Decades of transforming lives in Nairobi slums

It was a death wish which Rev Dr Judy Mbugua fulfilled to the last detail. But it also left the long- serving reverend with many unanswered questions.

“Dear reverend, please I have one last request before I die. I would like you to buy me a nice coffin and a lovely white dress to be buried in,” the woman named Margaret, who was battling HIV/Aids wrote to Dr Mbugua.

Margaret and her three friends had been frequent visitors to the Kabarnet Gardens offices of the Homecare Spiritual Fellowship (HSF) which Dr Mbugua and some of her friends had been running for years in Nairobi. They had just moved to the new premises and were known for their many prayer sessions.

The Kibera women were drawn by the prayers of the HSF members and they came asking for food. The HSF members realised that although the majority of women living with HIV in the slums had access to Antiretroviral drugs, this was not helping much because there was a missing link in the entire chain: nutrition. Henceforth, the HSF members agreed that they would be carrying food they cooked in their homes to the offices to share with the Kibera women.

“If we had ugali that remained, a few chapatis or even half a kilo of sugar, we took it all with gratitude and shared it with our new-found friends,” Dr Mbugua says. There was a marked improvement in their health and she adds that there were no more deaths from HIV witnessed among the women they worked with. “This is apart from four others who succumbed to cancer.”

“When Margaret died, I fulfilled her wishes and bought the coffin plus the dress she had requested. However, her death left me with many questions, especially on how we were to reach out to the many women in the Kibera slums which neighbours our offices, and where Margaret and her friends came from,” Dr Mbugua told Lifestyle.

Although macabre, Dr Mbugua knew the reasons behind Margaret’s request. In the early days of HIV/Aids and when knowledge of the disease was still scanty, those who succumbed were treated as outcasts and in most cases, were tied up in polythene bags and the bodies tossed into graves with those conducting the final rites avoiding contacts with the deceased and in that case, as it was believed, not getting infected.

After Margaret’s burial, Dr Mbugua sat down with her fellow HSF leaders and explored ways they could get more involved in the lives of the women of Kibera. “We realised that apart from praying with them, we needed to put our Christian faith into action and make an impact on their lives just as Jesus would want us to do.”

This is how the Fadhili Women Group was formed. The members made meals as they shared the word of God together. They have also been equipped with beadwork, knitting and detergent making skills. “We gift graduates with Sh10,000 seed capital to start businesses of their own preference. Some have embarked on soap-making while another started a kiosk and employed two other members,” Dr Mbugua says.

HSF’s decision to embrace HIV positive women was remarkable, given that the conventional wisdom prevailing in Christian circles back then was that HIV/Aids was a disease arising from immorality. There are some churches and religious leaders who hold the firm view that the disease was an arrow of God, sent to pierce the hearts and the very lives of people who broke the sixth commandment: Thou shall not commit adultery…

Rev Maxwell Kapachawo from Zimbabwe knows this only too well because immediately he went public with his HIV positive status in early 2000s, the backlash was swift and brutal. In an article appearing in ‘Religion Unplugged’, a New York-based religion news service, Rev Kapachawo says he decided to go public in order to demystify the ‘Disease of Shame’.

He says that for his church — where his bishop had once told him that his continuous sickness was making him a burden — it was already shameful enough to have a pastor suffering from a “shameful disease,” so it naturally became worse when that pastor had the audacity to appear in advertisements on television, on radio, in newspapers, on billboards and everywhere imaginable, revealing his HIV-positive status. He was quickly excommunicated.

That led Kapachawo to found Abandoned Grace Ministries, a church that would accommodate all, without discrimination. This was followed by the formation of the Zimbabwe Network of Pastors Living and Personally Affected with HIV and Aids in 2005, a localised version of the African Pastors Living and Personally Affected with HIV and Aids, which became a platform for tearing down the walls of stigma around the pandemic, the story adds.

Dr Mbugua admits that such notions existed but at HSF they taught the women that no sin was too big to be forgiven.

“By embracing them, we made a bold move and removed stigmatisation, which is one of the leading killers of those living with HIV. Having overcome stigma, the women were now free to live their lives to the fullest, just as God intended,” she says.

There was another problem that required HSF’s attention. A large number of young girls were growing up in Kibera and some of them were getting unplanned pregnancies. That is how a dressmaking training programme was birthed targeting the girls from the slums.

There is an interesting twist to this chapter of the Fadhili story. A gentleman living in Kibera heard of the good news from some of her neighbours who were members. One day, he walked to Rev Mbugua’s offices and insisted that he also wanted to be trained.

“It was the first time we were getting such a request and after deliberations, we allowed him to attend classes. He was working as a guard so he would be in his place of work until morning, go to his house to sleep for two hours, then go for lessons, and it never bothered him that he was the only man in the class of women. He graduated with government-issued Grade One certificate and has since been employed by the State Department of Defence,” Dr Mbugua reveals.

As the feeding programme progressed well, the HSF team started noticing a puzzling occurrence — most of the women were not finishing the meals served to them but were instead pinching the food and hiding in their hand bags.

It fell upon Dr Mbugua to solve this mystery and soon enough the answer was bare.

“How can we eat all this good food and yet our children are starving at home? No sane mother can eat to her fill and go home to the children who have gone for a day or two without a single meal,” one of the women told her.

For this problem, a new solution had to be effected, and fast. Dr Mbugua reached to her team once more with the request that they do something about the starving children. That is how a feeding programme for the children of Kibera came to be. Today it serves at least 700 children.

But like a hydra with many heads, it seems that when one problem was solved by the HSF, another one sprouted. Soon it emerged that a number of the children benefiting from the meals were not going to school for one reason or another.

“We didn’t have the money for their education but once again, we chose to trust that God would provide,” she says.

This is how Dr Mbugua met young Moses Sideti, a beneficiary of the HSF meal programme. He revealed that his elder brother was home after being sent away from the university in his second year. HSF took Daniel under their wings and paid for his university education. He is now a graduate in software engineering. Their only sister also benefited from the generosity of HSF and is also a software engineering graduate.

A brother, Tom, is a gifted musician and last year, he led a team that won a prestigious music award in the country.

There are a total of 300 learners being supported by HSF for various needs from primary to university level. “We have graduated 27 of them and in that group, we have architects, lawyers, bankers and many others, all part of the big HSF family,” Dr Mbugua proudly states.

Having visited a certain family and became well acquainted with the members, Dr Mbugua felt a strong attachment to one of the children. She felt moved to adopt the boy by the name Sammy. “Knowing all the manner of negative perceptions we tend to have about children born in places like Kibera, I at first viewed it as a big gamble but I went ahead anyway,” she says.

The gamble paid off well. Now a banker in Nairobi, Sammy recently obtained a masters degree.

The HSF team is expanding and is now in the process of putting up a multi-purpose centre where all the programmes will be housed.

“We are planning a major fundraising on September 30, 2023 with the ground breaking ceremony set for January 2024. I am appealing to all those who can chip in to help us continue with the work we are doing in Kibera and all the places we are engaged in,” Dr Mbugua appeals.

HSF has grown to immense proportions and Dr Mbugua can only give glory to God, whom she credits for everything. “I have seen God do wonderful things even in my own family,” she says. Her husband of nearly 60 years, Richard Mbugua, passed on last year, but after getting saved following many years of persistence prayers by members of HSF. She says her five children have also been faithfully serving God in various capacities.

“My final word to all Kenyans and indeed all human beings is that we may learn to share whatever we have with others. It doesn’t have to be material. If you are a teacher, you can spare some time to teach a farmer how to share his farm produce and so on.”

Her favourite verse? Mathew 6:33, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

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