Two Year Investigation by the Washington Post Published Today

This story represents two years of work by Rael Ombuor from the Washington Post. She and her editors who were the only ones willing to listen and believe the survivors when they came forward. Having helped to facilitate this story for two years now, I have been humbled, frustrated, and surprised how hard it is to make a story like this public when vested interests with lawyers have a stake in keeping it silent - even to the detriment to the children they claim to support.

This story isn’t over with the allegations public. The victims are owed restitution from those who should have protected them. Major reforms are needed in the child protection sector globally so things like this don’t continue to happen. One motivation of the survivors I worked with was that they wanted to come forward and tell their stories so that the same things didn’t happen to others. Their strength, resilience, and courage has inspired me and motivated me through this long ordeal.

There were further allegations including even the murder of a community health worker who some claim was going to be a whistleblower many years ago, but there was not time or resources to investigate those allegations further. I’m hoping that if the story gains traction amid all the other competing and legitimate crises facing the world, additional reporting might get to the bottom of that aspect of this many branching story.

Rael Ombuor, and her editors Max Bearak (former), Katharine Houreld (current) stuck with this investigation, gave it support, and kept it from getting lost. They have lived up to the ideal that journalism should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

"Never Again" and the importance of Historical Analogy

By now, many of us have heard about the appalling conditions in the detention centers where Latinx migrants are being kept. If not, link here: ‘There Is a Stench’: Soiled Clothes and No Baths for Migrant Children at a Texas Center . There has also been the photo of the father and daughter downed in the Rio Grande (above) and accompanying articles like this one Perspective | We used to think photos like this could change the world. What needs to change is who we are.

Amid all this bad news, the story of Dr. Satusuki Ina stood out to me: Japanese-Americans held in U.S. internment camps to lead protest against Fort Sill child detention: "It's never too late to do the right thing" Dr. Ina was born in an internment camp for Japanese Americans in the 1940s. Internment left such an impact on her and her family that she became a professor and psychotherapist specializing in trauma. Last Saturday Dr. Ina led a group of formerly detained Japanese Americans joined by a number of Native American groups to protest plans to use Fort Sill in Oklahoma as a detention center for migrant children. In the past, Fort Sill has served as an internment site for Japanese Americans and, before that, Native Americans.

The point that historical parallels are key for interpreting the crises and injustices of today, feels especially salient not only as I read about the descendants and former detainees of Fort Sill protesting this last weekend, but also as this week I am in Nebraska on book tour talking about my grandfather’s World War Two memoir. In pulling together my grandfather’s account (and others) who fought against fascism and Nazism in the 1940s, I am struck by the parallels with our own time, with our country of today. Sadly, they’ve always been there and even some recent work has uncovered how even the Nazi’s ideas of racial supremacy and ethnic segregation were imported from the white supremacists of the United States: White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots. But what I find myself grieving today is the contrast between the heroism of the men and women of a generation that fought to end Nazism, fascism, and what they stood for, and the quagmire of inaction/division we are in today. Why does the gulf between the moral resolve and the courage of the 1940s and the 2010s feel so wide? (Not that they were perfect, FDR was putting Japanese Americans in cages and there was still legal segregation of people of color throughout the US, but there seemed to be no doubt that the Third Reich had to be defeated).

Picture taken by Gordon E. Cross, medic in the 134th Infantry Regiment of the Army National Guard while his division (the 35th, also my grandfather’s) was en-route to the Battle of the Bulge. Cross and my grandfather’s accounts are included in the book Finding St. Lo: A Memoir of War and Family link here: Ted Neill

In the work of dismantling racism, we’re often called to see beyond our “categories” our “tribes”, and our self identifying labels, to recognize the humanity in everyone, regardless of ethnicity, creed, or nationality. To bring it back to the Newsweek article, I see Dr. Ina and those joining her (Native Americans and Japanese Americans) as doing just that. The children in these concentration camps (and yes I called them concentration camps because that is what they are) may not look like Dr. Ina, but she and her protest partners see their plight as their own. Recognizing that we are all children of God, with universal humanity and universal rights, Dr. Ina and others are allowing themselves to be moved to action, their hearts to be broken, by the same things that break God’s heart too. Their courage, their moral resolve, their moral clarity, are refreshingly strong and clear. I suspect history will see them as the greatest of their generation.

Post Note: these articles on the importance of historical analogies being central to the spirit of “never again” are great reads I’ve also included Caitlyn Flannigan’s (influenced by Catholic social teachings like myself) impassioned appeal to Christians.

Opinion | ‘Never forget’ is dead. And it was killed on our watch.

Holocaust Museum's Awful Intervention In the Concentration Camp Debate

Christ in the Camps

Little Rock ECD: Turning Scars into Stars!

