Aswani Kizito, a boda boda rider (meaning a motorcycle delivery and transporter) and his wife Linette, started a home for orphaned children soon after their son Prince was born with cerebral palsy in 2005 . Linette had to stay at home to look after Prince. Being church leaders, they were soon inundated with requests to take in disenfranchised orphaned children found by their church in the slums of Kawangware. Soon children of all ages found their way to the church and from there into Aswani and Linette’s home.

One such example was that of young George Kasiti who was five years old at the time, who Aswani found rummaging for food in a garbage heap in the slum. When Aswani asked George what he was doing, he said his mother was ill in bed and he had to feed her and his little sister, Mary Wanjiku. He led Aswani to the room in the slum where his mother lay in bed dying of HIV and a small child who hid from him. Aswani stepped in to help the family and soon after, the mother died and the two young orphans were brought into his home.

Before long, the number of orphan children had risen to 46 being housed now in three squalid rooms as Aswani’s home had become too small. Volunteers from the church provided basic teaching and a room was found nearby as a makeshift classroom converted on Sunday to a church. Soon, the programme expanded and children from single parent homes, those rejected by their families for various reasons, those with other special needs and poor children were being taught in the class and fed by Aswani through his boda boda business. The non-orphan children went home to their parents or volunteers each day – otherwise known at the Guardians.

The children live in difficult circumstances and environment, yet with so little, a few of the older ones have done really well academically, such as Blessed Vuyanzi, 14, who in the recent KPE national exams scored a commendable 80% and got a place at a national school (Mkumu Girls Secondary), where tuition is free but books, blankets and food are not. These children are deserving of a better chance in life from the one they were born into.

In 2011 Aswani registered his programme as a Community Based Organization and the operation runs smoothy with orphans looked after in slightly larger and better facilities paid for by well-wishers and his boda boda business. The income raised from these sources pays for the day to day operations of the shelter, electricity and rent, at least a meal a day and some education for the children. Exceptional costs such as those incurred for those who have done well and progressed to boarding schools are also supported by a combination of boda boda income and well- wishers.

At the end of 2018, a group of these well-wishers led by the Sejpal Family visited the home and stepped in to do something about providing the children a better home and life out of Kawangare. The plan is to establish a Children’s Centre under an NGO which will acquire land in a new location outside of the slum and establish a better living and enabling environment for the children.

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