Idea Libre: reinventing childhood in Chumvi, Kenya

A few months ago I came across the NGO Free Idea. It is located in Chumvi, in one of the most deserted areas of Kenya, where droughts and lack of access to resources and drinking water cause the population to have serious food problems. Most of the families live from collecting wood and making charcoal from it to try to sell it near the road, some of them have some animals. They all live in extreme poverty on less than two dollars a day. 

Knowing about this project moves one to observe carefully and not just look, and in that process I saw two women Sandra Blázquez and María Fábregas, empowered, brave and generous. I have known a project that is born from solidarity, from the responsibility that moves to do good at the end of the world, to add, to add a grain of sand to a cause so difficult and so necessary as education or childhood. The disinterested way of helping without looking at who, without getting anything in return other than seeing those little ones believe and learn, and thus (hopefully) become a new opportunity for social, economic and educational progress, for their families, their people and, why not, their country. 

I saw two women full of love to give, but above all full of patience and enthusiasm, to listen to the dreams, plans, feelings and illusions of these children, to accompany them in the process of becoming upright, responsible adults and, above all, good people. 

Two women who want to see the children of one of the poorest countries in the world reinvent themselves. Two women who fervently believe in the right to opportunities, to education, but above all to children; the latter often being a privilege in that country.

As an African, knowing them is a pride and a challenge to show the world. Here the sincere questions and the most special answers go straight to the heart, I hope you will feel that it means leaving your skin and soul in this dream come true. To understand the effort of others even if we cannot live it is one of the best experiments of empathy and helps us to understand this project full of humility and love.
 

How was the idea of Free Idea born? And why the peculiarity of that name?

On a trip to Morocco where we lived with a Moroccan family for a fortnight, we met an orphanage where the conditions of the children were terrible. From the first day we met Ryan, a 3 year old boy who could hardly walk because he was not taken out of his crib, we went every afternoon to the orphanage to play with him and all his classmates. The trip was over, we were returning to Spain and we felt that we were abandoning them. That made us decide to do much more than just visit an orphanage, something that, moreover, we find horrifying today, because, if everyone enters an orphanage, where there are very vulnerable children who have been abandoned or who have had a life that has made them end up far from their family, and anyone enters, gives them affection and leaves and so on with each person who enters, what is the message that is reaching the child? Maybe he can grow up believing that it is not enough, and that is why people go to see him and don't come back. A horror! These children must be protected! But to return to the question, we started this way, making a mistake. The love we felt for those children and the sadness afterwards when we felt that we were abandoning them, made us decide to create Idea Libre.

We named it because we want each person to grow up with enough freedom to think for themselves. To decide what to believe in and what to aspire to, without conditions. As long as no harm is done to the one next door, each and every person should have absolute freedom to choose, to do and to be. 

Who are you in Idea Libre?

Maria and Sandra. Two normal girls, with fears and doubts, but also with the absolute conviction that everyone can achieve what they set out to do. Sometimes you just need an opportunity, which many don't have, but it belongs to them. 

But the engine of our dream would not work without all the people behind it, who are also Free Idea. All the people who trust us, who support us and give us the strength to go on. 
 

What are the values and purposes of this NGO?  

Equal rights, love and education. Our great purpose is to be able to provide education to all the children we reach and who do not have this right. Education is the basis for good development, it is the basis for being free. Without education you are a slave to the system. And depending on where, the system can be a real hell.  

What is the difference between Free Idea and other NGOs? From what I understand you don't accept volunteers, why?

Perhaps the biggest difference is that Free Idea exists because it has to be named, because it has to be legalized. But really Free Idea is two women determined to give the best of themselves.

Then comes all the bureaucracy and obligations that the NGO has, but we are Sandra and Maria, to this day with 175 children to whom we have made a promise and we want to keep it. 

We don't work as volunteers because we believe that many times, instead of doing well, the result is terrible. We constantly receive emails from people who want to go and live an experience, who want to contribute what they have and enjoy their holidays by coming to Kenya to "help". 

