what is not working in implementing programme activities in the community. She later linked ACE Africa TZ with Envirocare in Moshi an organization that they support for exchange visit. They will visit ACE in early December 2010

“We have just returned from the most humbling, sad, yet rewarding and inspirational experience of our lives, and we want to share it with you.

We visited a very poor and deprived area of Africa, Western Kenya, and met for the first time two young persons, John and Esther, whom we have supported through their secondary education.  They were Aids Orphans who had completed their Government sponsored primary education, and then been abandoned by the State, which does not pay for secondary education.

In John’s case, after the death of his mother from Aids, his ailing father, who tried to support them all by subsistence farming on a half acre plot, took a new wife.  The stepmother was very cruel to John often denying him food and other necessities.  His father died and he was identified by Ace as needy and the office staff paid his exam fees and provided him with lunch.

Esther is a total Orphan.  Her father died when she was four, and two months later her mother died, leaving her fourteen year old brother to provide for Esther and one more brother.  They were without hope until Ace stepped in and helped the family.

Ace Africa is a wonderful, small Charity, with a very big heart.  They took us to see a typical home, a tiny hut with a meagre straw roof, where three abandoned children are “living” under the most unimaginable conditions possible.

The father had died of Aids, and as is the custom his wife was inherited by his brother.  She became sick and died soon after the birth of her little girl.  The 2yr old was identified as having full blown Aids and is being monitored by Ace Africa and housed with an Aunt.  This left the 16yr old to care for his brothers (5yrs and 7yrs) in this hovel.

Ace is teaching them to grow vegetables to survive, and he works in the fields, being rewarded by a handful of ground nuts or straw.  He has even tried to start to build a new hut!  When we were there we saw the remains of their breakfast, the shells of three eggs!  Between the four of them!

We have corresponded from the beginning and they call us Grandfather and Grandmother.  Ace send us all their school reports, and counselling updates.  John was elected Head Boy of Bungoma High School (1,200 students).  He will graduate with an A and go to Nairobi University where he will study Law and Computer Engineering.  He has a bright future ahead of him.  He is a delightful young man and eager to “give back to Kenya”, and help others to learn and better themselves.  Esther is quieter, but determined.  She studies at Cardinal Otunga High School for girls.  It is very hard to get her to talk about the past.  She has leadership qualities, was school football captain, and will probably gain a B+ and can also go to University.  Her current wish is to go into the Kenyan Army, the most elite and professional force in Africa, with the very highest of qualification requirements.

Supporting John and Esther has been the most enriching experience of our lives and you and your family can also perform this miracle for a child for the cost of just £380 p.a. for 4 years.  Yes, per annum! and this pays for Boarding, School clothes, food and education.  That’s LESS THAN THREE COFFEES A WEEK.

Contributions from various Family & National Charitable Trusts cover the cost of running the Charity, therefore we know that every penny donated goes to the education and wellbeing of the children we sponsor.

We ask you from the bottom of our hearts, to join us and change the lives of these abandoned children for ever.  Ace-Africa identifies 500 worthy children a year and is only finding sponsors for 40!

Please let us know if you wish to join us and we will introduce you.  The Charity needs to know as soon as possible so that they can plan for the new year.

Thank you for your valuable time in reading this and we look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely

Paul & Shan Daniels
PS – If you decide that you cannot take on a 4yr commitment, we are trying to help Ace-Africa set up an Alumni Centre in Bungoma. This is to retain and develop the Academic dynamic during the 18mths period between graduation and entrance into University or college.  It helps those who do not qualify by teaching them a useful trade, and the graduates help in schools and in the offices and field clinics.  They can also sleep there.  This offsets the effects of being reabsorbed into primitive village life, and keeps them academically inclined.

PPS - Please send donations, however small to ACE Africa.  Please contact ACE for details of the Bursary & Alumni Programmes.  Ace has just won the prestigious Stars Foundation ‘Impact Award’.

ACE Africa UK held its second Art Exhibition in 2010 at the end of November at HRW Antiques i

We will be holding another art exhibition in the new year, so look out for news on this, or let us know if you are an artist who would be interested in partnering with us for future exhibitions.

Click here for the feature news article on ACE Africa’s project site in Bungoma, Kenya

ACE Founder Joanna Waddington explained the ACE Africa story, and during the evening guests were shown some footage of ACE’s work on a short video narrated by Ross Kemp.

Guests were kept amused by Allan Lamb’s cricketing anecdotes, quips by comedian Ian Irving and the evening was held together by quizmaster and MC Gary Heasman. Throughout the evening everyone had a chance to bid on the fantastic silent auction lots by using their own individual ‘smart-cards’ – with the current highest bid being displayed on the plasmas generating some competitive bidding. Some of the auction lots included a fabulous lunch for ten people at 2* Michelin restaurant ‘The Square’ kindly donated by Chef & Proprietor Philip Howard, and unique opportunity to have a bespoke dress made by top designers at Ghost. Through a combination of sponsorship, ticket sales, raffle, auction and donations made on the night, the ACE of Trumps raised over £50,000 in funds, far exceeding the committee’s target. ACE would like to thank the generous sponsors, contributors, raffle and auction donors, volunteers and guests who all made the evening such a success.

For field workers and volunteers out in the community, transport is completely paralyzed on the poor rough roads of the region.  Transport costs shoot up by over 100% for the public vehicles, and ACE staff and volunteers have to find their way back on foot (sometimes up to 10 km to the main road) as the motor bike taxis completely stop business, unable to pass the muddy tracks at these times. The journey for staff, after a hard day’s work visiting vulnerable households, the sick and going about their daily chores, is exhausting and rough. Shoes have to be removed and carried as one finds the way over the thick, mucky paths. Clothes and field data tools will be painted with the dark red soil and splashes of rain; umbrellas in this case are rendered useless from the heavy winds blowing.

If the ACE truck is on the road, it will no doubt be rendered immovable at some point during the journey back. The narrow, slippery, muddy roads will send the truck off into the bordering deep trenches or alleys. The staff and volunteers will alight, remove shoes again and dig and push the heavy vehicle out from the quagmire. The struggle can last for hours involving skidding, high revving and resulting in the majority being covered in the thick red mud that has brought them all to a standstill in the first place. And then …the final twist of fate… the fuel gauge blinks, a cruel reminder that the fuel has run out and the nearest petrol station is 10 km away. Exhausted and with a long walk ahead, a volunteer will set forth to find some fuel. The staff and volunteers will finally return to their homes well into the dark hours.

Another long day serving the community in Siaya in the rainy season!

KEY CHALLENGES
• Less follow ups in the field due to short time for household visits
• More time in travelling
• Frequent break down of motor bikes and vehicle
• Increased costs of fuel
• High burn out by field staff and volunteers
• Late return from the field
• Extra expenditure in hiring people to help push/pull the vehicles
• High exposure to accidents

• 5 (2 female and 3 male) more students who have sat the recently concluded Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) have joined the Alumni making a total of 7 (2 female, 5 male) from the site.
• An old member of the Alumni, David Odero has successfully completed his self sponsored computer training course with a local church sponsored college in Siaya. He is currently waiting to join a Kenya public university next year.
• Will Heinman, the first  UK based student to volunteer in Siaya completed his one month placement with ACE, during his time with ACE he contributed incalculably to field activities including organizing and distribution of drugs, poultry distribution and VCT services. He left to join a medical college in the UK.
• 111 (46 male, 65 female) children benefit from blankets procured through the proceeds of ACE annual dinner event.
• ACE Africa Siaya was commended by Ministry of Agriculture for holding the  high profile exhibition and contribution on nutrition during the National World Food Day in Siaya hosted by Boaz Awiti on 16th October 2010

We met the Head of a primary school for orphans, who told us  “I wake up some mornings wondering how I will feed the children today”.  We saw a hovel, where a young boy, alone, cares for his 5yr and 7yr old siblings. Hardly any roof,  a handful of nuts the days food. This young “man” was trying , with the help of Ace-Africa, to grow a vegetable garden.  He is just 16 years old!

The Staff of ACE Africa are dedicated individuals. Always smiling, and hopeful, and they work under the most unimaginable pressure.  

ACE Africa is truly a small charity with a HUGE heart, and we beg you to dig deep, and give that little bit extra…….It will make ALL the difference.

“Describing my experience as Intern with ACE Africa I can say that these seven months were a combination of challenges, lessons and rewards!  The challenge for me has been to perform a wide range of demanding tasks such as research on collaboration among NGOs and grants.

I had the chance to learn from  the work and experiences of my colleagues and to participate to many interesting meetings and events in support of ACE Africa. The rewards were being able to contribute with my skills and knowledge to make a difference and to become more confident on what I can achieve.

I found the working atmosphere at ACE Africa very positive and stimulating.  An inspiring experience that gave me more motivation to continue to work in this sector and to focus more on key problems at the heart of NGO management, evaluation and effectiveness.”

Read Elena’s thesis  “Enhancing coordination among NGOs in the fight against HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa” Thesis, Elena Uderzo

Click here for the ACE Quiz Night Sign-up Form.  Put your teams general knowledge to the test, and in the process help raise funds for ACE Africa’s orphan support programmes.  Last years victors were Peter Lever’s team ‘Seronera’ – we have a feeling this year will be even more competitive, and we have moved to a larger venue: Pizza Express, Hammersmith Road, Olympia, W14 8UX. 

