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Boniface and Hamisi Report

 Majaoni Secondary School Project

We are also embarking on a fundraising project for Majaoni Secondary School, which is located right beside the primary school described above. This is the school where we supported 12 students last year, at a cost of about $300 each. This year we expect, with the continued support of interested Canadians, in sponsoring 23 needy students from this school. 7 of these are students we supported last year, who this year are in their final year of high school; the rest are new students.

Five of the students we supported last year have now graduated. Of these students, we have offered to support the top one, George Ouma, to continue on to university. George is an excellent student and his top-notch marks will gain him access to any university in the country. George, the son of É quarry stone cutter has a great ambition to become a doctor. It will cost at least $2000 a year to send him to university, but we see tremendous potential in this young man and his principal, Christine Kahindi, has written to us that “he will never disappoint you”. Andrew Thuva has visited him as well on our behalf and is likewise impressed. 

We see in George an uncommon man of huge potential just as a young Andrew Thuva was when the YMCA gave him the chance to pursue higher learning. Because of their investment in Andrew, we became involved in helping Andrew’s family, and now his entire community, in Kilifi, Kenya. We’re hoping that launching one more little pebble down the mountainside by helping George realize his great help create another small avalanche of change in Kenya. 

You can see a picture of George, and some of his ongoing letters to us on our website, www.northernmagic.com, by going to “Projects” and then to “Boniface and Hamisi Project”, and from there to “Majaoni Secondary School”, and clicking on his name.

 Majaoni Seondary School is also in dire need of repairs and expansion, and requires $40,000 for its basic infrastructure. We will be doing our best to provide what we can for them. 

 Hamisi’s cow, Magic, is doing well and producing eight litres of milk each day. Magic’s calf is also doing well!

 We’ve now sold 300 shark tooth necklaces made in Kenya, with approximately half the proceeds returning directly directly to Hamisi and his sub-contractors.  The income this has brought them in the past three months is the equivalent of more than eight year’s pay for a grown man working ten hours a day in a sisal field, and continues to make a huge impact on their local economy. Hadley Junior High School and Stephanie MacGregor, who has a very complementary fund-raising program going on for a Maasai school and village, have sold many of these necklaces, with the profits going to the charitable projects. Read the story below, published in today’s Ottawa Citizen, for more details.

 Ottawa Citizen, December 17, 2002

 The must-have accessory this season at Gatineau’s Hadley Junior High School is a shark’s-tooth necklace.

 The Grade 7 and 8 students at Hadley say the necklaces, made of fossilized shark’s teeth and beads, are cool because every one they buy helps a school in Kenya.

 “I think it’s really cool and I like to help people,” said 13-year-old Hadley student Erica Rothschild, sporting a blue-and-white beaded shark’s tooth pendant. Erica wanted to help so much that she spent $100, her life savings.

 Hamisi Mwandoro, a 20-year-old from Kilifi, Kenya, started making and exporting the necklaces with help from Diane Stuemer and her family two years ago.

 During a round-the-world sailing adventure, the Stuemers spent time in the impoverished village of Kilifi, where many families couldn’t afford to send their children to school. They also saw students sitting on the dirt floor of a schoolroom with a leaky roof.

When Mrs. Stuemer – in her weekly Citizen column about her family’s trip – wrote about the efforts to pay tuition for Kilifi children, she was flooded by donations.

 The project took on a new dimension this fall when Eva Blush, who had just started teaching moral education at Hadley, heard about Kilifi’s plight and saw an opportunity to show her students they could make a difference.

 Along with fellow teacher Melanie Johnson and some students, she is raising money for Majaoni Primary School in Kilifi. The school needs major repairs and lacks basic supplies such a desks and books.

 The necklaces have become a hot commodity, raising more than $600 so far. Students like the shark’s-tooth and bead jewelry because it “looks like something off Survivor,” Mrs. Blush says.

 The fundraising effort also helps kids discover who they are and tap into their talents Mrs. Blush said. “That’s why this project is important. The students feel as though they are making a difference.”

 The lesson isn’t lost on the students, who have spent time during lunch and after school planning and strategizing.

