Last week, one of the most energetic, courageous and dedicated women I have met in my Kenyan history passed away suddenly from a heart attack at the hospital in Mombasa, where she had been admitted for a few days.
I first met Sue Hayward in 2011, shortly after the opening of her dream, the Happy House, an orphanage in Watamu where she would be able to devote herself to children without parents in the area and those from disadvantaged families.
Mama Sue, as everyone already called her, had not just bought a piece of land to build a place where many local orphans could be cared for and nurtured, but she had opened a kindergarten with the first classes of primary school and in a short time was turning it into a model of education.
We often went back to see her and we also dedicated an article to her, which you can read again here, and every time there was not only something new (from the computers, the only school in Watamu to have them and teach them to the children of the primary school, to the football pitch with a team and a coach that we ourselves had trained in our sports academy) but above all incredible stories of humanity and great sacrifice.
By now she was well known not only in the tourist town and everyone knew that babies would grow up in a special environment, so the same social services would bring desperate cases to her, like the little one we christened, a few days after they brought her to Happy House, who had been picked up in the undergrowth outside a village, while rats were trying to gnaw at her.
This was Sue, who not only couldn't say no, but tried to educate children to become responsible kids and one day adults who would never have to abandon a child in that condition.
Her strength was also Dave, her husband who was almost always there when he wasn't in England collecting donations. The couple, she from Blackpool and he from Leeds, had run a hotel in their homeland for years and were also well known for their social initiatives, to the extent that they had received several awards. In 2010 they decided to drop everything and move to Kenya to create what for Sue was a natural extension of her life and essence.
So the Happy House went from being a model orphanage to a fantastic school in just a few years, where many foreign and Italian families from Watamu enrolled their children not only because the education was equal if not superior to that of the best public schools in the area, but because the multi-ethnic harmony and social inclusion of the "happy school" was truly unique. The couple, often aided by many volunteers, paid for teachers who were truly prepared and Sue was always very uncompromising about her staff.
Due to an illness she managed to overcome a few years ago, Sue managed to create an almost perfect machine of solidarity and education that today will manage to go on and hopefully maintain its high standards thanks to the staff, supervised by Dave who wanted to remember his wife in a touching video.
The great love of my life," he began, "a fantastic woman who managed to do everything she set out to do and more. Since 2000, the year of her first holiday in Watamu, visiting a decrepit school and seeing children counting with stones and writing with sticks on the red earth, she made the decision to help the most vulnerable children in the area and began to raise funds and visit Kenya every year. We fell in love with this place and its people, so when we decided to retire ten years ago, we moved in and started building Happy House. Thanks to Sue, it is now one of the best schools in the county and has some excellent facilities, such as a laboratory, a computer for every pupil and a library of 7000 volumes, which are unparalleled by other similar facilities. This is only because of her, her strength and her love for the poor of Watamu, which has always been reciprocated. This, in the pain I feel, is the only certainty. Mama Sue will be remembered and will live on in these children and in those who knew her".
She will also live on in our memory. She had our esteem, cooperation and affection and she always gave it back to us with the interests of the values she lavished, of what she created and of the very high meaning she wanted and knew how to give to her life. Thank you Mama Sue. Hugs to you, big Dave. "Rock", as she called you.