Our annual quiz is very popular amongst ACE supporters, so please return your completed entry form to us and enter your team now!   Entry is £30pp (details on the sign-up form). Contact us in the UK office at event@ace-africa.org if you have any questions.

 Click here to read stories and see a video clip on the blog of Charlie Morris & Henry Alty who took part in the 2010 trip and completed the course on a tandem bike!  Click here to read John Dwyer’s moving account.  

Contact us at event@ace-africa.org for more information.

“Hello – First of all I would like to say a massive thank you for your tremendous support. Thanks to your generosity we smashed our original target and revised targets and have now hit over £7 000 in fact the cycle challenge fund has now reached £7,128 and with gift aid of £1,339 the total increases to £8,467. (This has increased the overall Rosie fund to just over £50,000!) It was an incredibly tough 10 days (we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way) but we reached Bungoma on time and in one piece. When struggling to get up the
never ending hills I thought of Rosie and your messages of encouragement and they gave me the boost to keep going. Yet no physical pain can ever get close to the sadness of Rosie not being here with us. But Rosie was with me.  I saw her through the beauty of the Kenyan countryside and I saw her smile on the faces of the children in the villages we passed through. I always expected making it to the South End Academy and meeting Brenda (the teacher we are all funding) and the children, would be the highlight of our trip and I was right, they were amazing. I was overwhelmed by their love, energy, creativity and passion. Their room is called “The Rosie Dwyer Art Room” and her photos and artwork adorn one big notice board.  All this was the reason I was there, it was hard to contain such powerful and very mixed emotions. I had no doubt that Rosie’s fund was making a big difference but I never thought that the funding had and will continue to have such a big positive impact on the lives of so many children. As soon as we can get a chance, Jacob and I will put together photos and a short
film of our visit to the school, which will tell the story and show you how your generosity has transformed the lives of so many children. Thank you, John”

Since setting up Rosie’s Fund in 2009, the Dwyer family have raised over £50,000 in her memory.  To read more about Rosie’s Fund, please click here 

Friday 17^th September

After spending a few days in Arusha visiting some of the families ACE are helping, Imma from our Arusha Office kindly took me to the start of my trek.  I arrived at the Kilimanjaro Mountain Resort to meet the rest of the group.  Tour Leader Jenny Waller and Expedition Doctor Claire Clapshaw gave a briefing after dinner on the plans for the trek.  Over dinner there was a discussion over how many Diamox tablets should be taken as everyone had been advised different doses.   I had never taken it before for any previous high altitude trips, but the general consensus was that it was the way forward, and I felt the ‘tingly feet’ side-effects almost immediately after taking it.

Day 1 – Saturday 18^th September

After weighing in our kit bags (strict limit of 15kg each), they were loaded up onto the 2 minibuses which would take us to the start of our trek.  It was absolutely pouring with rain in Marangu as we departed for the 2 hour drive to the Rongai Route Park Gate, which would be the start of our trek.  We reached the Park Gate at around noon, and while Jenny checked us all in and registered us on the mountain, we had a quick pack-lunch while we watched the hundreds of porters lining up hoping for a job. We were introduced to our Head Guide ‘Passian’ and the seven Assistant Guides including David, Viviano, Gasper, Baraka and Crossmar who would be with us for the expedition.

We set off after lunch at a very slow pace up the narrow path through cultivated land and up through the rainforest, spotting a few monkeys on the way.  It was a bit frustrating not to be able to go at a normal pace, but the guides explained that it was important to go ‘pole pole’ (slowly slowly) in order to conserve our energy, acclimatise, and help our chances of reaching the summit safely 5 days later.  We constantly had to stop-start to let the porters through as they raced past us to set up camp for the many different groups trekking up the mountain.  We were a large group (29 including our TL and Doctor) and since we had to walk in single-file, we constantly breathed in a stream of dust.  The rainforest terrain started to give way to moorland as we arrived at the spot where our porters had pitched camp.  We dumped our packs before going on a short ‘acclimatisation’ walk – up a couple of hundred meters before descending again.  We arrived back in camp at about 5pm to find our tents up and our porters waiting for us with ‘washy-washy’ – a welcome bowl of hot water brought to each of our tents for us to clean up before dinner – about as civilised as mountain camping can be!  We were filthy from the dust, but I was very grateful for the gaiters that I had decided to throw in my pack at the last minute – they were brilliant at keeping the dust and stones out of my socks and boots.  The temperature dropped quickly as darkness fell, and we layered up and donned head-torches for dinner.  Dinner commenced rather bizarrely with tea and popcorn (this was to become the evening routine) and followed shortly after by a pretty good dinner – a hearty soup, plenty of carbs and veg and then fruit for dessert.  Bed at 9pm and our first night on the mountain!  I slept fairly well until about 2am – my old thermarest which I had last used about 10 years ago still comfortable, and the 4-season sleeping bag (borrowed from Juliet) nice and snug.  Unfortunately I got woken up by snoring from adjacent tents and that was my sleep quota for the night.  

Day 2 – Sunday 19^th September

We woke up to the most beautiful morning with fabulous clear views high up towards Kibo to the right and the jagged volcanic Mawenzi peaks to the left. The valley floor lay thousands of meters below under a thick layer of fluffy white cumulous clouds.  Breakfast at 7am and we set off afterwards for a fairly long hike up to our lunch stop.  Again the porters sprinted past us laden down with supplies. Sadly Helen had picked up a sick bug and had to turn back.  We also lost Donna (suffering from blurred vision), and then later that day her sister Paula (breathing difficulties) and very sadly the lovely Deb who had also succumbed to the sick bug.  After an excellent lunch, the depleted group pressed on over the heath and marshy land towards Kikelelwa camp. Lynne was sick just before reaching camp, and I too was starting to get a dodgy tummy as we arrived in camp about 6.30pm (a couple of hours behind schedule and shortly before darkness fell).  We had now climbed to 3,700m and it was feeling noticeably colder as the night closed in. Dr Claire had had her work cut out today and was now administering anti-sickness pills to Lynne, myself and various others.  I began to feel a little better as we drifted off to bed at around 9.30pm.   

Day 3 – Monday 20^th September

An overcast start to the day took us on our next hike up towards Mawenzi Tarn.  Halfway up, poor Kirsty was advised to head back down as she had a terrible chest infection and we had an emotional goodbye as she convinced her father Ivie to continue on the trek alone.  The terrain had become more rugged with rocky outcrops from time to time as we climbed higher. By lunchtime we had reached Mawenzi Tarn at 4,300m – our home for the next 2 nights.  Ronnie had been struggling with his breathing on the way up, and his health started to deteriorate rapidly at lunchtime, to the extent where our Doctor could not rule out a possible heart-attack. So poor Ronnie was stretchered back down the mountain and accompanied by Dr Claire.  In the afternoon, the rest of us took a short acclimatisation walk up the spectacular craggy rocks below the Mawenzi peaks to about 4,500m before dropping back down again into camp. As we returned, we were rewarded with fabulous views back over the tarn into camp.  Unfortunately my tent was pitched right next to the mess tent and porters’ tents so I was in for a noisy couple of nights.  It was also bitterly cold, and we sat in the mess tent for dinner with 2 pairs of thermals, 2 socks, woolly hat, gloves, fleece and down jacket – I kept most of this kit on throughout the night!   

Day 4 – Tuesday 21^st September

We awoke to the most beautiful morning with views over towards the majestic Kibo bathed in a glowing warm morning light. It was a beautiful crisp clear morning as we set off for our acclimatisation walk over towards Kibo.  We were rewarded with the incredible panoramic views down over the plains far below in the distance.  We could see far away the rainforest that we had trekked through a few days earlier.   As we trekked over the plain, I began to get stomach cramps again.  I was worried I might be sent down if I let on, but despite trying to make it back to camp undetected, I was violently sick on the way back. I was very fearful that my chances of being allowed to stay were slim, but when Passian the Head guide offered to take my backpack I insisted I was absolutely fine and perfectly fit to carry on, and in my efforts to convince them all was well, I forced myself to have a bit of soup for lunch to prove I was well enough to stay on.  Luckily for me, we had planned to rest in camp that afternoon, in preparation for our ascent to Kibo hut the following day, and to help us preserve our energy for ‘summit night’.  I was also very fortunate to have my own tent, so I was able to throw up in a bowl in the privacy of my own tent all night!  I think Passian thought I had altitude sickness as he mentioned several times that I would feel better at a lower altitude, but whilst I completely respect his many years experience as a mountain guide, I really was absolutely 100% sure that I was not suffering from AMS but had picked up the wretched tummy bug.   

Day 5 – Wednesday 22^nd September

Thankfully, after my busy night, I was feeling a lot better the next day.   As we left Mawenzi camp that morning, we were shocked to see how the water level in the tarn had shrunk to a small pool of dirty stagnant water.  I had started purifying my water despite being assured that the water was being boiled as I didn’t want to take any chances.  We feared that if there was no rain in the next few days they may actually have to close the Rongai route if the tarn ran completely dry. We departed Mawenzi Tarn camp at 8am and began the 5 hour hike over towards Kibo Hut – ‘base-camp’ for our summit expedition later that night.  As we climbed higher, the terrain gave way to high desert with very little vegetation.  We walked past the wreckage of a small plane that had crashed there a couple of years ago, and was now offering tourists a rather morbid detour to see the wrecked pieces scattered over the desert plains. As we reached camp, our ‘helping porters’ were ready for us as usual and had placed our bags in our tents.  They gave our boots and gaiters a good brushing to get rid of the accumulated dust in preparation for the summit climb.  Sadly poor Karen had to turn back at this point – she had been having breathing difficulties and our doctor feared for a pulmonary oedema if she didn’t descend quickly.  We were served a hearty carb-loaded lunch and then rested until our early dinner at 5.30pm.  We then had a final chance to get a few hours sleep in before waking at around 11pm.  We had been split into two separate parties to keep the group sizes more manageable.  Dr Claire had decided not to take part in the summit ascent and Scotty sadly also decided not to do the climb, and so this left us with a group of 18 people out of the original 27. We had strict timings to be ready to depart for the summit climb.  I had on seven layers, and we all donned head-torches, although it was a clear night with a full moon, and we had perfect conditions for our climb.  I did take a couple of precautionary anti-sick pills, but thankfully I was feeling a great deal better by the time we departed (other than an untimely nose-bleed just as we were setting off).

