Kenyan Heroine Featured on German TV

“Joyce gives us back our dignity”

German Tv station, Das Erste, last week on their show, Weltspiegel, featured a Kenyan heroine for the elderly, Joyce Wanjiku Kairu.

Joyce has taken it upon herself to defend the defenceless, a demographic group many of us have chosen to forget, the elderly. With her organisation, Purity Elderly CARE Foundation, Joyce together with other volunteers spend their days helping out elderly people in Nyeri.

They visit the elderly, clean their homes and cook for them. Inorder to finance most of her activities, Joyce results into begging, something that has led to her label, “the most famous beggar in Nyeri”.

Joyce has not always been there for the elderly. Her turning point came after her own mother was diagnosed with cancer. At the time Joyce was abroad living the life, having found the “green pastures” many seek abroad. She sent money to pay for her mother’s medication and health care but didn’t have the time to be there for her. Her mother eventually passed on and that shook Joyce to her senses.

She left her high flying job in South Africa and returned back to Kenya, to be there for elderly people who like her mother had been deserted by their children. Unlike her mother though, many of these elderly people can’t afford the basics and most get absolute no help from their children, who now live abroad or in the cities.

You can watch the video here.

We’ve featured Joyce several time before, read her story here:

From Life of Affluence in the Diaspora to Begging in Kenya

Kenyan Duped to Come to Germany as a Student Only to be Forced Into Prostitution