Rachel’s Kids, Part II

It’s time to take another brief break from the whirl of restaurant openings and cookbook launches to provide a happy update from the Kenyan Postal Service front: nearly three months after I first wrote about my friend Rachel Jones and her mission to help the children of PCEA Muniu Primary School in an impoverished refugee camp two hours outside Nairobi [where she is now living,] the boxes I’d shipped have been delivered.

With superhuman mental discipline, energy, and determination – hopefully no bribes necessary this time – Rachel tackled the postal service and collected the boxes of my boys’ outgrown summer clothes, gently used toys, and new workbooks, and delivered them personally to the school. The government has completely abandoned these refugees, she explains, and so they are amazed when people so far away care about their plight.

“I wish you could have heard the squeals of delight!” she writes. But I don’t have to; these photos say it all. The clothes, she says, are desperately needed, and the books will be used in English language class. What you can’t see, though, and what really made me cry was this line from her letter: “you'll be happy to know that the bag full of action figures is perfect for the mental health counseling sessions for the kids in the refugee camps. The counselors were really thrilled to see them.”

True to her promise, with the help of the English language teacher, Rachel has identified a pen pal for my son Kemp. “He is a 6-year-old boy named Duncan Mbugua, in Form 1 (like American First Grade), one of the top kids in the English class. I've asked him to write a letter to Kemp, so they can be pen pals. I will let you know when he's finished and when I'll be putting it in the mail,” she writes. Kemp is beside himself with excitement, suspense, and plans – these pictures, and the prospect of a friendship with Duncan have already expanded his 7-year-old world more than Rachel knows. An enormous return on a few cartons of old clothes –