In my memoir Two Years of Wonder, there a number of children who experience increased vulnerability due to developmental, cognitive, or physical disabilities. For a long-time there were no places for these children to receive therapeutic services, much less an education in Kenya. There are still too few. But one of the organizations working to change that is Little Rock Inclusive Early Childhood Development Center. 

I first visited Little Rock Early Childhood Development Center in Kibera in 2006, when I was a graduate intern for CARE USA. Little Rock ECD Center was founded in 2003. It was the ONLY ECD center where the CARE Kenya staff could refer children with special needs in 2006—and these needs ran the gamut from hearing impairment to cerebral palsy.  

What struck me most about that first visit was the powerful feeling of love and warmth I sensed from the staff and the children. By 2006 I was already a bit of a veteran when it came to visiting children’s homes, pre-schools, and primary schools. I could tell that at Little Rock ECD Center, something was different. There was a unity, solidarity, and genuine determination to give the children there the best chance possible—despite the lack of resources. This came across powerfully when we stopped by for a visit and class was not interrupted so that the children could perform song and dance for us. An aside: another song and dance by children is the last thing you want when you do a school visit—what you want to see is how the school goes about the business of teaching children! 

The interactions among the children were also remarkable to me. Little Rock ECD was (and still is) an inclusive school environment, where children who are “normal learners” are integrated with children who are not. I remember seeing children without special needs helping their friends who did eat, play, and learn. It was remarkable to see: these young children who did not flinch from one another’s differences, who didn’t think twice about helping one another. There was no shunning here, no shame, no stigma, only love, fellowship, and solidarity. 

I visited Little Rock every time I’ve been to Kenya since. I’ve seen them move to a larger campus as they have grown. The same spirit of inclusion continues. As I watched the children play soccer on my last visit in 2015, I realized ALL of them—hearing and hearing impaired—had been taught sign language in order to communicate. There was no telling who was hearing impaired and who was not. Throughout the game they all signed to one another. In additional to successes like these, over the years, the school’s services have broadened further, with trained staff and facilities that can accommodate and treat children with a wide range of cognitive and physical disabilities.  

All this started when Little Rock’s founder, Lilly Oyare founded an ECD center in 2003. It was her goal to focus on vulnerable children in her community. When one child named Melody (more on her below) came to the school in 2006, Lilly faced a dilemma. Melody had cerebral palsy. Due to that, she was more vulnerable than most. Lilly realized they had no training on how to deal with such a child with Melody’s needs. But if Little Rock was to be true to its goal of meeting the needs of the most vulnerable children, Lilly knew they had to accept Melody—she had nowhere else to go. Even though the staff were not sure how they would continue, they opened their doors to all children with special needs after that.

The rest, as they say, is history. Little Rock now has had thousands of children pass through its classroom, hundreds of them have been children with special needs who had received the finest levels of support available. They have classes and after school programs not only for children, but trainings for parents on everything from child care and nutrition, to business generation and microfinance. 

I wanted to provide a glimpse of who Lilly Oyare is, so I sent her a few short questions over email. Her answers are below.

T: Hi Lilly, can you share what inspired you to start your foundation?

L: What inspired me were the lovely faces of the many children I met in Kibera informal settlement. They didn’t look any different than the ones I had in my house, thus they had they had the same motivations to build their dreams of being pilots, doctors, nurses, teachers, and pastors.

T: What are you working on right now that has you especially excited?

L: We are working on a Manual of Inclusive Education and we are fundraising to build a resource center for children with special needs who are unable to transition to primary school because of their disabilities. 

T: Is there a particular success story you’d like to share with readers?

L: Out of the class of 3 year-olds who were admitted among the Baby class in 2004: 13 are joining university and technical college this semester—2018—to pursue a number of different courses. Melody, [Little Rock’s first student with special needs] who has cerebral palsy, completed primary school and has been admitted to high school. She wants to be a lawyer to advocate for the rights of children with special needs.

T: What can readers to do be more involved and to support your cause?

L: Readers can participate in our fundraising activities through our global giving platform (providing early childhood education to 250 children). You can send money through our Paypal account or one can donate through direct debit.

T: Bonus question, what do you do when you’re NOT working, for fun, to restore your spirit, and/or relax?

L: I am very much involved in church activities and I draw my strength from Bible reading 

Lilly is one of my all time most inspiring SHEROS. You can watch a video on YouTube with her here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l8dOk6uTt4

 It’s thanks to people like Lilly that children with dyslexia, such as Miriam in Two Years of Wonder, can get help so they can have a chance to learn, succeed, and thrive. If you’d like to donate to Little Rock, here is the link to their site: http://littlerockkenya.org/newsite/ The donation link will take you right to their Paypal account.