3 Values I Was Reminded of by 41 Orphans

I started attending boarding school at the age of eleven and since then have never lived home full-time. Unlike most kids (I think) and against my parents’ wishes (I know), I made up my mind already at such a young age that I wanted to live far from home, not for the sake of distance, but because I truly am an explorer at heart.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the explorer in me was stranded. Suddenly, my apartment became the place I worked, ate, exercised, prayed, cooked, slept, socialised via virtual meets etc. Admittedly, the beginning was very difficult and unfortunately for me it got worse. The pandemic also took my dear mother on the 28th of June, 2021 and with that I gained the bitter title of “orphan”.

The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimates that there are over 153 million children in the world who are orphans. That’s 153 million human beings under the age of 18 who are in most cases living in sub-par conditions, are deprived of parental care, and have uncertain futures.

Through an initiative pioneered and organised by my sister to help support orphans in Tanzania, I met 41 young orphans on 17th October 2021 in Tandale, a neighbourhood in Dar es Salaam. Up until then, most of my days since I lost my mother in June were blurry and the hard truth was that life as I knew it was never going to…