40 days in an orphanage in Kenya

No-one gets to choose where they are born. When you pick up a book to read, you don’t even consider that this fact alone represents a privilege, a gift. You have a home, you are sitting in a cosy armchair, you know how to read, you are wearing comfortable clothes to match your activity, you have had breakfast with your family. It’s ordinary for you, and you take it for granted. An orphanage or a children’s home is a term we most often encounter in novels or maybe in newspaper articles. Rarely do we come into direct contact with children who call it home or were, one way or another, “born” into one. It is, however, a reality existing in our world, although hidden in the background. There may be a host of reasons why someone is orphaned. Their parents may have given them up, they may have been torn away from their family by war, or they may have fallen victim to natural disasters. They start their lives at a severe disadvantage. When the orphanage in question is located in a country where there is rampant poverty and life is hopeless, the disadvantage multiplies. András Kocsis undertook to travel to Kenya. For 40 days, he shared his life with the residents of such an orphanage. He was teaching them, listening to them, and learning from them. The African continent is unfamiliar and mysterious to us. We may associate it with deserts, slave trade, ceaseless civil wars, but also with its special flora and fauna, or news of gold and diamond mines. On the other hand, what is an inevitable question regarding Africa is whether the developed world has repented the crimes of colonialism and whether it has been seeking to make amends. It would be a collective responsibility of the human race to share the resources of the Earth as brothers and sisters should, and ensure that the affluent help those who suffer disadvantages. Pope Francis has spoken up on many occasions in the defence of refugees and the persecuted. He particularly concerns himself about the vulnerability of children. András Kocsis’s account steers readers in this direction. It confronts them with the fact that we in Europe or in other affluent countries of the world live in prosperity, while people born into “third world” countries are destined to live in poverty and hopelessness. His account is intended to sensitise readers, with the gentleness, humanity and openness that are his trademark. At the same time, it inspires you to learn from these children their greatness of soul, a hidden treasure almost forgotten by our affluent civilised society. To learn to see the world through slightly different eyes. Let’s accept him as our expert guide, heeding his experiences and message. Let’s pick up his latest book to read it. PhD Miklós Beer Bishop