Day 6 – Thursday 23^rd September

I was in the second group of ten to set off just before midnight, and with Passian leading the way, accompanied by six other guides in each group, we plodded up the long volcanic slopes for several hours, with few breaks.  At some point we caught up with the first group and so we combined for a while, until gradually a few people tailed off and were accompanied by one of the guides for safety.  I enjoyed the experience of trekking up under the moonlit sky, and at last we seemed to be going at a decent pace!  We looked back down towards camp and saw hundreds of tiny head-torches snaking up the slope in a zig-zag and we were glad to have got a good early start and not got stuck behind the many other groups now on their way up.  By about 5am we had reached Gillman’s Point at 5,686m, and Jenny was thrilled to announce that this was the fastest ascent yet by a Charity Challenge group.  We stopped for a quick swig of tea here before carrying on around the crater ring on up towards the summit.  It was bitterly cold as we curled around the rim.  My fingers were icy cold, and Passian kindly swapped gloves with me.  Our group started to spread out as everyone decided on their own pace.  The air had started to get very thin – we were above 5,500m now and it was freezing as the wind picked up around the crater rim.  Passian conducted a quick ‘health-check’ before we proceeded further to ensure no one was at risk.  We trekked past the fabulous glacier on the left and up towards the summit as the most beautiful sunrise unfolded before us and dawn broke. 

I arrived at Uhuru Peak (5,895m) shortly before 7am with Passian, Jenny, Gilly, Rudy and Ryan, closely followed by the next few from our group just a couple of minutes behind.  As we neared the summit marker, we saw a few returning early trekkers heading back towards us.  We had reached the trig point and were lucky to snap a quick photo at the famous sign-board before turning around and hurrying back the way we came.  It was very cold, the air was thin at nearly 6,000m altitude and it was important not to hang around.   It may have seemed relatively safe in the morning sun, but sadly many people have died here over the years, and the dangers of this extreme summit were not to be under-estimated.   As we headed back, we saw more of our group arriving, and it was quite an emotional moment as they congratulated us and we wished them luck for reaching the summit.  Our water had completely frozen solid some time ago, despite our best efforts in keeping it warm, and in the thin air we were getting very de-hydrated. 

We re-traced our steps back past Gilman’s Point – now in daylight and busy with trekkers jostling for position.  As we turned the corner to descend to Kibo base-camp, we could see our tents nearly 1,000m down below in the distance.  By 8am the sun was burning down on us and we stripped off a few layers before running down the long scree slopes to Kibo Hut camp.  I made it back into camp at around 9.30am, my face was absolutely burning from the sun, wind and dust.   To minimise the risks of AMS and other altitude-related problems, our plan was to descend another 1,000m and camp further down at Horombo.  We just had time to pack up our kit in our tents and get organised, a quick hearty lunch and then on with the next 1,000m vertical descent!  It was a stunning walk down – back across the wide open high desert plains with magnificent clear views towards Mawenzi.  It was the most perfect day with blue skies and clear air. This time we forked right and skirted around the other side of the majestic volcanic Mawenzi peaks.  The dry air and lack of recent rain meant that we had to put scarves over our mouths to try to limit breathing in the steady stream of dust that kicked up.  Despite the rigours of the day, it was a fairly relaxed hike down to Horombo, with the terrain changing visibly, and as we descended further down we noticed more vegetation and the dusty desert plains giving way to giant green senecios and other high altitude moorland plants.  The route down towards Marangu was absolutely beautiful, and as we arrived into camp at Horombo we had more incredible views over the distant valley floor below. 

It was incredibly hot as we reached camp and our tents were like furnaces!  Our trusty helping porters gave us a warm welcome and greeted us with bowls of hot water for our final ‘washy washy’ on Kilimanjaro to try to get rid of the layers of dust from the days arduous trek.  At 3,700m however, as soon as the sun went down, Horombo camp was freezing cold under the clear skies, and we layered up again for our final night on the mountain.  We enjoyed our last camp dinner in the mess tent, and Jenny briefed us on the plans for the last day which would include the traditional ‘tipping ceremony’ for the guides and porters who had been such a tremendous support to us over the past week.  We headed off for our last night sleep on Mount Kilimanjaro.  With my sick bug finally abating, along with some of my fellow-trekkers I was now suffering from some heavy nose-bleeds – caused by a combination of cold, dusty air and the high altitude.  My supply of tissues was rapidly diminishing, but Rudy came to the rescue and kindly donated me his loo roll!  It had been a big day – a 1,200m ascent and 2,000m descent, and we had reached Kilimanjaro’s summit.  I lay wrapped up in my cosy tent thinking back over the past week – at the amazing scenery we had been lucky enough to see, the friendships we had made along the way, the thrill and emotion of reaching the summit and the tiny snapshot we had seen of the lives of the many local people who work as porters and guides. 

Day 7 – Friday 24^th September

A final breakfast, and our trusty chef ‘Spiderman’ did not disappoint.  A last group get-together in the mess-tent, the last time we would hear shouts of ‘can you pass the ginger tea’ from our fellow-trekkers.  Jenny had worked really hard on sorting out tip envelopes for the various Guides, Assistant Guides, Helping Porters, Chefs and Porters.  There had been an incredible team of over 90 support crew for our group of 27.  It sounds amazing and an embarrassing statistic, but that’s how it works on Kilimanjaro.  I thought back to my visit to Arusha the previous week – to the hundreds of desperately poor children running around in filthy torn clothes, with almost nothing to eat, and I took some comfort in the knowledge that our expedition was at least helping to provide livelihoods for some  people who would otherwise be living in even more extreme poverty.  The tipping ceremony was incredibly humbling and very emotional.  Guides, porters and chefs lined up to be thanked and were handed their small tip.  They all then sang the Kilimanjaro song to us as a final farewell.  It was time for us to pack up camp and head down the last 2,000m to Marangu gate.  Our Kilimanjaro trek was nearing it’s end.  At the Park Gate, Helen, Deb, Ronnie and Kirsty were waiting for us to arrive.  They had sweetly come to welcome us back. 

Saturday 25^th September

Back at the Kilimanjaro Mountain Resort Hotel at Marangu, we had a much-needed bath, and although the layers of dust disappeared down the plug, the memories of this extraordinary adventure will remain with us forever. 

Sunday 26^th September

At Heathrow we said our goodbyes to our fellow-trekkers.  I am sitting here in my flat in London now thinking back on the experiences of the past couple of weeks and wondering what everyone is doing now.  Most of us reached Kilimanjaro’s majestic summit, appreciated the breathtaking views from the world’s highest free-standing mountain, raised funds for our charities, made some friendships along the way, experienced the magic of spending a week on Africa’s highest mountain and gained a tiny insight into the lives of some of the local people in Tanzania who find work as porters and guides.  As I type up these last few notes in the comfort of my flat, they will all be at the Park Gates lining up and hoping for work before packing up supplies and beginning another gruelling walk up Kilimanjaro ready to prepare washy washy and bring tea for the next group. 

Kilimanjaro Song

Jambo, Jambo Bwana (Hello, Hello Sir)
Habari gani (How are you?)
Mzuri sana  (Very well)
Wageni, mwakaribishwa (Foreigners, you’re welcome)
Kilimanjaro yetu (to Kilimanjaro)
Hakuna Matata (No worries)

 ******

Thank you to all of our wonderful Guides, Chefs and Porters, to our TL Jenny and our amazing Doctor Claire, and to all of our fellow-trekkers who helped make this incredibly unique experience so special. 

Samantha Kite – September 2010 

In the dry season, this area is particularly arid, impacting the crops and exacerbating the hardships in this poverty-stricken community.  There is a pipeline from a deep well, but limited access points with sometimes water only flowing once every week or fortnight and people walking for many miles to fill their water containers.  Partnering NGOs Wildvision and SIDA are funding a project to increase the depth of the well and extend the pipeline, which will improve the lives of many people.