 “In Canada, we’re so lucky,” says 12-year-old Sara Graham.

 James Farr, 13, has a new appreciation for school.

 “They have a different attitude,” he says of the Kenyan students. “They want to go to school, but they can’t.”

 “Everyone deserves a good school,” Olivia Doggett, 13, says.

 The students say the necklaces, which sell for $20 and $25, do make a fashion statement, but also say wearing them shows how much they care about their Kenyan counterparts. 

Sales have been so brisk that another shipment of jewelry has been ordered to replenish stock before the annual talent show on Thursday. Mrs. Blush is sure they’ll sell like hotcakes so close to Christmas. But based on the excitement and goodwill of her students, she says, “this is feeling like Christmas already.”

 We’re now anxiously awaiting a new shipment to replenish our depleting stores! Boniface and Andrew’s daughter Dama are also both involved; apparently Dama has made 45 shark-tooth earrings to add to this exclusive line! 

 Boniface completed grade 10 at Sokoke Secondary School in December, and has asked our family for support to send him to a better-equipped private school beginning in January. Although the fees are higher, this school has stable electricity and even computers, so we consider it a good investment. Boniface’s brother, Katana, also finished off a year’s studies, supported by you.

 Mark Thuva Hair Salon Project

Mark’s hair salon, named Mark’s Magic Hair Salon and Beauty Centre, opened December 1 in Mtwapa Kenya. He has already had his first customers, although he reports that his landlord has been slow about connecting electricity to the building and he has had to obtain electricity from a neighbouring business at high cost. We’re awaiting pictures of his new business, established due to the continuing support of Karen Sharp of Charly’s Hair Design on Richmond Rd. We’ll keep you posted!

Andrew Thuva

Andrew works at the Sun ‘n Sand resort just north of Mombasa, and very close to the Mombasa Paradise Hotel that was recently bombed by terrorists. Attached is a draft report on the bombing he prepared recently for the Ottawa Citizen, which you may see printed there one of these days!

 November 28 was the day the devil visited this small village of Kikambala, Kenya. A day that had started rather lazily suddenly became the centre of the world's attention when religious fanatics visited terror on a tourist hotel, killing 15 people, tourists and Kenyans alike.

 I work at the Sun ‘n Sand Hotel, just down the road from the ill-fated Mombasa Paradise Hotel. While I answered telephone calls from media houses all over the world, only a few kilometers away, smouldering wood, burning flesh, sooty faces of survivors and the uncontrolled sobbing of friends and relatives of the victims, were telling evidence of the pain and loss that an act of barbarism had caused just moments before.

 Enemies have brought their war to our land, and we Kenyans have been left with the consequences.

The police cordoned off the area that morning, and as they stood guard, their faces betrayed the sorrow in their hearts. They could not hold hard forever.

Elsewhere, out in the sea, guests of our hotel, an English family of three - two women and a boy who taken a boat earlier in the morning to go fishing - captured the billowing flames and smoke on a digital camera.

 
Back in our hotel, guests and hotel workers whispered in hushed tones trying to comprehend everything, unsure of their future. Soon, flocks of media houses with their heavy cameras would descend on our hotel, hurriedly checking in and heading for the scene of the tragedy. By the end of the day, I had not done much in my office except making endless recounts of the day's happenings.

Such was the day hell was let loose in our peaceful village.
                     

Almost three weeks later, my neighbours are slowly counting their losses and painfully trying to come to terms with a new and painful reality.

 Dama Safari Yaa, whose husband was the leader of the local traditional dance troupe that was entertaining guests on the fateful day, is agonizing over how to bring up her eight children without her family’s only breadwinner. His life suddenly sacrified to a war he knew nothing about, Safari Yaa would never be there to fulfill his parental obligations. Will Dama be able to pay the school fees for her children? Will she be able to feed them and clothe them, without income? Dama’s children are victims of this tragedy too, but the world doesn’t know about them.