Now put yourself in the place of any of our children, let's put ourselves in Lilian's eyes, for example. Lilian is 7 years old. She lives in a mud hut with her mother and nine siblings. She has no water, no light, no shoes (among thousands of other things) and she sleeps on the floor. She starts going to school, together with her neighbours, and suddenly white people appear, coming from Europe, who have plenty of time and money and bring Lilian presents, things she had never seen before. They get into the class and start playing games, teaching math, taking pictures with their mobile phones... and after a fortnight they leave. 

There's a huge gap. And others appear, with more gifts, with new games, with new ideas, but when they leave, the usual emptiness returns. The mother has nothing to offer them, and the teachers are waiting for more whites to arrive. How will Lilian grow up? With the idea that in Europe there are good things, with the dependence on others, on those outside, on "those who have". And do you know what Lilian will want to do when she grows up? Go to Europe. And she will feel less than the whites, because it was the whites who came with good things. 
 

I'm not making this up, this is happening in a lot of places. Now let's put ourselves back in Lilian's eyes and turn her around. 

She lives exactly the same, but when she goes to school, a woman from the village is the teacher. The ideas are brought by people from the surrounding area who are prepared and qualified to do so. Nobody gives anything away, you have to work for it. How will Lilian grow up? She will know that things can be achieved. She will see the example in her elders. She will know that it is enough to achieve what she sets out to do because others with the same conditions as her have achieved it. 

That's why we don't like volunteering. Because we believe in development. When we come to Kenya we don't give anything away. And when we bring school materials or games, we give them to the teachers so that they can use them when they consider it necessary, but we don't arrive as if we were Santa Claus, how awful! 

If we were constantly receiving volunteers at the school to spend their holidays, we think we would have to change the focus of the NGO, because to be honest, the ones we would be helping would be the volunteers themselves. But our focus is on those vulnerable children with whom you have to have a huge amount of tact when making any decision. 

This does not mean that nobody can go to the project, we have received visits from people who collaborate a lot with us, who wanted to know about the project and who have gone as if they were going to visit our house. But not with Superman's cape. No one is more than anyone else. 

If at some point we need to do something concrete and we don't find anyone in Kenya who can do it, then we will bring him from Spain, but something very concrete for something very concrete. 
 

The reality of the lack of resources and extreme poverty that leave many children unprotected is mainly due to the life of their parents. Chumvi, where the school built by the NGO is located, is in one of the most deserted areas of Kenya. What are the main problems caused by poverty and what are the most practical measures that could be made available to this population? 

The problem of poverty in Chumvi, which is the one we know, is the extreme way of life they face every day. They wake up hungry and with nothing to eat, and have to walk for more than two hours to go to an area where there are trees to cut them down to make charcoal and fill sacks that take a week to fill and then load them up and sell them in the city for 5 or 6 euros. These are mothers with 4 or 5 children to feed, who usually eat once every two days.

Women who have grown up surrounded by misery and who believe there is nothing else. Those people, they are the poor of the poor. They can't integrate into society because no one wants them. And they themselves have accepted their conditions believing that they could never improve them.  Raising that is difficult without education. For us, education is not just knowing mathematics or geography, for us education is empowering these children. Let them grow up knowing that they can, that they have it within them, that they can. And we are working on it. We believe that, with the right education, where there is room for motivation, love and trust, these children will be able to go wherever they want. 
 

I have seen you testing for HIV, is it common for children to be carriers, how do you deal with it, are they and their families aware of the seriousness of the disease?

There are some children who are carriers, yes. Medicine for HIV is free in many countries in Africa, one of them being Kenya. What we do is detect that a child is a carrier and Mary, our coordinator in Kenya, who was a girl from Chumvi and is now a teacher and headmaster of our school, is in charge of talking to the family. In Chumvi the subject of HIV is a taboo subject. People reject those who have HIV, so we take great care of the subject and treat it very discreetly. 