We called in at the local Resource Centre – this provides a meeting point for the local community to get advice on health issues, collect leaflets and condoms and hold community meetings.  Mama Helen, the ‘Activator’ at the Resource Centre joined us on our visits.  We then visited the Illikshiru group to see one of the Posho Mills – a flour-grinding machine donated by an anonymous donor in the UK.  ACE have taught the local peopel how to produce a special nutritious flour (comprising sorghan, maize, millet, soya) which is used to make a special porridge.  This porridge is given to the many malnourished people and helps them to gain weight and gain strength.   As well as producing flour for their own use, they also sell some at the market, generating income to support at least 20 local children and provide them with basic essentials (soap, sugar, paper for studying etc)

Further on we visited the Matasia group, who were given seeds and a water-tank in February and trained on how to establish a kitchen garden.  They now have several plots growing different types of vegetable: spinach, black nightshade, cowpeas, sukuma (kale), Chinese leaves, tomatoes, pumpkin. The water-tank enables them to irrigate the crops even when no water is flowing from the pipe.  The ACE staff were very encouraged to see the success of the kitchen-garden, which enables them to support 35 OVC and 5 PLWA in the local community. We then visited Doris and her 5 children who also started a small garden in April.  Within 3 months the garden generated an income of TSch 80,000 in its first harvest and helps support 15 OVC and 3 PLWA.

Later on we visited Olive – a 40 year old mother of three.  She was lying on her bed, very weak and emaciated.  She had suffered from TB several years ago, and although now cured, she has been left with very severe chest pains, leaving her feeling weak, nervous and lacking in confidence.  Activator Mama Helen regularly visits Olive, bringing her basic provisions.  Having taken nutritious flour porridge for 2 months, she has gained some strength, but is still very dependent on help.  Anthon asked Salim to help Olive establish a small garden outside her home for her to grow healthy vegetables.  After leaving Olive we visited the local market – a fantastic vibrant scene of colour and activity!  Held twice a week, thousands of local people converge on this big market centre, bringing their own produce to sell, and buying products as well.  Anthon had given Olive Tsch 5,000 to help her and we also took her back some provisions from the market (potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, 2 bags of salt, bananas and a sack of maize) to at least give her and the children a meal that night.

The following day we travelled to Kimniyaki to visit a community living in the mountain foothills, where the climate is quite different to Mateves.  The land is more fertile than the area at Mateves.  However, its location near the main highway to Nairobi contributes to the higher percentage of HIV infected people. We visited several households and noticed that there were generally only women and children around.  Most of the men had gone to Nairobi to try to find work.  Often they contract HIV while away and then infect their wives when they return to Kimniyaki and therefore spreading the virus.

We visited the Emgaretok Espiatais group of 27 women.  When we arrived they were busy making jewellery from beads (a long-standing Maasai tradition).  They make between 10 – 20 bracelets per month and sell these for approx. TSch 1,500 (75p) each.  The community were given a Posho Mill and trained by ACE in the production of nutritious flour, and they have now established this as a business – people can bring their cereals and pay to have them ground into flour.  Since receiving the mill they earn between TSch 1,000 – Tsch 3,000 per day from grinding flour

Margaret, the group leader came with us on a home visit not far away.  We visited the home of Elizabeth – she invited us to sit with her outside her small hut in which she lives with her four children.  Elizabeth joined the group in 2009 following the death of her husband.  There were about 20 children all running around in torn filthy clothes, but they seemed very happy and were playing, using things they had made from pieces of rubbish.  I chatted with one of the children – a young boy called Eric – he attended a local primary school and spoke a few words of English (although the school was currently closed for a holiday). The children were very sweet and always gave us a warm welcome but never asked for anything.

Later on we visited another home – this one housing seven orphaned children – their father had died years ago and their mother just recently – one week ago.  They lived there alone – Maureen the eldest at 16 in charge.  They were very dependent on help from the Activator who arranged for them to be given essential food twice a week.  Again we noticed that there were no men around – Anthon explained that boys aged 18 would generally leave the family home to find work elsewhere and there was no sense of needing or wanting to support their family. The girls did attend school – we asked them what they wanted to do when they grew up and Maureen said she would like to be a nurse. Her 3 elder brothers are in Nairobi looking for work.
After my two days visiting some of these communities, I had had a snapshot of what life is like for the many thousands of people there.  I was shocked by the scale of the poverty, but encouraged by the work that ACE and other NGOs is doing to help improve their lives. As I left Arusha to travel to Moshi to begin my Kilimanjaro trek, I reflected on what I had seen.  It made me more passionate than ever about ACE’s work, and gave my Kili trek much more meaning.

http://samkite.wordpress.com/challenge-3-kilimanjaro/

The ACE runners met for a get-together ahead of the start of the race for a bit of team-limbering up before heading down to the start-line at Hyde Park Corner to join the other 25,000 participants!  It was the most amazing atmosphere, with lots of fun-runners – rumour has it that ACE’s new interim Director Samantha Kite was overtaken on several occasions by a crocodile and a zebra (respect to everyone who took part in those hot fluffy fancy-dress outfits!) and some of our other supporters made it over the finish-line in record-breaking times.  Elena Urderzo took just less than 42 minutes to complete the course and will probably be getting a call from the Italian Olympic committee!  All along the way we were cheered on and encouraged – it was a terrific day and a great personal achievement for everyone.

ACE Africa would like to thank all of our runners and all of their supporters who have kindly sponsored them, helping ACE to raise vital funds to enable us to continue to run our life-transforming programmes to support vulnerable children and AIDS orphans in rural East Africa.

Including GIFT-AID, the ACE 10k runners have helped us raise over £7,000 through your fantastic fundraising efforts!  Thank you again for supporting ACE!

If you are interested in taking part in next years 10k run or would like information on similar events and challenges, please contact us now at event@ace-africa.org !

These factors led to the creation of the ACE Truck Group. This group was set up in order to raise funds for the purchase of vehicles and cars for ACE’s work in Africa. It comprises supporters and donors and is open to anyone to join. The villages that ACE works with are often very rural and sometimes isolated. Access can prove difficult due to their remoteness and the broken roads that lead to them. Vehicles are not so much a benefit as a necessity!

Thanks to the effort and commitment of the ACE Truck Group, enough money has been raised to allow ACE to purchase a new vehicle for its work in Tanzania which is proving to be a massive help. Below is a picture of the brand new Toyota and you can read what ACE Africa’s founder, Ms Joe Waddington has to say about it.

‘Please do pass on all our thanks and appreciation to the Ace Truck Group for the generous donation and support that have enabled us to get this wonderful vehicle. It will make the work of the staff considerably more effective and comfortable as they will be able to coordinate their activities more easily and without doubt double the number of beneficiaries they visit in a day – somewhat more efficient than walking miles a day!

If you would like to be a part of this wonderful project to ACE that really makes a difference to the work the community officers are able to do on the ground, then please join the ACE Truck Group by signing up here:  Truck Group Joining Form

If you would like to set up a standing order to support the ACE Truck Group, then please complete the Truck Group Standing Order

Finally a massive thank you once again to the ACE Truck Group and it supporters for the wonderful job they hve done so far!

A few weeks later, early in 2009, the Dwyer family decided to establish a fund in memory of Rosie. She had visited a small Maasai village in East Africa in 2004 and was bowled over by the people there. So they chose a project specifically to fund a craft teacher (plus the necessary craft materials) at a primary school in Western Kenya already supported by ACE Africa. This has become a truly fitting memorial to Rosie, who lived her life in glorious technicolor and was passionate about art.

The teacher is Brenda and she works at the South End Primary School in Bungoma, which provides education to children totally orphaned by HIV/AIDS and left in extremely vulnerable circumstances. ACE Africa provides food, basic educational material and equipment to a number of children within the school, without which their extended families could not afford to send them there.

Since the Rosie Fund was established, the monies donated by the friends and families of the Dwyers have been channelled into this appeal. Furthermore, two close friends of the family hit on the idea of “Running for Rosie” in the London 10k Race, which is held every Summer in central London. Over 50 runners have run for Rosie each year, many of whom set up their own fundraising page online.

As a result, the appeal combined with the proceeds from this sponsorship of the London 10k runners has reached the amazing sum of £50,000.

We at ACE Africa have been extremely moved by the support we have received from the Dwyer family and their friends, through the appeal. The money raised will touch the lives of many orphaned children for years to come. Rosie’s family hope the fund will continue.

Hello, I’m Trevor McDonald and I’d like to tell you about the remarkable work of ACE AFRICA.
ACE operates in remote rural areas of Kenya and Tanzania – where poverty and HIV/AIDS are rife – helping orphans and vulnerable children reach their full potential.

Peter was 8 years old when he was found in a leaky mud hut alone with his bedridden father. His mother had died of AIDS when he was 2 years old. He was his father’s sole carer and they hadn’t been visited by anyone for 6 weeks. Peter was sick, filthy, scared and mute. He had flesh-eating worms in his feet and with constant malaria, he was close to death.

ACE ensured the worms were removed, that he was given nutritional supplements, shoes, and a school uniform. He attended the local school and received regular counselling. Now supported by an ACE independent donor he is at boarding school, speaking, reading and writing. He has every chance to grow up well-rounded and happy, and able to support himself.

Josephine is 40, HIV positive and a widow. She lives in a small mud hut with her 5 young daughters. She was found bedridden and unable to feed herself or her family. She weighed less than 4 stone and with no food, no medication and no help, she thought of killing herself and her children.

ACE provided emergency relief – clothes, blankets, basic medication, nutritional supplements and regular food from the ACE community kitchen gardens. Josephine has continued to grow stronger and has been able to access anti-retroviral treatment.

Josephine joined an ACE community support group and has been trained in agriculture and nutrition. She has established her own kitchen garden and even started a fledgling business selling surplus produce. Her eldest child has been enrolled in the ACE secondary school bursary scheme and the younger children have school uniforms so they can attend primary school. And Josephine now weighs 8 ½ stone!

ACE AFRICA employs just 37 staff and works with over 3,000 volunteers, and last year reached out to nearly 90,000 direct beneficiaries like Peter and Josephine.

