Visit to Cara Rescue Centre

April 29, 2019

Cara Rescue Centre takes care of girls that are at risk of FGM, early marriages, girls that have been defiled, and also those that have court cases pending, amongst others. During one of the club meetings at AIC Ngong School, we were discussing rape in families. One girl sent me a note saying she was a victim of rape. She was raped by her father and when she reported what was happening to her, the father was arrested. She was placed in a rescue Centre by the children’s court. She narrated to us her hallowing story, a story that a child should never have to tell, a story that made us sick to our stomach.

She cried as she told her story, and after a lot of counselling and a lot of hugging, we left the school promising to visit her at the Centre during the school holiday. The Centre is not too far from her school, and so today we went to visit her. The home has approximately 28 girls though it has a capacity for holding 40. There was a young girl breastfeeding her baby; she is not more than 16 years of age. Her case is still pending in court, so she silently suckles her baby with a look of total despair in her eyes. The Centre does not keep the girls at the home for long. As soon as their cases are resolved, they are sent back to their communities to live with their relatives. Those that cannot be sent back home are funded, and they attend boarding schools; they stay at the Centre during the school holidays.

After visiting the Centre, we decided to make it part of our CSR project for this term with the club members at AIC Ngong. We shall set some funds aside from our snack budget and visit the home one of the weekends. The aim here is to help the club members understand the need to reach out to the less fortunate members of their communities- to be a shoulder that the rest of the girls in their communities can find comfort in, to be responsible members of society.

We hope that they will learn that there is help out there, and they should not keep quiet when they need help. There ‘are’ Centres that can offer them refuge when need be. Most of the girls at AIC Ngong are from the Masai community, and they face a lot of challenges growing up.

We start our Club activities this week at Njabini Girls and Shiners School.  We will resume at Kimuka and AIC Ngong next week.