This is a record of something that happened in Nakuru, Kenya in January 2022. Ubuntu Village is no longer directly supporting this group of children — many were reunited with family, others found housing through community effort. We share this story because it is part of our history, and because it shows exactly what Ubuntu looks like when a community refuses to look away.
What We Found
During outreach in Nakuru, Kenya, Mbogo’s Quality Farm Products and Ubuntu Village came across a group of orphaned and unaccompanied children living on the street. No shelter. No adults. No plan beyond surviving the next day.
Nakuru sits in Kenya’s Rift Valley — Kenya’s fourth largest city, a place of significant movement and, for children without families, significant risk.
Sleeping in Culverts
Their makeshift shelter had been destroyed. With the rains arriving, they were sleeping in culverts — concrete drainage tunnels — barely shielded from the cold and water. This was not a metaphor for vulnerability. This was where children were sleeping.
Mr. Mbogo Cooked Porridge Every Morning
Before any organization got involved, Mr. Mbogo was already there. Every day, he would gather the children — orphans and unaccompanied minors — and cook porridge at his shop. Warm food. Consistency. Someone showing up.
He started with seven children a month before we arrived. By the time this was written, he was feeding twenty every morning. Four had already been reunited with their families — a fact that deserves more attention than it usually gets in these stories.
“He started with seven. By the time we arrived, he was feeding twenty every morning. Four had already been reunited with their families — before any organization got involved.”
The Neighbor Who Offered a House
After prayer and outreach, a neighbor approached Mr. Mbogo. She had seen him feeding the children day after day. She offered the use of a house — a place where the children could sleep under a roof, off the street, out of the culverts.
That is Ubuntu. Not a program. Not a grant. A neighbor, watching another neighbor show up, and deciding to show up too. The community had already built the response before the formal structures arrived.
Other neighbors followed — with clothing, food, supplies. This is the part of these stories that rarely makes it into reports: the community was already moving. What organizations like Ubuntu Village do is show up alongside that movement, not in front of it.
What This Story Is About
Ubuntu Village is no longer providing direct support to this specific group of children. This chapter closed. Some were reunited with family. Some found more stable housing through the community network that formed around them. We don’t have a tidy ending to report, because that is not how these situations resolve — they resolve incompletely, impermanently, through accumulated small acts of showing up.
What we can say is this: the community moved before we did. Mr. Mbogo cooked porridge before anyone called it a program. A neighbor offered a house before any organization filed a grant. Children were reunited with their families through local knowledge and local trust that no outside organization could have replicated.
This is what Ubuntu Village means when we say communities are not problems to be solved. They are the solution. Our role is to show up alongside what is already happening — to document it, to resource it where we can, and to bear witness to what community looks like when it moves.
“The community moved before we did. Our role is to show up alongside what is already happening — to document it, to resource it, and to bear witness.”
Community is the medicine.
Stories like this one happen because people like Mr. Mbogo show up before anyone is watching. Ubuntu Village documents those stories and supports the communities making them. Your donation makes that possible.
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Related Reading
- ‣ Early Morning in Kenya: Children Hiding from Sight
- ‣ A Window into Kenya: Bearing Witness, Building Bridges in Nakuru
- ‣ Ubuntu Village in Uganda: Owen, and the Beginning of a Promise
- ‣ What We Have Done: Ubuntu Village Program History 2016–2025
Michele Mitchell is the Founder, President & CEO of Ubuntu Village Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit rooted in East Harlem, New York, with programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. A writer, advocate, and community strategist working at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, public health, and community power, Michele leads Ubuntu Village’s work to center communities as the protagonists of their own healing. She writes from the conviction that science and spirit are complementary, that healing is relational, and that community is the medicine.
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