Please make a donation today by calling 0800 404 8144. That’s 0800 404 8144. Or you can send a cheque payable to ACE Africa to Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal. That’s Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal. Please mark the back of your envelope ACE Africa. You can also give online at bbc.co.uk/radio4/appeal.

Thank you.

Daily Telegraph Christmas Appeal 2/12/2007 By Mike Pflanz

A quiet revolution led by children in the fields of impoverished rural Kenya is introducing exotic new foods as a way to curb the devastating effects of HIV and Aids. Nutritious aubergines, capsicums, coriander and soya are being planted on small-scale farms which have only ever produced maize, potatoes or sugar cane. The programme, supported by ACE Africa, one of this year‟s Telegraph Christmas Appeal charities, has raised eyebrows among village elders resistant to the new approach. But campaigners have long argued that a balanced and nutritious diet is key to battling the spread of HIV. That accepted science has become mired in controversy amid claims from South Africa‟s former health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, that good nutrition was as effective as anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs in beating HIV. “There is no substitute for those medicines to stop the replication of HIV,” said Grace Ananda, a counsellor at ACE headquarters in Bungoma, 320 miles west of Nairobi. “But out in the villages, these people have little food, and the drugs are next to useless without good nutrition.” To mark World Aids Day yesterday, Kenya celebrated a drop in its national Aids rate from 14 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent now. But prevalence rates are still among the highest in the world here in the west, part of the verdant sickle of land along Lake Victoria‟s Kenyan, Ugandan and Tanzanian shores, where HIV first flourished in humans 26 years ago. Up to 40 percent of the 300,000 people ACE works with in Bungoma live with HIV or Aids. There are 19,000 orphaned or vulnerable children. Two-thirds of households live below the poverty line. ACE Africa – the acronym stands for Action in the Community Environment – was formed in Kenya in 2003 in response to these sobering statistics. It has expanded from three staff to 22 full-timers and more than 1,000 volunteers across Kenya, and widened to include a British arm, ACE UK, for fundraising. Expansion plans into Tanzania are well advanced. Those same statistics – and the human lives lying behind them – also brought W F Deedes back to report on Africa again and again throughout his career. His daughter, Lucy Deedes, will visit the ACE projects in January – her first visit to the continent which so captivated her father. At first glance, she may be surprised that there is a nutrition crisis here. The gentle green slopes which rise from the waters of Africa‟s largest lake look like a verdant Garden of Eden. Mango trees shade plots bursting with swaying yellow maize stalks. Cassava plants branch towards the cloudless sky. Rutted red-dirt roads carve corridors through dense sugar cane plantations. But maize and cassava, the staple foods, lack protein – a dangerous deficiency in a population too poor regularly to afford meat. Sugar cane is mostly sold and money earned used to buy maize. In a bid to break the cycle of poor nutrition, ACE is showing children how to set up kitchen gardens at school. Some are taking their new knowledge home. “I have a piece of our shamba (smallholding) to grow these things, but I don‟t think my parents like the taste or understand why I am doing it,” said Paul Wabwire, 12, a pupil at Kabula Primary School near Bungoma. With 31 other pupils in a Child to Child after-school mentoring scheme set up by ACE, he tries to help other teenagers understand the benefits of eating well. And not all of the older generation are so resistant to change. Michael Sifuna, a 70-year-old former teacher still energetic enough to play football with his grandchildren, has set-up a demonstration garden to show off to his village. With the money from selling is harvest, he pays school fees. Spare food goes to Aids orphans in his village. “People come to me and say, „old man, what is this you are doing?‟,” he said, smiling as his fingers trailed through his aubergine plants. “I tell them I have found a secret new way to live longer and earn money. Very soon they are interested and want to copy me.” ACE aims to fight HIV and AIds on many fronts. It has provided seeds and tools for the gardens, and a machine to mill soya into super-nutritious flour to blend with vitamin-poor maizemeal. Counsellors tour villages talking to community leaders as well as those who test positive for HIV. New committees promote child rights in a which culture traditionally ignored its children. And it works: look to Gladys Nanjala, a 47-year-old HIV-positive mother of eight, whose husband deserted her last year when the virus grew so strong that she was bedridden for three months “I was ready for God to call me away from this earth,” she said. “But now I am being given special flour blended with soya which makes me stronger, I am able to work more, I feel that there are people to support me, I wake in the morning now happy instead of sad.”

Ralph Johnstone spends a week with a group of volunteers working to alleviate the suffering caused by HIV/AIDS in Kenya’s Bungoma district – where love still occasionally conquers money.

Guilt.
When Geoffrey Munala was diagnosed HIV-positive in September 2002, he had been sick on and off for several years. But the shame of the disease prevented him from telling his wife for nearly a year, by which time they had conceived their fifth child, a baby girl. “I should have told her,” says Munala, a hollow-cheeked 39-year-old farmer, his head bowed. “I regret this now.” When his wife tested positive in August 2003, he found courage, took all of his children to be tested. They were all positive. “I fear how my children will stay behind,” says Munala, staring bleakly across his small, dark living room, where only health workers and a handful of local orphans visit his family these days.

Shame.
An orphaned 16-year-old boy with more courage than thousands of other HIV-positive people many years his senior, and a split-lip smile that melts your heart, who tells me I‟d better not put his name in the paper because it may bring him trouble. “If you tell my teacher or other people I may be isolated,” he says, the smile slipping for an instant. “I think they would throw me out of school if they knew.”

Fear. Down the road, another brave boy, who‟s spent much of the past month tending to his sick father. Peter Wanjala is eight, his father thinks, although he looks more like five; his feet are a mess, the result of dozens of jiggers dug out from under his filthy, cracked toes. His father is brave too, because he‟s now come out and admitted to the world that he is HIV-positive. The only problem is that his brothers and sisters won‟t talk to him anymore, or help him look after Peter. The little boy‟s friends run away when he tries to play with them. They tell him his father is dying.

When you walk the paths of rural Bungoma, past fields thick with sun-filled sugarcane and lush maize plots, life feels good. For about ten minutes. If you happen to be with one of the hundreds of volunteers who man the community centres and visit families devastated by HIV/Aids, you pretty quickly feel the sickness invade your own body, for it is inescapable here. Everywhere are orphaned children living with their grandparents. Everywhere are stories of husbands throwing out their HIV-positive wives, men inheriting their dead brothers‟ wives, teenage girls selling sex to support their siblings. Everywhere are people suffocating under a mountain of shame and fear and denial.
And you understand why no one here wants to be tested. For most of the people in these tight-knit farming communities, a positive HIV test is a call to prepare to die.

I have come here to speak to the volunteers. For years, I‟ve been amazed and moved at how thousands of people continue to give their lives to help others cope with this disease, this curse of „muniafu‟ – literally, „those who have suffered for long‟. But the story that comes out about these wonderful individuals – and there are still thousands of them out there, helping for helping‟s sake – the story is not so upbeat. The burden on them is huge, and mounting; they can‟t afford to keep giving, and never getting anything back. They have their own problems. When, as in parts of Bungoma, the disease is in every other household, you have to start looking after your own.
The recent announcement that PEPFAR, George Bush‟s Presidential Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, will spend over $170 million on HIV/Aids initiatives in Kenya over the coming year – making us the single biggest recipient of the world‟s single biggest health fund – has brought fresh hope to dozens of organisations doing vital work to alleviate the suffering caused by HIV/Aids. But while this is a laudable initiative that will undoubtedly save thousands of lives, the sheer quantity of PEPFAR‟s funding has in some ways skewed the balance between care and prevention on the ground. With most of PEPFAR‟s funds going to antiretroviral treatment and services, prevention efforts have been put on the backburner, with a handful of activities focused on the „traditional values‟ of abstinence and fidelity – riders that have forced fundees to avoid critical areas such as condoms, alcohol and drugs, and prostitution. For a place like Bungoma, close to the Ugandan border and host to the pan-African highway, these can seem like fatal omissions.

While PEPFAR is undoubtedly a well-intentioned effort, its focus on larger organisations with existing U.S. contracts, fuelled by pressure to distribute its funds quickly and transparently, has put most of its funds out of the reach of the smaller NGOs and CBOs that provide the only nutritional, health and psychological support in many rural communities. Many of these larger organisations are perceived to be „taking over‟ the ground laid by smaller groups, which still have to rely on erratic handouts from their local Constituency Aids Committees. Worse, the rush of new funds has led to an often blatant rivalry for different areas and sectors, which invariably sees better-heeled organisations winning over.

The biggest loser in all of this has been the spirit of volunteerism. Where once community members were willing to give up their time visiting sick neighbours, in places like western Kenya, where HIV/Aids has become big business, the rush of new money has served to undermine much of the old harambee spirit. “The influence of big donors has really affected our ability to find volunteers,” says Anthony Okoti, a field officer with ACE-AFRICA, a Bungoma-based NGO that runs a series of education, nutrition and home-based care services for orphans and families affected by HIV/Aids. “Larger organisations have come in and say they want volunteers and they‟ll pay them 20 thousand. What kind of volunteerism is that? You try to find a volunteer for 400 bob a month in an area like that!”
But the reality is, incredibly, that ACE and other organisations like it still do. One day in Bungoma, I meet a man called Martin Baraza. In a world where old systems are constantly falling victim to desperation and greed, this quiet 32-year-old farmer is a man to treasure.
Martin runs the ACE-AFRICA Resource Centre at Kabuchai, where he has a demonstration garden growing all sorts of vegetables and herbs for local people living with HIV and Aids (PLWHAs), providing seedlings and manure to groups supporting orphans, and running weekly „open days‟ to demonstrate methods for intensive vegetable farming. (With so much of the land turned over to sugarcane, he explains, entire communities have “forgotten” how to grow ordinary vegetables.) Most days,

Martin is the “community activator” for Kabuchai and three neighbouring locations, where he visits the sick and the lonely, helping to plant kitchen gardens, counselling people who‟ve just found out they are HIV-positive, and handing out what the recipients calls „nutritious flour‟ – a vitamin-rich mix of ugali, millet, soya and green-grams that ACE buys from two groups of PLWHAs, who it has provided with some simple management and accountancy training. “These are the real brave people, not me,” says Martin.

