Just watching news everyday and seeing how my fellow Kenyans were suffering used to break my heart. My biggest question always was, “Is there anything else I can do?” I had donated money and clothes but still felt I had fallen short. A small voice would tell me, “You could have been among the IDPs if it were not for grace”
First, our mission director at Mamlaka shared about Msafara. Then I came home on a Wednesday evening early enough to catch Njungush and Pastor Oscar discussing Msafara on air, I was drawn by Oscar’s passion. But what did it was the gift packs. When many people sms’ed and asked how they could help, Pastor Oscar explained about the gift packs and the item that caught me in all the packs was ‘Vaseline.’ Vaseline, Vaseline, Vaseline in all women, men and children’s pack. By then my heart was racing. I knew that at last this was my chance to do something more. Though as a company [Unilever] we had donated 70M shillings to WFP for the IDP’s in Kenya, I knew we could still do more especially since through our Tea Estates in Kericho, we knew firsthand the effects of the clashes.
Immediately, I wrote an SMS to our East African director, a born again believer, with whom I have both an official and personal relationship. I just asked him if he thought that there was a chance we could get involved by donating one of our products, Vaseline. He replied, “Talk to the Brand manager and then we will discuss”. I couldn’t wait for the night to end and the next day I was at the desk of Vaseline brand manager and she said “Cool, let me think about it”
I prayed for favour and in the afternoon, she asked me what size we want and approximately how many cases. I had not thought of that, so I just asked for 100g and as many cases as she could afford. Immediately she called the factory, got 30 cases (each case has 72 pieces) worth a total of 140,000/= kept aside for Msafara.
What God had done in a span of less than 12 hours, left me at a loss for words. Msafara had more than 2,000 pieces of Vaseline for donation to the IDP’s. We agreed with the secretariat on how to pick it and from then… The rest is history!
