In Strength Not Our Own: Caring for Kenya’s Children

Georgie Orme established a childcare centre in Kenya for the rehabilitation for children with mobility problems. Most of her original patients had suffered from polio and, left to their own devices, hauled themselves along the ground, seal-like - dragging their useless lower limbs behind them. Seeking out anyone who would teach them anything, Georgie and her team stretched affected tendons through many hundreds of hours of pain-staking and painful physiotherapy until children’s limbs were straight enough to be strapped into very basic home-produced splints. Many children were encouraged to do the apparently impossible - they learned to walk. Daniel, also a polio victim, joined the team. A shoemaker, he went to South Korea for a short training programme in orthotics and prosthetics. He soon put his newfound skills into practice. Amazingly, the Centre at Kajiado started producing its own artificial limbs. Children who were born without feet, or had traumatically lost their feet, were fitted with Kajiado-produced limbs and enabled to walk for the first time. The work had extended way beyond the original need Child Care Centre. God used a very ordinary Scottish missionary to do a most extraordinary work. Becoming mobile was not an end in itself, Maasai children were enabled to attend school, learn a trade and become independent. Many who saw Christian love in action became Christians.