For his time, six days a week, Martin receives a monthly “transport allowance” of Ksh 2,000 and a bicycle (which unfortunately was recently stolen). Like volunteers across the country, he usually walks the 5-6 kilometres to where he is working so he can use his money to buy a hen or some sukuma seeds for his family. Besides, he reasons, walking helps keep him in touch with people on the ground. “You can see some of the orphans working in the house naked, without any clothes, and if you have 10 to 20 shillings left over from the market you will buy something and take it to them.” The will is the giveaway: for a real volunteer like Martin, there is no question of not doing something to help.

Both Martin and the volunteer gardener at Kabuchai, Martin Moiti, say their jobs are worthwhile, for the “motisha” they receive through training from ACE in nutrition and organic farming, and the personal need they both say they feel to do something to help their communities. “You see all the orphans suffering and many people lying down on their beds for a long time, so you sympathise with them,” says Moiti. For Martin Baraza, it is more personal: his sister died of AIDS last year, leaving three of her children with Martin, his wife and their four children. The youngest of her kids, a six-year-old boy, is often sick.

“The way you can come and see how someone is suffering, that brings a feeling in your heart,” says Baraza. “You can imagine someone has been two to three days without eating anything, and if you have something and you have just eaten well in your house and some maize is left over, you feel you have to help.”

Hope. It is a commodity in desperately short supply in these parts of Bungoma, where ACE estimates the adult HIV prevalence is as high as 30-35% – putting it on a par with some of the worst affected regions of southern Africa. (Like so many things to do with HIV/Aids, no one is really sure; while antenatal testing suggests the national prevalence has halved to about 6.5%, Kisumu‟s Pandipieri Centre last month recorded a female prevalence of 42% at its VCT centre. While Bungoma‟s centres usually record rates of only 2-3%, ACE counsellor Grace Ananda says this is meaningless: “Our VCTs only attract people who know they have not led risky lives.”) The problem, as in so much of the world, is the stigma the disease carries. If you are seen going for VCT in your community, it will be presumed that you or your husband have had an affair, or, worse, that you suspect your partner is sleeping with prostitutes. Just as if you do not breastfeed your child, it is presumed that you have conceived out of wedlock, or you fear your HIV status. Either way, you will be at the mercy of wagging tongues.
It is the greatest tragedy of HIV/Aids that the stigma associated with the disease, combined with a plethora of traditional beliefs and customs, has led thousands of women to pass the virus on to their unborn children. Although PEPFAR-funded projects such as the Kisumu-based Academic Model for the Prevention and Treatment of HIV/Aids (AMPATH) are now scaling up major programmes of antenatal ARVs and formula-feeding to prevent mother-to-child transmission, it is estimated that over 20% of babies born to HIV-positive mothers in western Kenya are still receiving the virus through their mothers‟ milk.

It is a reality that Martin Baraza encounters on his long walks virtually every day. Today, in Kabasusi village, he is returning to the home of the Munalas, who he has visited every fortnight since November 2004. While this family receives two 4-kilo packets of nutritious flour from ACE each month, they have only a few shoots of withered sukuma to supplement it with. Geoffrey Munala has three acres of fertile land, but rarely has the energy to work it. When he‟s well, he has a job as a watchman at a nearby school, for which he gets Ksh 1,000 a month (minus frequent sick-leave deductions). Most of the time, he sits at home, waiting for Martin to come with his painkillers and his fortified ugali.

But what really brings the Munalas down, what Martin is convinced makes them “sick all times”, is the attitude of those around them. “People here don‟t want to come and greet me. They fear to come close to me or my children,” says Geoffrey. “Children are somehow more free, but when my children go to where the other children are, they shout at them „your parents are positive‟, and tell them „go away from here‟. This makes me very sad.”

Stigma and ignorance.
Again and again, you cannot escape the presence of these ugly sisters, the evil twins that prevent people getting tested, talking to their families, saving their children from this dreadful disease. The irrational fear of PLWHAs, popular misconceptions about contracting the disease through touch and spittle, age-old customs that oblige sick men to remarry and boys to be circumcised with a single knife, and a deep-seated belief that parents should never discuss sex with their children, all create the perfect conditions for a virus that thrives on ignorance and fear.

“Everyone is pretending to be perfect,” says Elijah Mogaka, a nursing officer at Bungoma‟s Bulondo Dispensary, who recently lost his 25-year-old sister to the disease, and whose sympathy for the people he treats – nearly half of whom show the symptoms of HIV, yet virtually all of whom refuse to be tested – is palpable. “Everyone acts like they don‟t have sex, like they have never sinned. Which of us has not sinned?”

The resounding silence that still stalks this disease, that prevents PLWHAs from sharing their status with relatives and friends, also continues to kill, for it prevents the sick from accessing soundly-diagnosed medical care, orphans accessing their legal and hereditary rights, the dying accessing a dignified or peaceful end. “The men are the biggest problem,” says ACE‟s Ananda, “because they keep the problem to themselves, they never talk about it. They tend to get depressed and tend to die faster than women.”
Courage. In a few places – still rarely, but in a mercifully increasing manner – the bravery to disclose one‟s status is making HIV infection less of a curse, and bringing people together to seek solidarity in their suffering. Down the road from the Munalas‟
house is a small building where, once a week, the Murakaru Huruma Support Group brings together 12 women and three men – or at least those of them who are well enough – to make the fortified flour that ACE hands out to its „clients‟. Started by three local widows in 2002, the group has grown into a busy little cooperative, making flour, sewing petticoats (a surprisingly lucrative line), and sharing funds in the traditional merry-go-round fashion.

Most of the members are widows; many have HIV-positive children. But in the dark little room where they meet, there is the kind of dignity and respect that one finds among old soldiers. “Sure, people still point at me, even avoid me, but I don‟t fear this anymore,” says Emily Nelima. “Two years ago, me and my little boy were sick all the time, but with this new flour he is growing better, getting fewer skin rashes… I think we can all say we are healthier than when we joined.” The Huruma men are largely absent – as they are today – but the ladies keep busy, making regular outings to talk about HIV to local women‟s and church groups. “It‟s hard to get the message across about condoms, especially for men,” says Emily. “Because people see this as a sexual disease, men feel they are exempt from discussing it.”
One of the thickest strands of hope among the communities of Bungoma is that, in the recent past, a handful of people have started standing up and admitting they are HIV-positive, even speaking at barazas to tell people how they are „living positively‟. “It‟s just in the last year I am having some chiefs coming to my office and saying „there‟s a sick person here, can you come and assist?‟, and even a few positive people are coming and asking for our advice,” says Martin Baraza. “Some of them even agree to come with us to barazas and tell people, ‘If you are feeling unwell or having diarrhoea all the time, go and get tested, it can help you change your life for the better.’”
I have been anxious to meet a local primary school headmaster, whom several people have mentioned as a rare “role model” who has willingly disclosed his positive status to his colleagues – even, incredibly, some of his pupils. With help from one of the projects, I get to the school; the teacher is there, a kindly-faced man, a large cross hanging prominently around his neck, welcoming us effusively. But when I broach the subject, in the safety of his office, there‟s another story: “I am HIV-negative,” he tells me, “but I am living positively. I have been married in the church for over 30 years, and when I attended HIV education I felt it was necessary to go for testing with my wife. I wanted to encourage other teachers to get tested.”

My island of courage and conviction in the great sea of shame has just sunk beneath the waves. The reality is that, when confronted by an outsider – worse, a note-taking mzungu – the spectre of stigma and notoriety returns. While I so wanted this brave man‟s story, I completely understand why he won‟t give it to me.

“This is classic of people‟s attitudes towards HIV,” says Grace Ananda, when I tell her about the encounter later. “Some people are very free with their status, but most of those who disclose are very selective about who they tell. They may be brave in front of a group of students, but…” It‟s a shame, admits Grace; the power of a respected community leader standing up and confessing their positive status is one of the most potent weapons in the battle to reduce the stigma that confronts every aspect of ACE‟s work.

For some reason – whether because they rationalise it less, or because, socially and culturally, they have less to lose – children seem to find it easier to discuss HIV/Aids. Most of the primary schools in Bungoma now have a “child-to-child (CtC) club”, where teachers openly discuss issues such as sexual predation and the risks of HIV/Aids with children as young as six. At 40 schools supported by ACE, they also stage „Fun Days‟, where kids from neighbouring schools get together to perform skits and songs about Aids in front of teachers, parents and other concerned residents.