Mary and the other teachers talk to the families and encourage them to go to the hospital to collect the medicines. They usually take responsibility for the situation and take it seriously. 
 

Poverty and disadvantaged situations combined with lack of education can increase the risk of children being abused by adults, family members or others. In your experience, is it important to know the root of the problem in the family in order to support these children in their development? 

Yes, it is always important to know the root of the problem. Although it is often a challenge to investigate because of their culture, they are very closed people.

Childhood, unfortunately in some parts of the world, is a privilege and not a right. Children are exposed to very tough problems from the time they are born and have to face situations for which no child is prepared. How do you see this affecting their emotional maturity? What awareness do these children have of life after the difficulties they have suffered? I suppose that such disadvantaged situations also lead to emotional problems and childhood traumas. How do they deal with their baggage of life when it comes to living with others and educating themselves?

These children, even before going to school, did not have any kind of hope, nor did they know it. Their parents, grandparents and people around them live with nothing and less, so their great effort is to manage to live every day. They are children who find it very difficult to open up emotionally, so that you get an idea, when we started with the theatre course and we talked to them about emotions, they didn't know what they were. Little by little we are introducing them to the emotional world, with a lot of tact, with the idea that they learn to listen to themselves and to feel. 

We don't rule out that as they grow up, they will have traumas, we are counting on that. But we will always try to support them and give them the necessary tools to overcome it.  

One of the data that has most caught my attention is that the rate of child labour is 26%. Have you been in a crucial situation related to this issue? Is it a reality that children abandon school in favour of child labour? How can you interfere in that process and prevent it from happening? Do children enjoy any institution that protects them?

Many of the children of Chumvi, before coming to school, worked. Some cutting down trees with their parents, others cleaning up in houses.

Since we decided to give education, all the parents wanted their children to go to school. Something that caught our attention, because we expected the opposite. It's true that they eat every day at school, and that gives the parents a lot of peace of mind. They prefer that they go to school and eat, because it is work that you take away from them. In an interview with parents, one mother said she was proud that her son went to school because that way when he grew up he wouldn't sleep on the floor. They see education as progress. It's an advantage for us.

In November and December schools in Kenya are closed for holidays, and in December 2018 Mary wrote to tell us that she had met Eyoya, one of our children, aged 6, begging in the street. We asked her if this was common, and she said that two months without going to school was too long and they had to make a living. That is why since November 2019 we have been running a camp during the holiday months so that they can go to school to play and eat.

We do not know of any institution that protects them, we do not know if there is one, but we can tell you that the streets of Isiolo, the closest town to Chumvi, are full of children living on the streets without any kind of protection. 

How can the NGO be helped? I have seen that you have different challenges in which the aid that the NGO receives goes to. Do you think that this cause is being supported as much as it should be?

What makes the project sustainable and grow are the membership fees, from nine euros per month. The fees mean that every month we can count on a certain amount of money and face the expenses that the school entails: food, firewood, teachers' salaries, school material, soap.

The challenges you have seen are for concrete things that help us to improve the quality of the project, for example, buying backpacks for everyone, shoes, trees for the school etc.

Many people empathize yes, many people feel close to these children, it is one of our main objectives, that people feel it as what it is. It's not giving nine euros, it's making that, with those nine euros, Dady, another of our children for example, can eat for a month, it's that real! 
 

What is the best feeling that comes from working with these children who need you so much? What is the greatest learning of this very human project? What is the hardest thing about choosing to live the growth of these children?

We have gone through many feelings, some good, some bad, some very bad, if we had to stay with one, it is to feel that our family has grown. That we have 175 dwarves eager to live, that they are part of our life. 

The greatest learning, knowing how to live with humility. We are neither so much nor so little. The hardest thing, knowing that this day they will not eat. Knowing that it is impossible to protect them from everything they face. We will do everything we can to keep the wound from hurting, but it will hurt. 

What do you ask of these next few years for these children? 

We ask that things follow the course they're taking. To keep growing, moving forward and reaching out to more children.