take my hand, take my whole life too

last friday, a beautiful baby girl was born to a mother of three, weighing only 2.2kg. that same day, she was also abandoned. her mother didn’t want her as she had a different father to her other three children – the man she’d divorced from, but was now getting back together with. and she couldn’t bring a child back that wasn’t his. so she left the clinic where she had given birth only a few hours earlier, without her child, refusing to breast feed, refusing to claim responsibility, without naming her daughter.

the clinic where she was born is just below ‘little ray of hope’. they know evelyn, the principal of the school, can never say no to children (hence why she works so hard at the school for these kids) so they asked her to take the baby home and care for her, indefinitely. and evelyn couldn’t say no, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say the word in the last three and a half months I’ve known her.

so just shy of her 45th birthday, which was yesterday, evelyn became a mother to her eighth child; some biological, some adopted. this is a lady who doesn’t receive an income and just manages off the donations from the school; which for the first six months of this year were far and few between. she tells me, “I couldn’t leave her alone, I couldn’t leave her by herself”. the clinic, she tells me, couldn’t push the mother to take her baby home, as it’s quite common for unwanted newborns to be placed in plastic bags and be tied shut and left.

there are no words.

this monday, evelyn told me all about this. we go into class, teach the kids, come out for tea while the kids take their porridge, and then out of the blue, she asks me the name of my sister and best friend. I tell her I have a few best friends, but meagan is one and my sister, elizabeth, is also my best friend. god it sounds so weird calling her elizabeth, that’s so not right, but when I try to explain that no one calls her that and that we call her rowdy, she did what I like to call the ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about but I’ll laugh and smile and pretend I understand’ laugh that so many kenyans do and have done since I’ve been here.

yesterday, after the kids facetimed with rowdy in class (isn’t technology bloody amazing?!), evelyn tells me she’s thought long and hard about it but she decided to name her daughter after my sister. elizabeth, but will be called beth for short. she also said she hoped that her beth would grow up to be like my sister; determined and intelligent, maybe even go to law school herself. she also hopes that rowdy will one day be the lawyer for the kids at ‘little ray of hope’.

so next year, when I come back to kenya to see how my angels are doing, which will be whenever I get given leave from being an ambo, I’m bringing my sister. I really want to share this beautiful yet heartbreaking place with her, and for her to meet the kids. and now, she also has to meet her namesake, a beautiful baby girl called beth.