It is indicative of our failure to develop a compassion and an understanding towards people living with HIV that the void has been filled not only by volunteers like Martin Baraza, but – incredibly – by some of our youngest children. At Siangwe Primary School, where I am taken to watch a lively performance by three CtC clubs, I hear of an extraordinarily compassionate outing recently undertaken by a group of young pupils. The elderly mother of a pupil was sick at home; one afternoon, they went round to her house, off their own bats, and did whatever they could think of to make her life easier. They collected firewood for her, washed her pots and plates, swept her floors. Then they had a whip-round and bought her some soap and sugar. It was a tiny thing, but it brought a great deal of relief for the old lady; it has also spurred the school onto greater things. “These days, whenever there‟s a funeral around here we always announce it so that the children can bring a shilling or two to give to the relatives of that person,” says the headmaster, Mkimba Mukakula.

The CtC club at Siangwe, like others under ACE‟s umbrella, is now bringing its lessons on HIV, health and hygiene to children in its pre-primary classes. It may offend the more moralistic in the community, says teacher Catherine Mayende, but ultimately it can save lives. “Right from nursery we tell the kids that if you play sex you are likely to get Aids,” says Mayende, whose husband and two co-wives also died from the disease. “We teach them not to share razors or combs, not to touch someone else‟s blood if they have an accident. These children know about sex, even from nursery. Some of them come from mothers who are selling sex at home. The other day, one of our nursery teachers found a child blowing up a used condom they had brought from home.”

Do the lessons really work? Amos, a 14-year-old pupil at Siangwe, believes so. “I know I should never play with older girls,” he says solemnly. And then: “I have heard that when you play sex without using a condom you could die.”

In conjunction with the national HIV/Aids curriculum, these primary schools have also devised some ingenious means of incorporating the disease into their science lessons, stories about HIV into English and Kiswahili, even sums about VCT attendance and HIV prevalence into maths lessons. “This is very important,” says Anthony Okoti. “It makes you take it as a normal part of life, not as a monster.”

For Patrick Khaemba, the father of Peter Wanjala, there is no point in lying anymore. Patrick has been sick on and off ever since his wife died “some years back”; when Martin found him, tipped off by a neighbour, in August, he was in bed with a raging fever and had not eaten in five days. “He couldn‟t talk, and his son couldn‟t walk from the jiggers,” says Martin. “They were on the verge of death.” Martin brought
Patrick some drugs, nursed him, washed him, removed Peter‟s jiggers, brought the pair some ugali and spinach, some secondhand clothes. In a couple of days, Patrick was back on his feet, planting vegetables beside his house with Martin‟s help. When I visited, they were about to make a start on the leaky roof. Although his relatives won‟t talk to him, Patrick has a new friend and, for the first time in years it seems, a little hope. “Martin is a better brother for me than my own brothers,” he says.

Now, ACE is tackling what it sees as the only long-term solution for Peter: getting him back into school, possibly the Imani Primary School where it already sponsors 13 boarding pupils. Here he will get an education, some friends, perhaps a long-overdue female role-model. “He‟ll have the start of a normal life,” says field officer Lillian Bwire. He can have a long one too; ACE have just tested Peter and confirm that he is HIV-negative.

There is some hope too – albeit belatedly, and still secretly – for our HIV-positive teenager at school. Even with the threat of expulsion hanging over his head, he at last has a small reason for that unwavering smile. In September he started receiving free antiretrovirals (funded, it must be said, by PEPFAR), and he says he feels better already. “I‟ve put on some weight, and I‟m feeling more strong,” he says. It is incredible to me, gut-wrenching and humbling, that this boy is looking me straight in the eye and talking about HIV like he has a bad cold. He tells me about his sisters, who don‟t know his status either. Tells me he thinks he got the virus in 2000, when he was circumcised with a group of his age-mates. Tells me how much he loves going to the ACE office on Saturdays and hanging with the staff – the only people with whom he can be “free” about his condition. Through it all, the broad, confident smile doesn‟t leave his face.
Lillian Bwire says his attitude alone could save this young man. “He doesn‟t let it bog him down. Most people (when they are diagnosed HIV-positive) are full of self-pity, they just give up on life and that‟s what ends up killing them.” This is the reason that ACE accompanies all its activities with intensive counselling from two professional therapists, as well as providing intensive training to „community mentors‟ who run follow-up visits to individuals and groups trained in counselling, nutrition, HIV-targeted crops. According to ACE director Joe Waddington, not following up on trainees can render such training completely redundant. “Unfortunately, there‟s a tendency among some NGOs to come in and deliver five-day courses in counselling or will-writing, and then not do any follow-ups, or run out of money to do follow-ups. Right now in Bungoma, there are hundreds of people claiming to be professional counsellors, when they have only attended a five-day workshop.”

This gives rise to a darker side of volunteerism: the spectre of charlatanism. Dickson Kesekwa, a young Bungoma volunteer, says the arrival of external “caregivers” in his community has contributed to a growing mistrust and suspicion of strangers. “In the olden days, people always came to visit their neighbours, but these days if you come to someone‟s house two or three times they start to think you are bad,” says Kesekwa. “Since AIDS came along, there is less trust between neighbours. There are more strangers going around pretending they are working for an NGO, so people are not trusting. It takes more time to get involved in the community and to get trust.”

This is a shame, as training remains the single greatest incentive for NGOs seeking to recruit volunteers, even in communities where the spirit is waning. Of the NGOs and CBOs I spoke to for this article, every one quoted the offer of training – and the potential of better jobs and remuneration associated with it – as the single greatest factor motivating their volunteers. Idealise all you want, but poor people have to get ahead.

In Kisumu, I walk the slums with a social worker called George Olale, who has been working for the Pandipieri Centre for a daily „token‟ of Ksh 200 for the past three years. Like most volunteers, Olale says the “empowerment” he receives through training in nutrition and counselling keeps him motivated. But there‟s another side here, a side that harks back to the humane spirit of the early missionaries, or the voluntary contraceptive distributors of the 1980s – the simple pleasure of giving. “You‟ll find a woman with a sick child who can‟t afford to go to the hospital,” says Olale. “If you take them to the clinic and help them get free medical services, that woman will remember you forever.”

The Pandipieri Centre has a strong reputation for training and retaining volunteers, which undoubtedly has a great deal to do with their spiritual convictions, although its health department coordinator, Sister Bernadette Nealon, says the arrival of more donor funds is testing even the most principled volunteerism. “When you train them for the community and they are wooed by NGOs in other towns, it‟s very hard,” she says. “I think organisations are going to have to work more closely together to train health workers for each other. We shouldn‟t be in competition. We spend a lot of time raising funds to train people and then immediately after the training we lose half of them.” But ultimately, her own convictions notwithstanding, Sr. Bernadette sees good in all training. “Whenever a volunteer goes away, even if it‟s just to their own family, they‟ll know how to look after them properly, to treat them in the face of malaria or opportunistic infections, and that must be a good thing.”

It’s not hard to find volunteers looking over their shoulders for better things. Even at the exemplary ACE-AFRICA, things are not all roses. At their resource centre in Bulondo, the activator goes to great lengths to explain how his work has become untenable without a motorbike or a generator. (He has lent his bicycle to someone who for some reason I can’t fathom needs it more than he.) His assistant, meanwhile, stops a conversation we are having about Bulondo‟s volunteers to issue me with what development professionals call a ‘shopping list’. “Life is too hard now,” she says. “If you could just help me for my work with a jembe, a watering can, a rake and panga.”

Damn. And I was just about to ask her how she so selflessly donates her time without receiving a cent.
“What do you expect?” asks Nzioki Kingola, project manager at the International Centre for Reproductive Health, when I call for his advice. Kingola runs 14 projects for Family Health International‟s IMPACT project in Mombasa and has a solid reputation for recruiting and retaining volunteers; his current network numbers over 1,000. “Most of these guys are poor people and there‟s no way you can remain in a programme for the whole day without something to eat at the end of the day. Our volunteers are always asking us to increase their transport allowance, to give them lunch when they go to the community. It‟s very hard.” Mwihaki Kimura, regional HIV/Aids project manager at AMREF, concurs: “Although you can still find pockets where people still don‟t see this kind of support as work, the general picture in the countryside suggests that this kind of community support is breaking down.”

Of course, it is all, and increasingly, about poverty. Whatever we may read, the rising cost of living is driving people in rural areas to greater desperation – and, inevitably, challenging their community consciousness. “I‟ve found that in larger towns, where people are living in slums, they are more willing to volunteer,” says Augustine Wasonga, ACE‟s programme manager. “It‟s because they stay closer together and deal with their neighbours‟ survival on a daily basis. Because they see so much suffering close up, they‟re more likely to want to help. Come to Bungoma and you have a problem. There are so many big organisations giving people 500 bob to attend a meeting, if you‟re looking for real volunteers you won‟t find people – or they‟ll come for 2-3 months and then drop out.”

A report released last month by the global watchdog Human Rights Watch levelled strong accusations against the governments of Kenya, Uganda and South Africa for “turning their backs” on the welfare and education of children orphaned by Aids. The report, Letting Them Fail, stated that the Kenyan and Ugandan governments in particular had completely abdicated their responsibility to their Aids orphans, letting churches and community-based organisations provide them with the uniforms, books and basic rights to keep them in school. It painted a picture of nightmarish proportions: of children dropping out of school to look after sick parents and siblings, of physical and sexual abuse by family „guardians‟, of schools and teachers “simply acquiescing when emotionally scarred children drop out of school or fall behind”.
Although the Kenyan government has recently taken several positive steps to promote the welfare of its 1.5 million Aids orphans – establishing an Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Steering Committee, a five-year national action plan covering OVCs‟ education, healthcare and legal rights, and a pilot scheme with UNICEF handing out monthly grants to orphans‟ caregivers in three districts – there is clearly a long way to go. As I witnessed in Bungoma, efforts on the ground can flounder simply because of the impenetrable wall of stigma that surrounds the disease.