 Relatives of the other victims: Lucia Magia, who lost her husband, a member of the dance troupe. Charo Kadzolugo lost his wife – also a dancer - in the blast. Salim Yaa lost his daughter and so did Mweni Mramba. Young Pendo lost her beloved mother, also a dancer. Juma Mwangiri lost his sister and Vincent Tuku lost his sister, Rebecca Nyamvula. Rebecca was a hotel waitress who had resigned and had dropped by to collect her final paycheque. It was her final act.

 The manager of the bombed hotel, Mr. Maina, has been burned beyond recognition, and it finally took DNA testing to identify him. He was his family’s sole breadwinner and with his death, the family is not sure of their future.

 Mercy Mwagambo, the hotel receptionist on duty on the dark day, who suffered severe burns is still in hospital, traumatized and uncertain of her future.

 The effects of the bombing go far beyond the immediate victims. Curio traders will have to look elsewhere to sell their ware. The kiosk owners near the hotel will have to close down for lack of customers. Beach boys will find few customers. Suppliers of goods to the hotel will suddenly find themselves with nowhere to send their merchandise. Travel agents and taxi drivers will suffer too.

 Tourism, being a major earner of the country’s foreign exchange, will certainly affect other sectors of the economy. All of us who depend on visitors will be affected. I don’t know about my own future in the nearby hotel where I work, if tourists stop coming to our country. Jobs will be lost, and many schoolchildren will no doubt be forced to abandon their studies, with no one able bear the already heavy burden of school fees.

 This has been a terrible jolt to our country, a country already struggling to catch up with the rest of the world.

 I hope that potential visitors will remember that terrorist targets are to be found anywhere in the world. While Kenya has proved to be vulnerable, no countries are completely ruled out from being targeted, as New York City discovered on its own day of terror.

 In the stark glare of all this misery, the world has yet to remember to offer help to the Kenyan victims of the tragedy, the ones who have ended up paying the highest price in this battle of a greater war not of their own making.

 Ironically, within hours, the world was able to mobilize the best journalists and equipment worth millions of dollars to be at the scene of this cowardly act of hatred. Relatives of victims were made to endlessly recount what they heard, saw, felt and thought about their respective experiences, even in their moment of extreme grief. The world was shown the humble surroundings of these villagers.

 And then, as suddenly as they had come, the media disappeared. In a few days, the wretched of this village had been forgotten. The bodies of my dead neighbours became merely a news item that boosted network advertising revenue for a few days. For the rest of the world, life and business went on as usual, while here in a modest Kenyan village, we continue to grieve over our losses and contemplate our uncertain future.  No one will be erecting memorial tributes to our victims in the war on terrorism. We will be forgotten.         

 I pray the world won’t turn its back on my fellow Kenyans – the vulnerable victims of a war we cannot understand.  

 BY

Charitable Status

We’ve been temporarily stalled in our application process to receive official charitable status (making us capable of issuing tax receipts.) Getting this status is complicated for overseas projects, and we had to put the application on the backburner during this busy fall, because we were entirely consumed by the launch of our book. In addition, we need to find an accountant who can conduct the required annual audit of our books. Since everyone else who has worked on this project, including our lawyers, Fraser Milner Casgrain, has done so free of charge, we are hoping to locate an accountant who will contribute his or her services to the project as well. If any of you know of such a generous person, we’d surely appreciate your help getting them involved. It’s been our policy so far to have zero overhead expenses, so that all the money we collect goes directly to Africa. Other than a few government filing fees, we’ve managed to stick to  this policy, and we don’t want to deviate on it now.

Northern Magic Book Launch

We had a very successful private book launch, and will be contributing at least $500 from the proceeds of the books sold directly by us, at our private event and through the internet, to the project. My national book tour has provided me an opportunity to spread the word around the country, and at each event people come forward with donations and offers to help. This is what has been driving the growth of the project. We’re now making approaches (and being approached by) several service clubs, such as Rotary, Kiwanis and Lion’s Clubs, and we do expect to include some of them as partners in this ongoing adventure. 

So that’s what we’ve been up to on behalf of all of you, who have generously made this possible. Sorry for the length of this report, but there was so much we needed to share with you!

Herbert and I, and our children, wish all of you a very Merry Christmas, and our thanks once again for helping make a difference in the world.

With best wishes,

Diane