While the intensive campaigns to raise awareness of the risks of HIV/Aids have undoubtedly been successful, the focus on the risks of unsafe sex has probably compounded the view that this is a disease you get “from being bad,” as ACE‟s Grace Ananda puts it. Because it is spread largely through sexual intercourse, if you are infected you are presumed to have slept with a prostitute or been unfaithful to your partner – whereas the reality, as Grace sees it, is that “at least 70% of people who get HIV get it innocently”. Grace gets all these questions in her counselling work: whether you can catch the virus from saliva (“only if you both have mouth ulcers”), from sharing razors or combs (again, only if blood is transferred). “This morning someone asked me if you can get HIV from urine, and I didn‟t have an answer,” says Grace. So she goes back to the Internet – where she probably spends a quarter of her salary surfing for answers. Someone else confides to me that Lillian Bwire spends at least a third of her salary sponsoring individual orphans in the community.

These here are the soldiers in the war against Aids, people who rarely make it into the public eye, but who come to work each day not knowing what personal tragedy they will encounter next – but knowing, always, that there will be one. “Sometimes it‟s so heartbreaking,” admits Lillian. “You visit someone today and you go the following week and you are met by a grave.”

“Of course you get personally involved,” admits Joe Waddington. “Members of staff will come in and say, “I have to visit that child again today…” So how does it affect them individually? Ms Waddington thinks for a minute, decides to let go. “Sometimes I come back home at night and I cannot stop crying,” she says. “I don‟t know what this is taking out of me, but I do know I will never be the same person that I was before.”

Dennis Chebukosi is in his mid sixties. At his age, he should be enjoying retirement and relishing in the fruits of his labours. In another world, Dennis would be sitting under a tree, admiring his maize crop and telling tales to his grandchildren.

But Dennis is doing none of these things. He is actually working harder than ever. Daily, he pounds the paths of rural Bungoma, Western Kenya visiting members of his community. He has no shoes and wears torn trousers and a patchy jacket. Dennis has never had a job or been to school. His family; seven children and four grandchildren live deep into the interior, surviving on one meal a day.

As a volunteer Community Health Worker, Dennis walks up to 20 kilometres daily visiting People Living with HIV/AIDS. Seeing over 15 patients a week, he checks on rashes and sores and provides cream for the itching. He administers basic drugs and vitamins, cleans wounds, washes soiled sheets and deals with incontinence and sickness on a regular basis. He counsels patients, their families and children about nutrition, safe health care, positive living and the way forward. Dennis is keeping his community alive. He is giving them hope and love. He is often the only person who comes to visit, the only one who cares.

Dennis gets nothing – no money, no food, nothing but perhaps an umbrella to keep off the rain and a bag to carry supplies. Without people like Dennis, many families in this part of Bungoma would be on their knees. In tiny pockets of Kenya, in tiny pockets of the statistics, men and women, old and young, are giving their lives to alleviate the pain of a few.

Being a Community Health Worker is not cost effective for the individual. It eats into family life and resources. But the most striking thing about Community Health Workers is that they are prepared to do all this when their own social and economic needs are as great as the next man. But Dennis’ morale is low. He cannot financially or psychologically withstand the demands placed on him. He now no longer has the drugs to give to his patients. His only resources are compassion and time. If he cannot provide basic drugs to his patients, his promises are in danger of sounding empty.

This year, Kenya received $129 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. But where will this money go and will it get to the people who most need it? $26 million of this will be awarded to local NGOs and CBOs. If we are hoping to convince the world to commit more funds to the fight, then now is our chance to prove that we can spend effectively. As Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO advisor for HIV/AIDS in Africa, says: “Besides the low number of HIV+ people in Africa on ARVs, only 23% of those infected with HIV on the continent and in need of essential medical care have access to it.”

At a conference in South Africa on 3/8/03, Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, said that, “No matter how high the prevalence rate in individual countries, no matter how impoverished those countries may be, no matter how frayed the infrastructure, government after government across the continent is bent on treatment. They are answering the desperate call of the people living with AIDS; they are responding to the NGO activists; they are embracing the proposition that treatment prolongs life and treatment brings hope.”
Despite the will to deliver, however, the reality in Kenya is that approximately 90% of NGOs involved in HIV activities are focusing on ‘advocacy, awareness and behaviour change’. These are all essential components of the fight but only in conjunction with the care of PLWA. In reality however, they often focus on urban areas, usually holding workshops and debates, producing educational materials – and driving four-wheel-drive vehicles on fleeting tours of community centres.

Among recent HIV/AIDS proposals to Bungoma’s Constituency AIDS Control Committee, 99% focused on ‘building awareness and behaviour change’, while only 1% were concerned with mitigation programmes. Here, where the HIV prevalence rate is between 25-30%, there are no government VCT centres, and in the rural areas approximately one in three households is infected.

Surely it is time to redress this imbalance in service provision. Take Rosa. She is 32 and lives an hour’s walk from her nearest health centre and four hours from Bungoma District Hospital. She is desperately thin, has swollen legs, and her skin is covered in itchy boils and rashes. She vomits blood and has chronic chest pains. She is listless and depressed. She has no energy to tend to her farmland or her six children. Typically of HIV-positive people in this area, she has no drugs and very little food.

Rosa is one of 50,000 people in the catchment area of the Bulondo Health Centre in rural Bungoma. Here, the five community nurses see approximately 500 patients every month. Half of these patients are showing the signs and symptoms of HIV/AIDS. Three quarters also have malaria.

The health centre is a concrete block, with four basic rooms and few resources. People hang about sitting under trees waiting their turn to be seen by the nurse. They wait patiently, shrouded in silence, but their wait is usually in vain. There are no drugs at the Bulondo Health Centre. The drug supply from the district hospital arrived four months ago and ran out in less than two weeks. Drugs such as anti-malarials, paracetamol, multi-vitamins, antibiotics – all desperately needed – will not be delivered again until October. The nurses, who work tirelessly in dreadful conditions, are forced to send their patients away empty handed, with a sympathetic word of comfort – and advice to go to the hospital 20 kilometres away, to buy drugs.

Here in the rural areas, where more than 90% of people earn less than Ksh 1,500 a month, purchasing drugs usually means borrowing money from relatives and friends – or forgoing the family food. Mary, one of the community nurses, says that the staff often dip into their own pockets to buy drugs for patients with pneumonia or tuberculosis, with malaria or debilitating diarrhoea.

“People in the rural areas are not getting any help,” says Mary, who asked that her real name be withheld. “Sometimes we can give them a paracetamol but we need antibiotics, oral rehydrants, multi-vitamins and anti-malarials. As medical staff, we are virtually completely helpless.”

The treatment and provision of drugs is central to the global debate on HIV/AIDS and whilst the reduction in the price of ARVs is laudable, it is necessary to consider that in these rural areas they are largely unavailable and virtually impossible to administer. There is however, another strategy, simple yet effective, affordable and practical, that can and does improve the health and lifestyle of people like Rosa.

Given basic antibiotics, anti-malarials, vitamins, a balanced nutritional diet and support from a Community Health Worker, the likes of Rosa could return to a level of health that would enable her to work her land. The immediate alternative, whilst the debate rages on is to strengthen ‘home-based care’ services which are having a positive impact on the reduction of the number of people admitted to hospital and prolonging life. People need basic drugs and food, health workers and nurses need the resources to continue providing a service. Without this support home-based care is in danger of collapse.

Shabir Namakanda is a team leader for Community Health Workers in the sub-location of Bulondo. He too has no paid job and 10 children to support. He is a highly respected member of the community and people come to him for advice and basic medical treatment. Shabir has over 40 patients that he visits personally. Often he provides them with fruit and food from his own shamba. He is also forced to pay for drugs or travel expenses to the hospital when a patient is unable to meet the payments. He has motivated the community to donate land and plant food crops to help feed the growing number of orphans and vulnerable children in his area. Like Dennis, he does not get paid a shilling.

While advocacy and education are clearly vital for future generations, prolonging and improving life could easily be cost effective. Improving Rosa’s health status would improve her ability to care for her family. Giving her basic, effective health care would enable her to live positively and to act as a testimony to others. When people are forced to reconsider their actions because they are affected personally, they are more likely to change their behaviour and attitudes.

Organisations that proclaim to be fighting the epidemic have an obligation to deliver an holistic, sustainable service to PLWA and their families, in their communities and in their homes. Without simple drugs, without encouragement and support, people like Dennis and Shabir will be unable to continue their visits. As Stephen Lewis said in his landmark speech, “People are dying in numbers that are the stuff of science fiction. Millions of human beings are at risk. Communities, families, mothers, fathers, children are like shards of humanity caught in a maelstrom of destruction. They’re flesh and blood human beings, for God’s sake. Is that not enough to ignite the conscience of the world?”

ACE (Action in the Community Environment) is working in partnership with Children in Crisis. It is training People living with AIDS, Community Health Workers, Orphans and Vulnerable Children in the rural areas of Western Kenya in agricultural techniques, nutrition and herbal remedies, income generation and health messages.

Registered Charity Number 1020488